Christine Leider.

Christine Montecillo Leider, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Pronouns
She/Her
College
Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (FAHSS)
Department
School of Education, Center for Asian American Studies (CAAS)
Office
Coburn Hall, Room 270C
Email
christine_leider@uml.edu

Expertise

Teacher education; teacher beliefs; multilingual learner education; duoethnography; mixed-methods

Research Interests

Christine Montecillo Leider's work focuses on teacher beliefs about language diversity and policy and civil rights issues regarding teacher education and racialized multilingual learners’ access to education. She also uses critical collaborative ethnographic methods to unpack, make visible, and center the lived experiences of women of color educators and scholars.

Education

  • Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.): Curriculum and Instruction, Boston College
  • Master of Arts (MA): Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology, Boston College
  • Bachelor of Arts (BA): Spanish, Psychology, University of Portland

Biosketch

Chris Montecillo Leider, PhD, is a teacher educator and education researcher. Her experiences growing up as a Filipina American and second-generation immigrant in southeast Alaska, as well as her professional experiences teaching English and Spanish and working in predominantly white institutions have shaped both her research agenda and approach to teacher education. She is the Principal Investigator and Project Director of Responsive Opportunities and Personalized Educator Systems and Supports (ROPESS), a federally funded grant to support grow your own pathways to bilingual teacher certification. She is also the Principal Investigator on the Advancing Equitable Support for English Learners with Disabilities (ELSWD) Project, a state funded research project dedicated to enhancing the educational experiences for ELSWD in the Commonwealth (and beyond). Her work examining State Education Agency policies and resources for classified English learners has been nationally recognized in public education media outlets, including EdWeek: English Learners with Disabilities Lack Consistent State Support and New America: New Research Illuminates EL Teacher Certification Requirements and Related Impacts on Student Learning.

Read more in the UMass Lowell News article: "New Education Professor Awarded $3.4 Million for Bilingual Teacher Training."

Selected Awards and Honors

  • Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, School of Education, UMass Lowell, 2025

Selected Publications

Selected Presentations

  • Leider, C.M. & Dobbs, C.L. (July 2025). Critical Consciousness and Inclusion: Two Systematic Approaches to Building a Culture of Belonging. Paper presented at the Division of International Special Education Services, Council for Exceptional Children, Nairobi, Kenya.
  • Leider, C.M. & Dobbs, C.L. (May 2025). A translanguaging approach to developing linguistically responsive writing instructions. Workshop presented at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Educators of English Language Learners, Framingham, Massachusetts.
  • Wang, T., Norova, N., & Leider, C.M. (May 2025). How National Content-Area Educational Organizations Position English Learners. Workshop presented at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Educators of English Language Learners, Framingham, Massachusetts.
  • Dobbs, C. L. & Leider, C. M. (April 2025). Duoethnography as a way of being for Women of Color in white academia. Roundtable presented at the American Educational Research Association, Denver, Colorado.
  • Leider, C.M. (April 2025). “Dad, It’s She, It’s Embarrassing When You Say It Wrong.”: A Critical Autoethnography of Evolving Language Ideologies. Paper presented at the annual American Education Research Association Conference, Denver, Colorado.
  • Phillips-Galloway, E. Dobbs, C.L. & Leider, C.M. (March 2025). Linguistic Cartography: Mapping Language Identities and Repertoires through Narrative Research. Paper presented at the annual American Association for Applied Linguistics, Denver, Colorado.
  • Leider, C.M. & Wong, K. (March 2025). Contesting Boundaries and Identities in Applied Linguistics: Insights from Asian Diaspora Scholars, Activists, and Allies. Invited Colloquium at the American Association for Applied Linguistics annual conference, Denver, Colorado.
  • Leider, C.M. (December 2024). How can linguistic cartography foster a dynamic perspective of languaging? Paper presented at the annual Literacy Research Association, Atlanta, Georgia