Allison Firestone

UC Berkeley
Doctoral Candidate
allisonfirestone@berkeley.edu

Allison Firestone is a 5th-year doctoral candidate in the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses broadly on preservice teacher education and capacity building for inclusive, equity-centered pedagogy. Her dissertation is a mixed methods design experiment that explores the impact of integrating scaffolded inquiry practices into student-teaching coursework, and how critical inquiry impacts preservice teachers’ knowledge of, attitudes toward, and enactment of inclusive practices. Allison’s work is grounded in critical disability theory, and another strand of her research examines school discipline equity and the impact of rigorous instruction on discipline disproportionality. Through her research, Allison seeks to reimagine inclusion as meaningful, accessible pedagogy for students across intersecting diversity spectra (e.g., neurological, cultural, linguistic, (dis)ability). Prior to her doctoral studies, Allison earned a master’s degree in special education from the University of Oregon and worked as a general and a special education teacher at the elementary school level.