Ryan Oto
· Assistant ProfessorVerifiedUniversity of Minnesota · Curriculum and Instruction
Active 2018–2026
About
Ryan Oto is an assistant professor in social studies education at the University of Minnesota. He earned his Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from the University of Minnesota, where he examined the ways that educators and youth resisted anti-Black racism through enactments of resistance. His research focuses on social studies education, particularly in understanding how educators and youth engage with issues of race and resistance.
Research topics
- Political Science
- Sociology
- Pedagogy
- Gender studies
- Law
- Social Science
- Criminology
Selected publications
American Educational Research Journal · 2026-05-14
articleSenior authorDominant forms of citizenship education remain tied to anti-Black character education that reinforces the hegemony of racial liberalism and white supremacy. Drawing on the concept of racial literacy, this conceptual paper critiques existing conceptualizations of civic education and constructs a framework for an anti-oppressive citizenship education grounded in Black feminism. Using Black feminist scholarship, this paper explores three pillars of a Black feminist citizenship framework: solidarity, humanizing resistance, and action toward liberation. This framework offers K–12 teachers the opportunity to move away from citizenship education programs that emanate from and perpetuate anti-Blackness and instead allows for citizenship education to be reimagined ideologically and in praxis using a Black feminist epistemology to take civic education to horizons yet unseen.
Subversive World Building: How Classroom Educators Enact a Feminist Ethic of Care
2025-01-01
article1st authorCorrespondingTeachers College Record The Voice of Scholarship in Education · 2025-04-01
article1st authorCorrespondingBackground or Context: Belonging has proved to be important for youth and adults in schools. However, anti-Black racism in U.S. schooling has led to harmful psychological and physiological effects that teachers of Color face in combating racism. As such, teachers of Color continue to face a “double bind” when it comes to teaching: working to advocate for anti-racist pedagogies, curricula, and school policies, while also having to navigate and protect themselves from the normalcy of racism in individual, ideological, and institutional forms. Hence, it is worth understanding how teachers of Color navigate the politics of belonging in the current contexts of their schools and seeing what lessons there are still to learn about how belonging takes shape in the context of anti-Blackness. Additionally, this piece contributes to the growing body of literature on Asian American teacher experiences by explicitly attending to the relationship of Asian American educators' efforts to combat anti-Blackness in school contexts. Purpose/Research Question: This study explores how an Asian American teacher works to cultivate belonging in the context of an anti-Black school. Hence, this study poses the following question: How does an Asian American teacher enact their own politics of belonging to contest the hegemonic presence of anti-Blackness for themselves and with youth? Subsequent supporting questions are: How does an Asian American educator foster senses of belonging in our educational communities when automatically positioned as an authority figure who represents and carries out anti-Black practices that have endured the modern schooling history? What actions and beliefs do teachers rely on to intellectually and materially foster senses of belonging with youth? Research Design: This project employed the critical ethnographic methodology of portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997) of an Asian American teacher, Thuy, with an explicitly named commitment to Black solidarity. The study took place in Racial Justice Community School during a two-year period (2019–2021). Data collected consisted of formal interviews, extensive informal interviews, field notes, participant observation, lesson plans, and student assignments. Conclusion/Recommendations: Thuy’s portrait illustrates the tension between the potential for classrooms to be sites of racial justice and the hegemonic force of anti-Blackness in schools that she constantly had to strategically navigate. Drawing on these lessons, the conclusion explores what it might mean for schools to support educators like Thuy, with specific attention to the ways that teacher education, school leadership, and policymakers need to divest from anti-Black logics that undergird current formulations of being a teacher.
The Canon of Civics Education: Troubling the Logics of Liberalism in Social Studies Civics Standards
2025-01-01
article1st authorCorresponding2024-01-01
article1st authorCorrespondingTheory & Research in Social Education · 2023 · 27 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Sociology
- Sociology
- Political Science
Social studies education research lauds the importance of schools as spaces to practice democratic values while also largely ignoring the agency youth exercise to shape their lives in the present. This article explores how young people organize and enact democratic practices within youth-mediated contexts in schools by examining the pedagogy of solidarity that adults must enact to support youths’ visions of democratic life. This qualitative study examines youth organizers’ response to the murder of a Black man in their community and how adults acted in solidarity or against their civic action. The findings elucidate how youth organizing and action can be re-framed as democratic actions and what it takes for adults to make this epistemic and ontological maneuver. The article concludes with a discussion about implications for social studies research when centering youth agency, as well as an analysis of social education beyond the classroom and adult-centered understandings of democratic education.
Theory & Research in Social Education · 2023-01-18
article1st authorCorresponding“I Used to Think Religion—I Mean Christianity—Was a Cult”
2023-09-20
book-chapterSenior authorThe Purple Room: A YPAR-Designed Healing Space Grounded in Community-Engaged School Leadership
VUE (Voices in Urban Education) · 2023-02-24 · 1 citations
articleOpen accessSenior authorThis article explores how a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) team and adult co-conspirators in varied school leadership positions became partners, an unusual pairing as urban schools do not often prioritize young people as leaders. The school leveraged the district's community-engaged mission and their collective power to increase youth organizing and mental health in an urban-based community school. Drawing from community engagement and social justice, the authors use the concepts of sharing power and engaging healing to better understand the development of this YPAR project, a youth-designed healing space called "The Purple Room." Findings show that multiple levels of school leadership can set the conditions with youth researchers to build trust and to support the justice-oriented work that students know is needed.
Proceedings of the 2022 AERA Annual Meeting · 2022-01-01
article1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 2 shared
Abigail Rombalski
University of Minnesota
- 1 shared
J. B. Mayo
Illinois College
- 1 shared
Ngan Nguyen
FPT University
- 1 shared
Scott Thomas Glew
Twin Cities Orthopedics
- 1 shared
Amina Smaller
University of Minnesota System
- 1 shared
Megan Custer
International Center for Transitional Justice
- 1 shared
Jessica Forrester
Youth Development
- 1 shared
Justin Grinage
University of Minnesota
Education
- 2021
Ph.D., Curriculum and Instruction
University of Minnesota
- 2016
M.A., Curriculum and Instruction
University of Minnesota
- 2009
B.A., history
Carleton College
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