Andrea Bien
Clinical Associate Professor
Dr. Andrea Bien is a clinical associate professor at BU Wheelock with appointments in both the Teaching & Learning and Language & Literacy Education departments. Dr. Bien’s research and teaching focus on understanding elementary classroom practice as a tool for disrupting inequity.
In her role as a clinical faculty member, Dr. Bien has the unique opportunity to spend extensive time in the field, working with elementary teachers and learners to examine and support literacy teaching practices. She prioritizes innovative models of pre- and in-service teacher education that recognize and value students’ and teachers’ expertise. As a critical scholar, Dr. Bien is especially interested in the impact and consequences of school reforms that contribute to a commodification of knowledge and shape what counts as literacy, teaching, and learning.
Dr. Bien’s work has been published in the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, Journal of Literacy Research, Teaching Education, Teaching & Teacher Education, and the American Educational Research Journal.
Pronouns: she/her
Recent News
- BU Wheelock Clinical Faculty Promoted
- Elementary Education Students Participate in “A Queer Endeavor”
In the Media
Education
PhD, Curriculum & Instruction: Literacy Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder
MSEd, Elementary Education, University of Pennsylvania
BA, Communications, University of North Carolina at Wilmington
Courses
WED LR 551: Reading Development, Assessment, and Instruction in the Elementary School
WED CH 300: Methods of Instruction 1 – 6 (Language Arts)
ED 300: Learning as a Cultural Process
CAS SO 210: Confronting Persistent Social Inequalities in American Schools: Educational and Sociological Perspectives
CAS SO 211: Confronting Racial, Cultural, Gender, and Social Identities in Urban Classroom
Selected Publications
Bien, A., Carlson, J., Kazemi, E., Reisman, A., Scheve, M. & Wells, A. (2018). Taking core practices to the field. In P. Grossman (Ed.) Teaching Core Practice in Teacher Education. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.
Bien, A. & Selland, M. (2018). Living the Stories We Tell: The Sociopolitical Context of Enacting Teaching Stories. Teaching and Teacher Education, 69, 85-74.
Dutro, E. & Bien, A. (2014). Listening to the “speaking wound”: A trauma studies perspective on student positioning in schools. American Educational Research Journal, 51(1), 7-35.
Selland, M. & Bien, A. (2014). Collaborative teacher education: forging tangible connections between the field and the classroom. Teaching Education, 25(3), 239-260.
Dutro, E., Selland, M. & Bien, A. (2013). Revealing writing, concealing writers: high stakes assessment in an urban elementary classroom. Journal of Literacy Research, 45(2), 99-141.
Gutiérrez, K.D., Bien, A.C., Selland, M.K., & Pierce, D. (2011). Polylingual and polycultural learning ecologies: mediating emergent academic literacies for dual language learners. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 11(2), 232-261.
Gutiérrez, K.D., Bien, A.C. & Selland, M.K (2010). Syncretic approaches to studying movement and hybridity in literacy practices. In D. Lapp and D. Fisher (Eds.) Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts (3rd Edition). New York: Routledge.
Selected Presentations
Jiménez, L. & Bien, A. (2020, November 12) Skippyjon No: Confronting Mis- and Under-representation of BIPOC Identities in Children’s Literature. [Webinar] BU Wheelock, Boston University YouTube. https://youtu.be/kLEC5UU7xu4
Bien, A. & Jiménez, L. (2020, February 4) How to Use the Books You Choose: Elevating the Status of Marginalized Identities in Children’s Literature through Classroom Teaching. [Webinar] BU Wheelock, Boston University YouTube. https://youtu.be/I7wdQgIS-7g
Disciplines, Discourses, & Power: Bien, A., Rosebery, A., Warren, B., O’Connor, C., Olivares, M., Gadd, R. (2019, April). Understanding ecologies of textured relations in teacher learning: classroom discussion as participative thinking. In N. Louie & L. Berland (Chairs) Teacher Learning to Position Students as Capable in Class Discussions: Looking Across Subject Matter Domains. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Toronto, ON.
Bien, A. (2018, December). Stretching the Rubberband: Resistance within Limits. A Four Resources Perspective on Reading Goals at Lazarus Elementary. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Literacy Research Association, Indian Wells, CA.
Dutro, E., Bien, A. & Henning, M. (2017, December). Trauma as Critical, Humanizing Practice in Literacy Research, Theory, Policy, and Pedagogy. Paper presented in an invited session at the annual meeting of the Literacy Research Association, Tampa, FL.
Bien, A. (2017, November). Field-based Language Arts Methods: Championing Students and Their Teachers of Today and Tomorrow Through a University/Elementary School Partnership. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Council of Teachers of English, St. Louis, MO.
Bien, A. (2017, April). Disentangling the Web: Unpacking Unequal Access & Opportunity in Teaching & Learning through a Syncretic Approach to Classroom-based Research. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Antonio, Texas.
Bien, A. (2015, April). High Stakes, Low Expectations: How the Pressure to Prepare Proficient Test Takers Undermined One Elementary Teacher’s Efforts Towards Justice & Equity, paper accepted for the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, Illinois.
Bien, A. & Selland, M. (2014, November). Living the Stories We Tell: The Sociopolitical Context of Enacting Teaching Stories. In Featured Session, CEE Opening Session Roundtables, Stories of Practice and Possibility in English Teacher Preparation. Paper presented the annual meeting of the National Council of Teachers of English, Washington, D.C.
Bien, A. (2012, November). Prescribing Proficiency: Teaching, Learning & a Packaged Reading Program in the Climate of High-Stakes Testing. Paper presented at the Literacy Research Association, San Diego, California.
Dutro, E., Bien, A. & Henning, M. (2012, November). Enacting Visceral Literacies Pedagogy in a High-Poverty Elementary Classroom: A Three-Year Study of Trauma Literacies in Theory and Practice. In. J. Allen (chair), Expanding the Views and Purposes of Literacy in the Primary Grades. Symposium presented at the Literacy Research Association, San Diego, California.
Bien, A. & Selland, M. (2012, November). Pre-service teachers’ evolving orientations to technology as mediational tools for learning and development. In K. Gutierrez (chair), Pathways and challenges of moving and expanding digital practices and literacies across contexts: Cases from El Pueblo Mágico Symposium presented at the annual meeting of the Literacy Research Association, San Diego, California.
Bien, A. & Selland, M. (2012, April). Collaborative Teacher Education: Forging Tangible Connections Between the Field and the Classroom. In S. Jurow (chair), Re-imagining Teacher Education through University-Community Partnerships. Symposium presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Vancouver, British Columbia.