Christine Montecillo Leider

Dr. Christine Montecillo Leider is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Multilingual Learner Education at the School of Education, University of Massachusetts Lowell. A Filipina-American second-generation immigrant raised in Southeast Alaska, her work bridges bilingualism, teacher education, and civil rights in language policy through clinical and research roles at Boston University and UMass Lowell.

• Education: PhD and MA in Curriculum & Instruction from Boston College, BA in Psychology and Spanish from University of Portland.
• Research: Focuses on bilingual language practices, teacher beliefs about language variation, and equity in multilingual education policy, with recent work on critical disciplinary literacy, duoethnography as a methodological haven for women of color, and humanizing pedagogies for multilingual students.
• Leadership: Vice-President of Massachusetts Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (MATSOL), chair of the Massachusetts English Learner and Bilingual Advisory Council, and Associate Editor for the Journal of Multilingual Theory and Practice.
• Publications: Her scholarship includes analyses of state-level teacher credentialing, asset-based approaches in distance education, and linguistic identity frameworks. Recent trends examine equity in college access for multilingual learners and critical consciousness in teacher assessment.

Engagement: Dr. Leider actively shares her work via Twitter (@cmleider) and Instagram, and leads federally funded initiatives like ROPESS to support bilingual certification pathways in immigrant communities.