Garrett Delavan

Ph.D. in Language, Culture and Curriculum, University of Utah, 2017
M.A. in Linguistics, University of Utah, 2003
B.A. in Spanish, Grinnell College, 1995

World language, dual language and ESOL education
Multicultural education / social foundations of education
Critical pedagogy and environmental justice in second language teaching
U.S. language education policy
Neoliberal discourse and policy in education
Critical discourse analysis and practitioner inquiry in education

Garrett Delavan is an assistant professor in the College of Education & Human Development’s Department of Middle and Secondary Education and an affiliated faculty member in the college’s Center for Transnational and Multilingual Education. He received his doctorate in language, culture and curriculum from the University of Utah in 2017 and his master’s degree in linguistics with an emphasis in bilingual education. Before joining the CEHD faculty, he spent three years as an assistant professor of multilingual and multicultural education in the School of Education at California State University San Marcos.

Prior to earning his doctorate, Delavan spent 17 years in public schooling, the first eight of which were spent at Horizonte Instruction and Training Center, a diverse, urban, alternative high school in Salt Lake City, Utah, with a social justice vision. There, he taught English as a Second Language and business information technology to both adults and high-school-age youth, and served two years as English as a Second Language coordinator. This experience and his time in his last K-12 position — where he taught Spanish I, Spanish II and Spanish for Native Speakers — gave him experience with navigating the politics of race, class and culture in the U.S. school system and with employing empowering instructional methods.

His work revolves around equitable educational access in language education. His view of educational access is ultimately about transformation of problems sometimes under-recognized as related to language learning, such as new forms of racism and classism embedded within the marketization trends in education. His work balances two aspects of equitable access: a.) language education planning that creates equitable access to program types, effective teaching practices and curriculum content; and b.) social justice and ecojustice curriculum connections that will allow language learners to access the empowering awareness it will take to transform society for the better.