Zena Tredinnick-Kirby

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Adjunct Professor, Art & Design Education

PhD, Pennsylvania State University
MPS, Pennsylvania State University
BA, The College of New Jersey
AA, Art Institute of Philadelphia

Contact Info

Art & Design Education

Zena Tredinnick-Kirby, coordinator of student teaching in Art and Design, is a progressive interdisciplinary educator who is passionate about transforming education through the ethics of care theory. At the heart of her research is how care ethics, experiential learning, and choice within the curriculum can reshape lifelong learning.

Biography

Zena Tredinnick-Kirby earned her PhD from The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), her MPS from Penn State, and her BA from The College of New Jersey (TCNJ).

Her research focused on designing a teaching artist residency as a living ethics of care curriculum supported by care theory and pedagogy, and she work alongside care theorist Nel Noddings. In addition, Tredinnick-Kirby’s research was an inquiry with her children that fostered dialogue and site-specific artmaking in homeschooling and aimed to create interdisciplinary educational encounters. Her work has been published in multiple academic journals and the National Home Education Research Institute.

Experience

Tredinnick-Kirby's teaching experience spans over 15 years, from teaching advanced placement high school students to higher education in the U.S. and internationally. She was selected numerous times to be on the curriculum review panel on a policy level in New Jersey and wrote a new curriculum for advanced placement art history courses nationwide for the company CollegeBoard.

Tredinnick-Kirby has supervised and taught pre-service educators at TCNJ and Penn State for numerous years, and she is currently working at Penn State, where she teaches a course she authored in 2018. Further, Tredinnick-Kirby has lectured about the progressive educational model of John Dewey and Noddings’ care theory at conferences in the Northeast and internationally. In addition, she has lectured at myriad museums in the Northeast about the importance of dismantling the art history canon to be more inclusive of motherhood.

Awards & Accolades:

Tredinnick-Kirby's work has been recognized through awards and grants, including a
Faculty Fellows Award, Penn State (2023);
Teaching and Technology with Technology Grant Award, Penn State (2022);
Center for Pedagogy C-PAD Discovery Award, Penn State (2021);
National Endowment for the Humanities Award (2021); and
Professional Master's Excellence Award in Education, Penn State (2018).