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Dean Vesperman

Assistant Professor
History University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

Dean Vesperman's office hours

Tuesday
1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
or by appointment
Thursday
1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
or by appointment

Dean Vesperman

Assistant Professor

History

Specialty area(s)

Citizenship and democracy education 

Cultural-Historical Activity Theory

Education Policy

Brief biography

Dr. Dean P. Vesperman is an assistant professor of education in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Dr. Vesperman teaches courses in secondary social studies methods. He earned doctorate at Indiana University in Curriculum and Instruction minor in learning sciences. Before earning his doctorate Dean taught junior high and high school social studies for eleven years in southeastern Wisconsin and CTY for 18 summers. Dr. Vesperman has published articles on various pedagogical methods for teaching social studies. He lives in Western Wisconsin with his wife, daughter, and dog

Current courses at UWL

HIS 419  - Teaching and Learning Social Studies in the Secondary School and Field Experience II

Education

BS - University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh - History and International Studies

MEE - Cardinal Stritch University - Brain-Based Teaching and Learning 

Ph.D. - Indiana University - Curriculum and Instruction: Curriculum Studies and Learning Sciences

Career

Teaching history

I taught middle and high school social studies for 11 years. I taught 7th Grade World Geography, 8th Grade United States History to 1877, High School courses in American Government, Economics, Psychology, and Sociology, and Film Analysis. 

I have taught classes in elementary and secondary social studies methods, educational psychology, foundations of diversity and equity, and education policy. 

Professional history

Luther College - 2014-2019

University of Wisconsin-River Falls - 2019-2024

Research and publishing

Blankenship, W. G., Aydinian-Perry, A., Vesperman, D. P., & Missias, M.T. (2025). Contextualizing socio-cultural STEM through historical figures and events. In Pryor C. R. and Kang, R. Socio-Cultural STEM for middle school: A model for student engagement and teacher collaboration (pp. 81-105). Rowan & Littlefield.

Aydinian-Perry, A., Missias, M. T., Blankenship, W. G., & Vesperman, D. P., & (2024). Teaching the Red Summer Through The Chicago Race Riot: A Primary Source Investigation.  Oregon Journal for the Social Studies 12(1). p. 14-25.   

 

Smith H., Vesperman, D. P., Frederick, A. (2024). Preparing Teachers for Linguistically Diverse Classrooms. In Andrews, O. S. & Tomlin, A. D. When We Hear Them: Tools to Attune Teachers’ Ears to Voices of Language-Diverse Learners. Information Age Publishing. 257-267.  

 

Aydinian-Perry, A., Missias, M.T., Vesperman, D. P., & Blankenship, W. G. (2024). Whose greatest story is ever told: Historical agency in evangelical Christian American history textbooks. In Allen, A., Kavanagh, A. M., and Ni Cassaithe, C. Moving Beyond a Single Story. Information Age Publishing. 195-213.

 

 

Vesperman, D. P., Aydinian-Perry, A., Blankenship, W. G., & Missias, M. T. (2023). Acknowledgements and introduction. In Vesperman, D. P., Aydinian-Perry, A., Blankenship, W. G., & Missias, M. T. Out of turmoil. Catalysts for re-learning, re-teaching, re-imagining history and social studies. Information Age Publishing. Xi-xiii.

 

Vesperman, D. P. & Pol, M. (2023). Teaching social studies in a time of COVID-19: an examination of contradictions in activity. In Vesperman, D. P., Aydinian-Perry, A., Blankenship, W. G., & Missias, M. T. Out of turmoil. Catalysts for re-learning, re-teaching, re-imagining history and social studies. Information Age Publishing. 57-72. 

Kudos

presented

Dean Vesperman, History, presented "Blazing a New Freedom Trail: Connecting Past and Present through Historical and Geographic Thinking" at the National Council for the Social Studies on Nov. 23 in Boston, Massachusetts. The presentation was on how to engage in authentic historical inquiry using local and historical maps to identify and illuminate the silences within historical geographic texts within a justice-oriented inquiry. Use Boston’s historical geographic texts as a model to interrogate local social and political discourses, to frame historical narratives, and teach with justice-oriented historical inquiry.

Submitted on: Nov. 28, 2024

presented

Dean Vesperman, History, presented "This Decade is Gnarly: Primary Sourcing the 1980s" at National Council for the Social Studies on Nov. 22 in Boston, Massachusetts. How do you teach a decade that shaped the future as dramatically as the 1980s? Using the words, images, music, politics, and culture of a period our curriculum pairs primary sources and various literacy techniques in analyzing this decade.

Submitted on: Nov. 28, 2024

published

Dean Vesperman, History, co-authored the chapter "Local Historical Maps and Geography as Social Inquiry: Critical Interrogatories for Social Justice" in "Dismantling Spaces of Silence in Social Science Education," which was accepted for publication by Information Age Publishing. Maps are ubiquitous objects in the social sciences, and as historical artifacts provide a visual-textual way of human evolution of thought about spaces, places, and the human-spatial relationships. Engaging in historical inquiry that places local interests, and local geography, at the center of its work gives scholars a tangible mechanism for challenging normative assumptions about space, and to critically engage “the familiar in unusual ways, and the unusual in familiar ways” (Stout, 2007). But to be in critical engagement with a map as a historical text means illuminating–and even resisting–the dominant social, historical, and cultural practices in which the map was created. Confronting the places of local histories, and the silences that reside in between them, enable us to advocate for historical inquiry that is both justice-oriented and inclusive of legion human experiences.

Submitted on: Nov. 7, 2024

Memberships & affiliations

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