Rate My Professor Karen Colum

Karen Colum, Ph.D., is Department Chair and Associate Professor in the Elementary and Literacy Education Department at Minnesota State University, Mankato's College of Education. She has held faculty positions at the university since August 2011, initially as Assistant Professor, and currently serves as Graduate Program Coordinator for elementary education, Online Coordinator, and internship coordinator for K-12 and secondary programs. Colum earned her Ph.D. in Education, Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 2016. Her doctoral dissertation, titled “Can I just be a human with them? Cultivating Equity-Mindedness for the Teaching and Learning of Elementary Mathematics,” addresses equity in elementary mathematics teaching. She previously obtained a master's degree from The University of Texas at Arlington.

Colum's research focuses on equity-mindedness, elementary mathematics education, and teacher preparation, with interests in phenomenology, educational equity and justice, culturally responsive teaching and learning, and culturally responsive pedagogy. Her publications include “5 Indicators of Decimal Understandings” in Teaching Children Mathematics (2015), “Fractions, Number Lines, and Third Graders” (2017), “Invoking Action, Disrupting Complicity: Teacher Educators' Journey to Reimagining Racist Grading Practices” (2020 AERA Annual Meeting proceedings), and “How do you measure that?: Confronting Ideological Barriers to Socially Just Teacher Education in Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching” (2020). Other works encompass “edTPA Innovation at Minnesota State University, Mankato” co-authored with Lori Piowlski and Peggy Ballard (2013), “Making Justice Fundamental: Teacher Educators’ Journey to Reimagine Accountability” in Studying Teacher Education, and “Plunging Beneath the Surface: Uncovering Internal Dispositions.” Colum contributes to program innovations such as asynchronous post-baccalaureate pathways for elementary teacher licensure and graduate endorsements in reading. Her scholarship, cited 13 times on ResearchGate, supports equitable practices in teacher education.