Dr. Strekalova-Hughes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies. She was born and raised in Russia, completing a master’s degree in Language and Literature with a minor in Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Volgograd. She later moved to the United States to pursue a doctoral degree in Early Childhood Education at the State University of New York-Buffalo. She has taught in multilingual early childhood classrooms in Moscow and Buffalo and began teaching at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2015.
As a faculty member, Dr. Strekalova-Hughes supports future teachers in becoming a collective of self-fulfilled creative professionals committed to equity in education. Together, they imagine a society where all children are learning with well-prepared, affirming, and inspiring educators, whose well-being and long-term quality of life are prioritized. Join her students in the rewarding profession of Early Childhood Education (Birth-Grade3) to make a long-lasting impact on children’s lives.
As a researcher, Dr. Strekalova-Hughes is interested in intersections of family storytelling, children’s literature, legal and policy texts, and dominant discourses that influence well-being of children and families who experience displacement. Having grown up in Volgograd, which is formerly Stalingrad, she is committed to peace and global co-existence of people’s full humanities. As an immigrant with family stories of internal displacement and forced dispossession, she dreams of a world in which people choose to leave for reasons like curiosity, intellectual and creative pursuits, not because they cannot be themselves, have a life or livelihood in their (home)lands. Implications from her scholarship aim to support culturally sustaining pedagogies for teachers and generative methodologies for researchers.
Ph.D., Early Childhood Education, State University of New York at Buffalo
M.A., Language and Literature with a minor in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Volgograd State Pedagogical University
Strekalova-Hughes, E., Peterman, N., & M. Minaya, R. (2023). Rereading the past, imagining just futures: A generative method of historicizing forced displacement in children’s literature. The Social Studies, 1-16.
Strekalova-Hughes, E., Nash, K. T., Schmer, B., & Caldwell, K. (2021). Meeting the needs of all cultureless learners: Culture discourse and quality assumptions in personalized learning research. Review of Research in Education, 45(1), 372-407.
Strekalova-Hughes, E. & Peterman, N., (2020). Countering dominant discourses and reaffirming cultural identities of learners from refugee backgrounds. The Reading Teacher, 74(3), 325-329.
Strekalova-Hughes, E. S. & Wang, X. C. (2019). Perspectives of children from refugee backgrounds on their family storytelling as a culturally sustaining practice. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 33(1), 6-21.
Strekalova-Hughes, E. (2019). Unpacking refugee flight: Critical content analysis of picturebooks featuring refugee protagonists. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 21(2), 23-44.
Strekalova-Hughes, E., Peterman, N., & Lewman, K. (2019). Legally scripted fictions: Fathers and fatherhood in picturebooks with young protagonists from refugee backgrounds. Children’s Literature in English Language Education, 7(2), p. 10-36.
Wang, X. C., Strekalova-Hughes, E.S., & Cho, H. (2019). Going beyond a single story: Experiences and education of refugee children at home, in school, and in the community. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 33(1), 1-5.
