Dr. Cherise McBride is an educational researcher who studies digital literacy, teaching, and learning. She is a Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University in a dual appointment with the Stanford Impact Labs and the Stanford Graduate School of Education where she is on the Civic Online Reasoning project--a project dedicated to improving students' ability to critically evaluate information online.
Dr. McBride also serves as Scholar-at-Large for YR Media, a national youth media organization empowering BIPOC content creators ages 14-25. There, she is designing work on data storytelling, teacher learning communities, and digital literacy curriculum development.
Dr. McBride's research has been published in national and international academic journals such as English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Pedagogies: An International Journal, English Education, and English Leadership Quarterly. She has presented at numerous academic conferences including those of the Literacy Research Association, the International Society of the Learning Sciences, and the American Educational Research Association. She is an active member of these, and several other, professional organizations including the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Association of Media Literacy Educators, and the Connected Learning community.
Her work with the Marginal Syllabus project was awarded the 2020 ELATE National Technology Leadership Initiative (NTLI) Award and she is also a 2023 recipient of the Divergent Publication Award for Excellence in Literacy in a Digital Age Research.
Prior to transitioning to academic research, Dr. McBride taught English, journalism, and student development courses across high school, community college, and adult school settings. She holds a Master’s in Urban Education from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelor’s in English with a concentration in Multicultural Literature from the University of California, Berkeley.
Recent Work: Most recently, Dr. McBride served as a researcher on the Writing Data Stories (WDS) project, led by Dr. Michelle Wilkerson & Dr. Kris Gutierrez at UC Berkeley. The project, funded by the George Lucas Educational Foundation and the National Science Foundation, examines equity-centered computing environments.
As a researcher, I value co-design as a humanizing approach to research. Far too often, Black people, Indigenous people, poor people and those of us with intersecting identities have been treated as objects and not subjects or authorities of our own realities. As a lead researcher on several projects, I hold equity, community participation, and historicity as core in what I do.
Impact is a significant motivation in my work—local and national, present and future. I consider myself answerable to both my children--2 beautiful souls navigating this world as dark-skinned Black girls, and to my ancestors (children of sharecroppers who traveled the Great Migration from the US South, as well as those who preceded me as a third-generation Mexican-American).
These words of Dr. Harold Campbell, a faculty mentor in the McNair Scholars Program at UC Berkeley, ring true many years later, including in my work.
I started my full-time teaching career in an all-Black continuation high school that had a disproportionate number of Black students (>90%) in relation to the comprehensive high school (which was also classified as one of the most racially diverse in the nation).
My students had been failed by traditional education, and I made cultivating safe relationships and an inclusive classroom climate a priority–via culturally-responsive curricula, restorative justice, and opportunities for students to express themselves.
This project aims to partner with communities to put social science to work for society.
My work is building community partnerships and theory of change to advance equity-centered education in and out of schools.
Learn more about Stanford Impact Labs...
This project aims to strengthen young people’s ability to evaluate online content: "Who's behind the information?" "What's the evidence?" "What do other sources say?"
My role involves investigating these questions alongside teachers and students as a qualitative researcher in major school districts around the US.
Learn more about our COR research & curriculum...
This project advances teaching and learning of large-scale datasets in middle school STEM classrooms. How might integrating the social, cultural, and personal with statistics and computing support data science learning?
My role is qualitative research within a collaboratory of 4 universities: UC Berkeley, NYU, Northwestern, and CU Boulder to investigate Equity-Centered-Learning Environments in computing and technology classrooms. funded by the George Lucas Educational Foundation.
Learn more about our Writing Data Stories Project... & Access WDS DataBytes Curriculum
This project examines teacher diversity from recruitment, retention to educational impacts and policy. We bring together multiple stakeholders (educators, parents, students, policymakers) to develop local policy agendas and lead strategic action.
My role on it is Affiliate Researcher, with a focus on ensuring youth & BIPOC community voice is present and central in the 5 statewide conversations (TX, CA, ND, PA, & OH) about policy change.
Learn more about National Center for Research on Educator Diversity (NCRED)...
This project gathers multimedia texts and resources that teachers can use in their classrooms. We ask: how can digital texts support literacy development in creative ways? What are the learning affordances of
My role is curating youth-created digital texts to share with educators for use in their classrooms.
This project—the first of its kind—brings together data science researchers, educators, and policymakers to develop research-based frameworks for Data Science Education in K-12 levels.
My role in it is as a launch collective member, where I support the planning of the inaugural DSE K-12 conference (coming 2025).
Learn more about the Concord Consortium, which is hosting this work...