Maia Cucchiara

Profile Picture of Maia Cucchiara

Maia Cucchiara

  • College of Education and Human Development

    • Teaching and Learning

      • Associate Professor

Biography

Dr. Maia Cucchiara's research interests fall into three often-overlapping categories. First, she is interested in urban education policy, particularly in the intersections between policy assumptions and discourses, issues of race and class, and people’s lived experiences. Second, she studies family-school relations, with a focus on how class shapes parents’ experiences with urban schools and their children’s education more broadly. Third, she is interested in the impact of urban development and revitalization on public education and the implications for disadvantaged students. Dr. Cucchiara is the author of Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities: Who Wins and Who Loses When Schools Become Urban Amenities (University of Chicago Press, 2013). Her current project, an ethnographic study of low-income mothers’ experiences with parenting education, is funded by a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation.

Research Interests

  • Educational Policy
  • Sociology
  • Urban Education

Courses Taught

Number

Name

Level

EDUC 2103

Socio-cultural Foundations of Education in the United States

Undergraduate

URBE 5417

The Urban Environment

Graduate

Selected Publications

Recent

  • Cucchiara, M. & Steinbugler, A. (2021). “The Books Make You Feel Bad”: Expert Advice and Maternal Anxiety in the Early 21st Century*. Sociological Forum, 36(4), 939-961. doi: 10.1111/socf.12748.

  • Cucchiara, M. "Sometimes you have to pop them": Conflict and Meaning-Making in a Parenting Class. SOCIAL PROBLEMS, 68(4), 1010-1025. 10.1093/socpro/spaa045

  • Cucchiara, M., Cassar, E., & Clark, M. (2019). ‘‘I Just Need a Job!’’ Behavioral Solutions, Structural Problems, and the Hidden Curriculum of Parenting Education. Sociology of Education, 92(4), 326-345. doi: 10.1177/0038040719861363.

  • Cucchiara, M. (2019). Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School. AMERICAN JOURNAL of EDUCATION, 125(4), 653-657. 10.1086/704101

  • Cucchiara, M. (2019). Middle-class engagement in urban public education: Implications for family-school partnerships. In The Wiley Handbook of Family, School, and Community Relationships in Education (pp. 575-595). doi: 10.1002/9781119083054.ch27.

  • Woyshner, C. & Cucchiara, M. (2017). Can parent-teacher groups work for all students? Educational Leadership, 75(1), 64-69.