Peter Bjorklund

UC San Diego
pbjorklund@ucsd.edu

Peter is a third-year PhD Student in Education Studies at University of California, San Diego. He earned his B.A. in History from Occidental College and continued on to teach high school social studies in the San Francisco Bay Area for seven years. During that time, Peter completed an M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction from Santa Clara University. He then left the classroom in 2014 to pursue an Ed. M. in International Educational Development at Teachers College (TC), Columbia University. At TC, his interests centered around education in emergencies, namely teachers in refugee contexts in sub-Saharan Africa. 

In transitioning back to domestic education at UCSD, Peter’s primary research interests center on educational change, social network analysis, preservice and early career teachers, teacher identity, teacher beliefs, trust, sense of belonging, and refugee education. He is also interested in teacher-student relationships and the impact they can have on students’ achievement, academic identity, and overall well-being.

Currently, Peter is working on a longitudinal project exploring the social networks of pre-service teachers and their relationship to teacher identity and beliefs, a project examining the ELL and science advice networks of teachers during educational reform, and a study investigating the relationship between the social construction of refugee and immigrant populations and how schools address the needs of recent arrival English learners.