Ethan Chang

Research Overview

Ethan Chang is an assistant professor of Educational Administration at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He is a critical ethnographer and community-based researcher interested in co-producing knowledge that answers to people and places that U.S. public schools have historically failed to serve. His current work asks: How do community-based leaders design learning spaces that cultivate broad-based, culturally sustaining leadership? Ethan’s prior experiences as a middle school Social Studies teacher (Waialua High and Intermediate School), training in the sociology of education, and recent work on white parent opposition to Ethnic Studies in K-12 public schools inform his interests in teaching and learning further distanced from formal schooling. 

Ethan received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz (under Dr. Ronald David Glass) and pursued a University of California Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in Asian American Studies and Black Studies (under co-mentors, Dr. Diane Fujino and Dr. George Lipsitz). He is also a haumana of uhau humu pōhaku under Kumu Kimeona Kane of Waimānalo. Manuscripts written with friends and co-authors can be found in Educational Policy, Harvard Educational Review, Educational Administration Quarterly, and Teachers College Record.