Davena Jackson
Assistant Professor
Dr. Davena Jackson is an assistant professor of urban education in the Teaching & Learning Department at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. Her work focuses on English education, language, and literacy, 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.
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 brings anti-racist, culturally responsive/sustaining pedagogies, and humanizing frameworks into her teaching—preparing 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 is also a member of the English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE) Executive Committee of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), 2022–2026. Further, Dr. Jackson is a faculty affiliate at the Center on the Ecology of Early Development (CEED) at BU Wheelock 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: Reading Research Quarterly, Research in the Teaching of English, Journal of Literacy Research, Teachers College Record, and the International Review of Qualitative Research.
Pronouns: she/her
Recent News
Education
PhD, Curriculum, Instruction, & Teacher Education, Michigan State University
Graduate Certificate, Urban Education
MAT, Secondary Education (Major: English & Minor: French), Wayne State University
BA, English, Wayne State University
Courses
WED EN 631: Educating for Equity and Literacy in the Humanities (4 Credits)
WED ED 206: Family and Community Engagement (4 Credits)
WED EN 711: Critical Literacy as a Lens: Exploring Theories, Processes, and Strategies (4 Credits)
WED EN 520: Pre-Practicum, English Education (2 Credits)
WED EN 507/508: Student Teaching Practicum, grades 5-8 & 9-12 (2 Credits)
WED EN 630: Educating for Equity and Literacy in the Humanities
WED EN 501/701: Teaching Classic & Contemporary Texts
WED EN 701 (Online): Teaching Classic & Contemporary Texts
Selected Publications
Book Chapters
Jackson, D. (2023). Black joy, love, and resistance: Using digital storytelling to center Black students’ full Black humanity. In Contemporary perspectives on semiotics in education: Signs, meanings, and multimodality. Information Age Publishing Group.
Dao, V., Farver, S., D., Jackson, D. (2018). Getting down to identities to trace a new career path: Understanding novice teacher educator identities in multicultural education teaching. In J. Sharkey & M.M. Peercy (Eds.), Self-study of language and literacy teacher education practices across culturally and linguistically diverse contexts. V (30) (pp. 55-72). London: Emerald Publishing Group. Advances in Research on Teaching.
Journals
Jackson, D., Johnson, W. F., Frankel, K. K., & Houston‐King, A. (2025). Preserving integrative and humanizing literacies: A commentary on the current literacy debates and the narrowing of literacy instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 60(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.594
Jackson, D. (2022). Making sense of Black students’ figured worlds of race, racism, anti-Blackness, and Blackness. Research in the Teaching of English, 57(1), 43-66.
Baker-Bell, A., Williams-Farrier, B., Jackson, D., Johnson, L., Kynard, C., & McMurtry, T. (2020). This ain’t another statement! This is a DEMAND for Black linguistic justice! Conference on College Composition & Communication.
Jackson, D. (2020). Relationship building in a Black space: Partnering in solidarity. Journal of Literacy Research, 52(4), 432-455.
Carter Andrews, D., Brown, T., Castillo, B., Jackson, D., Vellanki, V. (2019). Beyond damage-centered teacher education: Humanizing pedagogy for teacher educators and preservice teachers. Teachers College Record,121(6), 1-28.
Baker-Bell, A., Paris, D., Jackson, D. (2017) Learning black language matters: Humanizing research as culturally sustaining pedagogy. International Review of Qualitative Research, 10 (4), (pp. 360-377).
Selected Presentations
Jackson, D., Brownell, C., Coles, J., Everett, S., Moten, T. (2020, November). Decolonizing literacy practices: Using multiliteracies as a medium. National Council of Teachers of English Assembly for Research, Denver, CO.
Kynard, C., Martinez, D., Baker-Bell, A., Johnson, L., Lee, A., Jackson, D., McMurtry, T. (2020, November). Linguistic justice: Scholars of color converge on Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy. National Council of Teachers of English Assembly for Research, Denver, CO.
Jackson, D. & Johnson, L. (2020, April). A justice-oriented pedagogical mutuality: Teaching and learning together to disrupt anti-Blackness. American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.
Jackson, D. & Johnson, A. (2020, February). Promoting possibilities for justice-oriented learning in English education. National Council of Teachers of English Assembly for Research, Nashville, TN.
Jackson, D. (2019, November). We, us, and ours: Building an alliance that seeks to sustain Blackness in an eleventh grade English classroom. National Council Teachers of English, Baltimore, MD.
Jackson, D. (2019, October). Engaging in critical conversations that center race, racism, and language. Arlington Public Schools, Arlington, MA.
Carter Andrews, D., Brown, T., Castillo, B., Jackson, D., & Vellanki, V. (2019, April). Thinking beyond damage-centered teaching: Enacting a humanizing pedagogy in teacher education. American Educational Research Association, Toronto, ON.
Jackson, D., & Presberry, C. (2019, April). Radical mothering as pedagogy. American Educational Research Association, Toronto, CA.
Jackson, D. (2018, April). Culturally sustaining talk: African-American youth use discourse to make sense of race, racism, and language. American Educational Research Association, New York, NY.