About Us

The Center for Educating Critically envisions classrooms and schools for students that are anti-oppressive and intersectional learning spaces.

We do this through:

  • working with PK-12 teachers, staff, administrators, and community members 

  • researching new approaches to humanizing, anti-oppression teaching and learning 

  • amplifying research focused on equitable and just teaching and learning 

  • collaborating with other equity-focused researchers and practitioners

The continuous interrogation of history, research, and practice through questioning lies at the core of the work of the Center for Educating Critically. Our approach fosters a deep understanding of the past and present and empowers educators and students to challenge and dismantle oppressive systems and construct educational possibilities.

Our work is grounded in Crenshaw’s conceptualization of intersectionality which posits that a person has multiple social identities and that various aspects of those identities interact to create unique experiences and outcomes. In other words, we must address multiple oppressions simultaneously because none exist in a vacuum.

Meet the Team

  • A light skinned Latina woman with curly light-gray hair sits on a bench with her arm resting on the back of it. She wears a black shirt with numerous fists on it reading "We Rise Together".

    Dr. Laura M. Jiménez

    CO-DIRECTOR
    Senior Lecturer, BU Wheelock


    My scholarship focuses on the ways educators can and should teach anti-oppression with and through children’s literature. As a result of being in teacher education, my work also encompasses Whiteness, intersectionality, and growth through radical honesty and inclusion. 

    I am a White presenting Latina lesbian and so I represent both the colonized and the colonizer. I represent the LGBTQIA community as an out and vocal lesbian. In my allyship, I try to support and uplift marginalized voices by consistently attending to the representation of people, history, and communities and the ways oppressive bias acts to uphold racist, misogynist, homophobic, ableist, and Eurocentric norms. 

    I am a founding member of the editorial board of Research on Diversity in Youth Literature and I co-authored Lee and Low’s 2019 Diversity Baseline 2.0 survey. My work has been published in The Lion and the Unicorn, Reading Teacher, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Teaching and Teacher Education, and the Journal of Literacy Research, as well as other peer reviewed journals. In addition, I am a member of the We Are KidLit Collective, and a regular contributor to See What We See review database on Social Justice Books website.

  • Dr. Davena Jackson

    CO-DIRECTOR
    Assistant Professor, BU Wheelock

    Her work focuses on English education, language, and literacies, building on over 20 years of experience as an English Language Arts (ELA) teacher. Through research-practice partnerships, she centers Blackness while challenging and disrupting anti-Blackness and white supremacy in secondary English classrooms.

    As an interdisciplinary scholar and critical, qualitative humanizing researcher, Dr. Jackson examines how teachers’ justice-oriented commitments shape curricular and pedagogical choices that can lead to the transformation of English language arts classrooms. Her research and collaborations aim to contribute to the fields of language and literacy studies, English education, writing studies, and urban and Black education. Extending her commitment to justice in education, she also incorporates antiracist, culturally responsive, and sustaining pedagogies, as well as humanizing frameworks, into her teaching. This prepares educators to support their students’ full humanity and reimagine English classrooms as transformative and liberatory spaces.

    Dr. Jackson is a 2023 National Academy of Education (NAEd) Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow. She also serves on the English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE) Executive Committee of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) from 2022 to 2026. Furthermore, Dr. Jackson is a faculty affiliate at the Center on the Ecology of Early Development (CEED) at Boston University’s Wheelock College and was a former Research Affiliate at the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University.

    Finally, her research has been published in the following journals: Urban Education, Reading Research Quarterly (RRQ), Research in the Teaching of English (RTE), Journal of Literacy Research (JLR), Teachers College Record (TCR), and the International Review of Qualitative Research (IRQR).

Affiliate Colleagues

  • A man with dark brown hair and a brown jacket smiles at the camera. Behind him is a cluster of trees.

    Dr. Eric Cordero-Siy

    CLINCIAL ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
    Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development

  • A Black woman with dark brown curly hair that is gray at the roots, smiles at the camera with silver hoop earrings and big round glasses.

    Dr. Stephanie Jones

    ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
    Grinnell College

    Mapping Racial Trauma in Schools

  • Dr. Tracey T. Flores

    ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

    University of Texas at Austin

    Somos Escritoras

Think your team will work well with ours?

Let’s connect and talk about how we can collaborate.