Contact Info

Biography

Dr. Catherine Michener holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction from the Lynch School of Education, Boston College, an MAT in TESL from Salem State University, and a BA in International Development from the University of Calgary. She researches language and literacy development in schools and classrooms where cultural and linguistic plurality are the norm. She is interested in how social contexts promote students’ language, literacy, and conceptual development, and how teachers are trained to shape these contexts. Currently, she examines instructional discourse and its effects on student reading comprehension, the influence of language policy on instruction, and the training of teachers to work effectively with dual language learners. She aims to further our understanding of bilingualism and biliteracy, culturally sustaining pedagogies, the support of language minoritized students in schools undergoing demographic shifts, and studying these areas by developing a robust mixed methodology that encompasses both proximal and distal variables at work in language and literacy learning. Her research interests are informed by her work as a bilingual and English language specialist in K12 and tertiary settings in Massachusetts, Taiwan, and Canada.