earned her Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2023. Her dissertation highlights how secondary teachers’ positionalities/lived experiences and exposure to multiple critical social theories guide their trajectories as social justice educators and their pedagogical orientations of critical media literacy.

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Her research and practice draws on her experiences implementing critical media literacy as a tool for advancing self, social, and environmental justice with secondary students in Raleigh, NC and undergraduate students in education, global literature, and composition courses at UCLA.

 

Andrea has also received Teacher of the Year twice in her home district in NC as well as UCLA’s Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award and the School of Education and Information Studies’ George Kneller Humanitarian Award due to her contributions cultivating inclusive and critical learning communities.

 

Andrea is an active co-organizer of the annual Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas, UNESCO DCMÉT Symposiums, and the BLACK! Critical Media Literacy Conference (Founded by Dr. Amina Humphrey).

 

She is presently authoring a monograph based on her dissertation while serving as a Research, Design, and Instructional Coaching Consultant continuing her work with teachers in the U.S. and China situating a Project-based Inquiry Global Framework (Spires et al., 2021) responsive to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.