Dr. Dina C. Castro is Director of the Boston University Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being and faculty in the Department of Teaching and Learning. Prior to joining, Boston University, she was Professor and the Velma E. Schmidt Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Education at the University of North Texas (2014-2021). She also held positions at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University (2013-2014), and the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, and the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1997-2013). Her scholarship focuses on equity and quality in the early care and education of bilingual children in immigrant, migrant and indigenous communities. Nationally, Dr. Castro has developed and evaluated early childhood professional development programs to improve language, literacy and socio-emotional development of bilingual children. She has developed measures to assess the quality of early education programs serving bilingual children, and second language acquisition in young children. Dr. Castro served as Director of the Center for Early Care and Education Research: Dual Language Learners, a federally funded national research center focused on increasing understanding of practices and measurement to improve early care and education for bilingual children.

Dr. Castro’s research has been funded by the Institute of Education Science, the National Institute of Child Health and Development, the Administration for Children and Families and the Office of Special Education Programs. Her policy and advocacy work includes being past member of the Governing Board of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and advisor to statewide and local early childhood initiatives in states around the country, including Arizona, California, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas. In the global context, she is examining teachers’ conceptualizations about interculturality and their classroom practices in intercultural bilingual education schools in Peru and co-leading a binational study investigating the experiences of transnational students and their teachers in U.S. and Mexican schools. Dr. Castro is co-editor of the book Language, Learning and Disability in the Education of Young Bilingual Children, and lead author on the book New Voices ~ Nuevas Voces Guide on Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in Early Childhood and has published numerous articles, book chapters and reports. She presents nationally and internationally as an expert on the early development and education of bilingual and culturally diverse children.