Tina Trujillo

Tina Trujillo is an Associate Professor at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. She earned her Ph.D. in Education from UCLA and her M.A. in Education from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has worked as a public school teacher, educational consultant, and program evaluator. At Berkeley, she teaches Ph.D. students in policy, politics, and the epistemological aspects of research. She also teaches undergraduate students about contemporary issues in pubic education.

Dr. Trujillo has used tools from political science, critical policy studies, and critical race theory to study the politics of educational change; the democratic and instructional consequences of national and state accountability policies; and the relationships between different international political contexts and schools’ promotion of democratic values like collectivism, welfarism, and the common good.

Recently, Dr. Trujillo has turned to questions about the connections among nature, well-being, and learning, as well as the tensions and commonalities between empirical and spiritual epistemologies. She is interested in exploring how educational spaces, as sites of socialization, can cultivate values for and relationships with the broader living community. 

Her work is published in a range of journals and other outlets, including American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and McSweeney’s. She is the co-editor of Understanding Educational Leadership: Critical Perspectives and Approaches (2021, Bloomsbury, with Steven Courtney, Helen Gunter, and Richard Niesche) and Learning from the Federal Market-Based Reforms: Lessons for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) (2016, Information Age Publishing, with William Mathis).