Elizabeth Castro

Elizabeth Castro (she/her/ella) is an Assistant Professor of Bilingual and Dual Language Teacher Education at Central Washington University. Elizabeth is part of an (im)migrant farmworking family from rural eastern Washington and Veracruz, Mexico. Now a teacher educator in her home community, she previously served bi/multilingual migrant high school students. Her research and teaching are informed by sociocultural theories, raciolinguistic perspectives, and translanguaging instructional design. She is interested in the ways that early career bilingual teachers, paraeducators, and youth co-create knowledge and solidarities and the brilliance and joy of everyday practices. Her dissertation, “Latina Bilingual Paraeducators as Sociocultural Mediators of Language and Literacies: In Accompaniment with Bi/Multilingual Youth in Secondary Schools,” a classroom-based ethnographic study, was supported by a NAEd / Spencer Dissertation Fellowship in 2024. 

Elizabeth received her Ph.D., in Education from the University of California, Davis and an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She earned a BA in International Studies from the University of Washington – Seattle and is an alum of Columbia Basin College.