Brian W. Dotts

Biography

Brian W. Dotts, PhD, is a Professor of Educational Foundations at the University of Georgia. He has published three books, including his latest with Cambridge University Press. He has published peer-reviewed papers in the history of American Education, specifically focusing on education and political theories during the American Revolution and early national period, common school politics during the Antebellum Era, John Dewey and Social Reconstructionism during the early twentieth century. He also focuses on education policy and politics, multiculturalism, ethnic studies, the school privatization movement, and Educational Foundations as an academic field. Dotts’s primary theoretical lens is Critical Theory.

Areas of Expertise

  • Educational Foundations
  • Federal Education Policy
  • History of American Education
  • Classical and Enlightenment Philosophy
  • Public School Privatization
  • School Law
  • Multicultural and Ethnic Studies
  • Education Politics

Education

  •  PhD in History, Philosophy, and Education Policy Studies in Education, 2005
    Indiana University
  •  MA in American Politics, 1992
    Boston College
  •  BA in Political Science, 1990
    Indiana University Southeast

Concentrations

Contact

 706-201-5979 (mobile)
 brian-dotts-b4824a67
 https://briandotts.wordpress.com/

Publications

Books

(In progress) Politics of American Education
  • Brian W. Dotts
Educational Foundations: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives (Outstanding Book Award, Society of Professors of Education)
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019. ISBN: 9781316648896. 568 pages.
The Elusive Thomas Jefferson: Essays on the Man Behind the Myths
  • M. Andrew Holowchak and Brian W. Dotts
  • Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 2017. ISBN: 9781476669250, 252 pages.
The Political Education of Democratus: Negotiating Civic Virtue during the Early Republic
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. ISBN: 978-0-7391-6720-5, 276 pages.

Chapters

The Federalist Society, the Institute for Justice, and the School Choice Agenda
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • In Kathleen deMarrais, Brigette Herron, and Janie Copple’s Conservative Philanthropies: Ideologies and Actions Shaping U.S. Educational Policy and Practice (pp. 39-77). Gorham, ME: Myers Education Press, 2020. ISBN: 9781975503000. (A 2021 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award Winner))
The Sun Never Sets on the Global Privatization Movement: A Return to the Heart of Darkness in a Neoliberal and Neoimperialist World
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • In International Handbook of Critical Pedagogies (pp. 480-197). Edited by Shirley R. Steinberg, Barry Down, Sandy Grande, and Dara Nix-Stevenson. Volume I of III. London, UK: Sage Publications, 2020. ISBN: 9781526411488.
Impacting Education through Privatized Graduate Schools: Strategic Fields, Charter Networks, and the Relay Graduate School of Education
  • Jamie C. Atkinson and Brian W. Dotts
  • In C. Luvienski & T. J. Brewer, Learning to Teach in an Era of Privatization: Global Trends in Teacher Preparation (pp. 91-112). New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2019. ISBN: 9780807761595.
The Apostle of Whig History: Thomas Jefferson’s Reliance on the Ancient Saxon Constitution
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • In M. Andrew Holowchak and Brian W. Dotts (Eds.). The Elusive Thomas Jefferson: The Man behind The Myths (pp. 24-45). Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 2017. ISBN: 9781476669250.
Cato’s Resolve and the Revolutionary Spirit: Political Education, Civic Action, and the Democratic-Republican Societies of the 1790s
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • In Donald Warren and John Patrick (Eds.). Moral and Civic Learning in the United States (pp. 33-50). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. ISBN: 978-1-4039-7396-2.

Articles

Tacitus: “The Greatest Enemy to Tyrants”: History as Moral Instruction
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • The Journal of Thomas Jefferson’s Life and Times 1, no. 1, 71-82, 2017.
Dewey Anticipates Habermas’s Paradigm of Communication: The Critique of Individualism and the Basis for Moral Authority in “Democratic Education”
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • Education & Culture: The Journal of the John Dewey Society 32, issue 1, Article 9, 2016.
Education as Instrument or as Empowerment? Untangling White Privilege in the Politics of Ethnic Studies –The Tucson Unified School District
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • Multicultural Education 22 nos. 3 & 4, 35-38, 2015.
Social Foundations in Exile: How Dare the School Build a New Social Order
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • Journal of Educational Foundations 28 nos. 1-4, 51-72, 2015.
Beyond the Schoolhouse Door: Educating the Political Animal in Jefferson’s Little Republics
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • Democracy and Education 23 Article 5, 1-12, 2015.
Schooling in the ‘Iron Cage’ and the Crucial Role of Interpretive, Normative, and Critical Perspectives in Social Foundations Studies
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association 49 no. 2, 148-168, 2013.
‘Making Rome Appear More Roman’: Common Schooling and the Whig Response to Jacksonianism
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • Journal of Philosophy and History of Education 62 no. 1, 207-226, 2012.
The Democratic-Republican Societies: An Educational Dream Deferred
  • Brian W. Dotts
  • Educational Horizons 88 no. 3, 179-192, 2010.

Awards and Accolades

Outstanding Book Award

Society of Professors of Education, 2020

Special Collections Libraries Faculty Teaching Fellow

University of Georgia Special Collections Archives, 2018

Carl Glickman Faculty Fellow Award

Mary Frances Early College of Education, 2016

Donald O. Schneider Mentoring Award

Mary Frances Early College of Education, 2014