Research Projects

Marginalization and inequities plague our current educational landscape. Those with social identities that are marginalized tend to feel the brunt of these pressures. In particular, teachers whose racial, gender, and sexual identities are marginalized inevitably experience identity tensions between who they are and what the school expects them to be. What has been under explored in the field is a close examination of teachers’ social identity markers that are linked to social dimensions of power, intersectionalities among them, and the ways those markers interact and influence teachers’ professional identity construction and enactment. This project aims at investigating marginalized teachers' identity negotiation and associated issues (e.g., microaggression) within school and broader community and societal contexts. 

Emergent Bilinguals (formerly known as English Language Learners) are the fastest growing population in United States public schools. As the percentage of Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) continues to grow, educators continue to search for ways to equitably serve this population of students. One approach developed to address this need is the “sheltered instruction” model. Used especially in secondary schools, these classes are designated for newcomer students who are in the beginning stages of English language development. Sheltered teachers use specific strategies to teach academic content in English while supporting language development. This project aims at evaluating the efficacy of personalized, need-based professional development (PNPD) for sheltered instruction teachers. 

Public schools in the U.S. have become more diverse and multicultural. It is predicted that by 2025, students of color will comprise 52 percent of the total public-school population in the U.S. Teaching in this increasingly more multicultural context means not only knowing students within classrooms, but also understanding how their out-of-school lives shape and influence their thoughts, priorities, and social-emotional capacities, and incorporating them in classroom instructions and interactions. This project aims at unpacking teachers' empathy dispositions on multiple dimensions of cognition, emotion, and action.