I define myself professionally as an educational anthropologist and an early childhood education specialist. My education was interdisciplinary, with coursework in anthropology, sociology, and child development and a Ph.D. from the Committee on Human Development at the University of Chicago and a post-doctoral fellowship at the East-West Center in Honolulu. My principal doctoral mentors were Robert A LeVine (who is an emeritus professor at the Harvard Graduates School of Education) and Takeo Doi (a Japanese psychoanalyst, most famous for his work on Japanese ethnopsychiatry).

My job title is “The Nadine Mathis Basha Professor of Education” in the College of Education at Arizona State University. My home unit is the early childhood education cluster in the Division of Curriculum and Instruction. I also have an appointment in the Social Foundations program of the Division of Educational Policy and Leadership. I joined the faculty at ASU in 2001. Before that I taught for many years at the University of Hawai`i and for a year at the University of New Hampshire. I have been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago and the University of Paris.

For the 2007-2008 academic year I am a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City, where I am working on a book on immigration and early childhood education.

My research interests include cross-cultural studies of early childhood education, immigration, children and the media, and qualitative research methods. Among my publications are the books Preschool in Three Cultures; Good Guys Don't Wear Hats; Remade in Japan; Making a Place for Pleasure in Early Childhood Education; and Pikachu's Global Adventure. I am currently completing a sequel to Preschool in Three Cultures and leading a major international project: Children Crossing Borders: Immigrant Parent and Staff Perspectives on Preschool.