Randall Westbrook

Randall Westbrook

Lecturer, School of Education

CONTACT INFORMATION

Courses

• Seminar in Professional Practice I: The Role of the Teacher in School and Community
• Applied Field Experience: Final Project
• Philosophy of Education

Research

• Teacher Education
• Contemporary Foundations of Educational Philosophy
• African American Social and Political Thought of the late 19th and early 20th centuries
• Harlem Renaissance
• Life and work of W.E.B Du Bois
• Life and Work of Paul Robeson

Education

• BA, Livingstone College of Salisbury, North Carolina
• EdM, EdD, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Academic Profile

I refer to members of my courses as “colleagues” because as students in the QUEST program, their aim is to become professional educators – TEACHERS. Together, we engage in the creation of an environment that not only provides a solid educational foundation but encourage them to develop proficiencies, and to share gifts and perspectives that will not only make them better educators but also better persons…

In the Professional Practice courses I teach, we simulate a broad range of skills needed to become leaders in the school and the community, and discuss what being a teaching means beyond “reading, writing and ‘rithmetic.” We work in teams beginning in the first hour and continue to do so until the last moment of the semester, talking about everything from curriculum development to the importance of understanding of one’s self and tolerance and understanding of others. In the graduate courses, Final Project, and Philosophy of Education, I expand my role as editor and guide, helping to explain the role of research in making their lives and workplace better. My professional and intellectual background, as well as my personal disposition centers on a philosophical base and this pervades every aspect of my approach in the classroom and on campus.

I am a scholar who cherishes time spent with students, having been taught and mentored by Pulitzer laureates, and mentors who have advised world leaders. I have published and edited articles in number of academic journals, as diverse as The Harvard Law Journal for Racial and Ethnic Justice, to the Lincoln Journal for Social and Political Thought. 

I have also written, edited or contributed to a number of books. These activities allow me to help students develop a greater appreciation for their written work, and to de-mystify, and ultimately embrace intellectual investigation. I encourage students to explore wide expanses of existing knowledge and to carve out their own questions and answers. To resist doing so invites the suggestion that their own perspectives don’t matter, and renders them less able to recognize the world for all of its richness. They owe nothing less to the profession, and most importantly to themselves, and to their own future students than to bring as much as they can into their own lives, and into their classrooms, as they prepare the next generation of life-long learners.

Selected Works: Author/Editor, Book: Du Bois at 150 (2021)

2020 Rutgers Graduate School of Education Distinguished Alumni Award, Two Time Maddy Award (FDU Student Govt. Association) “Teacher of the Year” Winner, (2019, 2020) Contributor,  Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History, W.E.B. Du Bois, Harlem Renaissance, 2019 Author/Editor, Journal of Negro Education Special Edition on the 150th Anniversary of the Life of W.E.Bl  Du Bois; (2018)

Author: Elusive Quest: Examining Bell and Brown, Harvard Journal for Ethnic and Racial Justice (2018) Author, Book Education and Empowerment: The Essential Writings of W.E.B. Du Bois (2013)