Dina Castro

Dr. Dina Castro is Professor of Teaching and Learning and Director of the BU Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being. Her scholarship focuses on equity and quality in the early care and education of bilingual children in immigrant and indigenous communities, conceptualized at the intersection of language, culture, race, ethnicity, class, and disability. Dr. Castro has developed and examined the efficacy of professional development programs to improve language, literacy and socio-emotional development of young bilingual children, developed measures to assess the quality of early education for bilingual children and second language acquisition. She served as Director of the Center for Early Care and Education Research: Dual Language Learners, a federally funded national research center focused on increasing understanding of practices and measurement to improve early care and education for bilingual children. Dr. Castro’s research has been funded by the Institute of Education Science, the National Institute of Child Health and Development, the Administration for Children and Families and the Office of Special Education Programs. In the global context, she is investigating intercultural bilingual education policies and practices in Peru and the experiences of transnational students and their teachers in U.S. and Mexican schools.