Rebecca Kantor, Ed.D.

Professor and T&L Director

Contact Info:

• E-mail: kantor-martin.1@osu.edu
• Office: 333 Arps
• Phone: (614) 292-1257
• Fax: (614) 292-7695

Mailing Address:

• 1945 N. High St.
• Columbus, OH 43210-1172

Biographical Information:

Rebecca Kantor is currently the director of the School of Teaching and Learning. Dr. Kantor received a Bachelor of Arts in Developmental Psychology and Linguistics from the University of Rochester, and both a Master’s in Early Childhood Education, and a Doctorate in Education and Applied Developmental Psycholinguistics from Boston University. She taught profoundly deaf children for seven years in Massachusetts.

Dr. Kantor began her tenure at The Ohio State University in 1983 as an assistant professor in the Department of Family Relations and Human Development in the College of Human Ecology. She also played the lead role in the department's A. Sophie Rogers Laboratory for Child and Family Studies. In 1987, she was assigned the directorship of the lab, and in April 1989, she was promoted to associate professor with tenure.

In 1996, Dr. Kantor requested a transfer of her tenure-initiating unit to the School of Teaching and Learning in the College of Education to pursue her interests in public schools and Head Start. While she found her work in the lab school deeply satisfying, she increasingly felt that her goals there had been realized, while, at the same time, she became more active in work related to the public schools. In 1999, she was promoted to full professor in the College of Education.

Dr. Kantor’s evolving interests and work over the past 20 years have been in collaborative and ethnographic research, early childhood development and education, teacher education, integrated and socially constructed curriculum (especially the work of the Reggio Emilia educators in Italy) and children's peer cultures. She continues to be highly involved with the early childhood policy community in the state where work on improving professional development systems for all early childhood professionals takes place. Dr. Kantor also works with doctoral students through the school’s early childhood area of study.

Education

• 1982 Boston University EdD (Applied Psycholinguistics)
• 1977 Boston University M.Ed. (Early Childhood Education)
• 1975 University of Rochester BA Developmental Psychology and Linguistics

Selected Publications:

• Kantor, R. & Fernie, D. (Eds.) (2003). Early Childhood Classroom Processes.Caskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
• Kantor, R. & Fernie, D. (2001). Reconceptualizing a research agenda: Personal journies. In Greishaber, S. and Cannella, G. (Eds.). Shifting identities in early childhood education: Expanding possibilities for action and thought. New York:Teachers College Press.
• Kantor, R., Fernie, D., Scott, J. and O'Brien, (2000). Career pathways in Ohio's early childhood profession: Linking systems of preparation inside and outside of higher education. In Horm-Wingerd, D., Hyson, M. and N. Karp (Eds.) New teachers for a new century: The future of early childhood professional preparation. (This paper was originally commissioned by the Federal Department of Education as a "white paper" and now is in publication.)
• Fernie, D., & Kantor, R. (1998).Our reflections on collaborative research. In B. Graue, and D. Walsh (Eds.), Studying Children in Context. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, (pp.83-91).
• Kantor, R., & Whaley, K. (1998). New ideas and existing frameworks: Learning from Reggio Emilia. In C. Edwards, G. Forman, and L. Gandini (Eds.), The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education, 2nd Edition, (pp.313-333). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Press.