Our “Get to Know Our EduDawgs” series celebrates the incredible undergraduate and graduate students who make up the UW College of Education community. Through student interviews and storytelling, we’re highlighting the passions, experiences and perspectives that shape their journeys — in the classroom, in the community and beyond. 🌎✨

Each story is a glimpse into what drives our future educators, researchers and advocates to make a difference.

Editor's note: This story was written by student associate Winston N. through the College of Education’s partnership with Cristo Rey Jesuit Seattle High School.

Centering students, questioning systems

Mallory Hutchings-Tryon (PhD, Social and Cultural Foundations, advisor: Dr. Matthew Kelly)

Hometown Sammamish, WA  

Experience Doctoral student, educator, researcher

Inspiration “When students share their perspectives, the classroom becomes a place where learning grows together.” 

Mallory Hutchings-Tryon believes students should help shape their learning. In her International Comparative Education course at the University of Washington College of Education, students help guide discussions and contribute their own perspectives.

With as many as 80 students in the class, Hutchings-Tryon sees a range of experiences and viewpoints.

“If we all pull together,” she said, “we have 80 different data sets about what quality high school education looks like.”

Before starting graduate school, Hutchings-Tryon taught high school for seven years in Utah, Kansas and Missouri. Those experiences helped shape her approach to teaching. At UW, she encourages students to reflect on course material and share their perspectives.

She also regularly revises the course based on student feedback. During a discussion about a reading on South Korea, students raised concerns about assumptions in the article that they felt no longer reflected current understanding. Hutchings-Tryon took their feedback seriously and reconsidered the reading.

“I really do feel like good learning communities are team efforts,” she said.

Student feedback has shaped the course in other ways as well. After recognizing limited coverage of South America, Hutchings-Tryon invited a colleague who studies Chile to give a guest lecture and recommend additional readings.

In addition to teaching, Hutchings-Tryon researches educational equity. Her work on school dress codes examined policies from the 1990s and found that girls and girls of color were often removed from classrooms more frequently than other students. While schools often justified dress codes as safety measures, her research found little evidence that the policies improved safety.

As a historian of education, Hutchings-Tryon studies how educational policies and practices develop over time. She also researches international education systems and assessments such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Her work examines how countries build and sustain education systems, including investments in teacher preparation and early childhood education.

“When you invest in education,” she said, “you don’t see the result immediately. It’s a ten-year cycle.”

Hutchings-Tryon grew up in Sammamish, Washington. After more than a decade away for college, teaching, and graduate school, she returned to Washington in 2021 to join the UW faculty.

Today, her research focuses on gender, human rights, and access to education. She is also interested in future work on religious education in the United States and debates about public funding and curriculum.

For students considering a doctorate, Hutchings-Tryon encourages them to pursue questions that continue to spark their curiosity and to connect with scholars whose work they admire.

“If you’re asking why something is the way it is,” she said, “other people are asking that, too.”