Alexandra Figueras-Daniel

Dr. Figueras-Daniel began her career as a preschool teacher in a dual immersion school in New Jersey’s Abbott Pre-K program. Alex applied what she learned as a teacher to conducting research at the National Institute for Early Education Research and completed her PhD in Education Policy while there. Her work included organizing and overseeing data collection for various large-scale early childhood education research studies. For one of these studies she co-authored the Classroom Assessment of Supports for Emergent Bilingual Acquisition (CASEBA) to measure the quality of language supports for dual language learners in preschool classrooms and co-developed the system using the related Self-Evaluation for Supports of Emergent Bilingual Acquisition (SESEBA) for use by teachers and coaches.  Alex has served as the Associate Director of the Straus Center for Young Children and Families at Bank Street College, the Director of Research at Teaching Strategies and as a Senior Research Scientist in the Dual Language and Literacy Lab in the department of Behavioral Sciences at Teachers College, Columbia University. At Teachers College she worked on a study examining the effects of a web-based coaching and professional development model for dual language learners. Alex was awarded a Young Scholars Program grant from the Foundation for Child Development to investigate coaching and professional development of Latina preschool teachers working with DLLs. At NIEER, she leads this study as well a project to develop a Latina leadership pipeline in ECE.