January 09, 2023

LE 279: The Subtle Gestures that Create Feelings of Belonging in Immigrant Students with Drs. Kristina Brezicha and Chandler Miranda

37 minutes

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Kristina Brezicha, Ph.D.

Kristina Brezicha is an assistant professor of educational leadership at Georgia State University. She holds a dual-title Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University in Educational Theory and Policy and Comparative International Education.

Brezicha’s research interests focus on how education supports individuals’ abilities to equitably participate in the democratic processes at both the local and national levels. Her research considers domestic and international contexts. Specifically, she has studied how immigrant students’ experiences of in/exclusion in their schools has shaped their knowledge, attitudes, habits and dispositions towards the political process in the U.S. and Canada. She has also examined how teachers, educational leaders and school boards have facilitated educational opportunities for diverse student populations. She has presented her work at conferences such as American Educational Research Association annual meeting, University Council for Educational Administration Convention and Comparative and International Education Society Conference.

Before pursuing her doctorate, Brezicha taught kindergarten through fifth-grade special education students in New York City. She holds a Masters of Arts in Politics and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and a Masters of Science in Urban Education from Mercy College.

Chandler Miranda, Ph.D.

Professor Chandler Miranda is an urban ethnographer and education scholar who studies the educational experiences of recently arrived immigrant youth in urban public schools. Her research offers a hopeful look at uncommon schools while critiquing U.S. education policies rooted in ideologies of monolingualism, white supremacy, and xenophobia.

Miranda’s work investigating teacher rhetoric following the 2016 presidential election is published in Anthropology & Education Quarterly (2017) and two co-authored articles that examine the experiences of immigrant students and their families in adverse political climates appear in Harvard Educational Review (2019 and 2021). In 2020, Leadership and Policy in Schools published “Segregation or Sanctuary,” in which Professor Miranda and her colleague argue for the possibilities of counterpublics for immigrant students. In 2022, Equity & Excellence in Education published a cross-case analysis comparing immigrant youth experiences of belonging in urban and rural schools. She has presented this research at the American Educational Research Association, the University Council for Educational Administration, and the American Anthropological Association. Her collaborative work has allowed her to publish critical case studies to look across time, place, and population to advance the field of immigrant education.

Miranda’s teaching experience spans high school to graduate courses. She taught 9th-12th grade science for seven years in three different schools for English learners in the U.S and Colombia before pursuing a Ph.D. She taught pre-service teachers at Queens College before accepting her current position at Barnard.

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