CEEL invites you to an in-person keynote address on May 21, 2025 featuring Dr. Dina Castro, Director for the Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being at Boston University, on "Early Childhood Well-Being in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts".

The number of people leaving their communities in search for a better life for them and their families has increased dramatically during the last twenty years. About 20 percent of the world’s total international migrants live in the United States. One consequence of these migration movements is the increased linguistic and cultural diversity in communities and schools; bilingual/multilingual children are a third of the U.S. child population ages 0-8. This session will focus on the questions: Why should children’s languages, cultures and diverse abilities be considered when seeking to improve quality in early care and education and overall children’s well-being? and how do early educators, administrators and policymakers can work towards reaching this goal? We will discuss interdisciplinary asset-based perspectives to maximize children’s well-being and build resilience in multilingual and multicultural contexts.

About Dr. Dina C. Castro
Dr. Dina C. Castro is director of the Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being and the inaugural Bahamdan Professor in Early Childhood Well-Being at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. Her scholarship focuses on equity and quality in the early care and education of bilingual children in immigrant, migrant, and indigenous communities. It is conceptualized at the intersection of language, culture, race, ethnicity, and disability, recognizing the need for interdisciplinary approaches across the fields of early childhood development and education, bilingualism and bilingual education, and special education.

Before joining BU, Dr. Castro 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). She also served as director of the Center for Early Care and Education Research: Dual Language Learners, a federally funded national research center focused on increasing our understanding of practices and measurement to improve early care and education for bilingual children. Her 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.