About

Jabari Mahiri is a Professor in the Berkeley School of Education and holds the William and Mary Jane Brinton Family Chair in Urban Education. He serves as Faculty Director of Leadership Programs, Chair of the Leadership Board for the 21st Century California State Leadership Academies, Faculty Advisor for the Bay Area Writing Project, and is a Board Member and Chair of the Governance Committee of the National Writing Project. His research and professional focus encompass multicultural education, digital tools in urban schools, literacy development among urban youth, and issues of race and equity in education. Mahiri's work emphasizes deconstructing race, promoting anti-racist educational practices, and exploring the intersections of youth culture, media, and learning in urban contexts.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Gender studies
• Political economy
• Criminology
• Geography
• Law

Selected publications

• Guiding and Supporting Scholar Practitioners' Research and Writing of Equity-Focused Dissertations

  2026-04-10

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The Leaders for Equity and Democracy (LEAD) EdD program at UC Berkeley selects, guides, instructs and supports practicing and aspiring educational system leaders to become powerful scholar-practitioners capable of transcending long-standing educational inequities. To do so, the program relies on a rigorous selection process, guidance conceived of as integrated stepping stones along the path to the degree, signature instructional strategies, and robust collegial support. By integrating liberatory educational strategies with key scholarship and foundational experiences, LEAD aims to equip students with the necessary tools, mindsets and networks for conducting original research and developing transformative solutions at scale. To date, the approach has led to a 100% student retention rate since the program's inception five years ago.

  PublisherDOI

• Multidimensional Time Perspective and Social Emotional Learning With Two Early Childhood Teachers

  Journal of Research in Childhood Education · 2025-09-30 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Deconstructing Race: Prerequisite to Belonging in US Society and Schools

  Springer eBooks · 2021 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  PublisherDOI

• “OMG can I have your meme lesson? TY”: Affective literacies and collegial meaning-making in digitally-mediated participatory networks

  Universitas Tarraconensis Revista de Ciències de l Educació · 2019-01-16

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  As representative and communicative resources change the educational landscape, research indicates the importance of teachers developing increasing competencies and confidence in the use of appropriate digital tools and texts for learning. The present study traced the semiotic consequences of digitally-mediated participatory networks for educators who were positioned as designers of learning experiences as they worked on developing and demonstrating digitally mediated instructional approaches. Using methods of digital ethnography, data sources included 300+ blog posts and responses, multimodal digital compositions from in-class work by pre-service teachers, expert teacher demonstrations, online use logs, and fieldnotes on classroom activities. This research identified and described the affective literacies and new relationships for meaning-making that emerged as educators engaged in digital, participatory networks. The study extends understanding of the roles of affective literacies and collegial meaning-making in the process of learning to design digitally mediated instruction.

  PublisherDOI

• “OMG can I have your meme lesson? TY”: Affective literacies and collegial meaning-making in digitally-mediated participatory networks

  Universitas Tarraconensis Revista de Ciències de l Educació · 2019-01-23

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  As representative and communicative resources change the educational landscape, research indicates the importance of teachers developing increasing competencies and confidence in the use of appropriate digital tools and texts for learning. The present study traced the semiotic consequences of digitally-mediated participatory networks for educators who were positioned as designers of learning experiences as they worked on developing and demonstrating digitally mediated instructional approaches. Using methods of digital ethnography, data sources included 300+ blog posts and responses, multimodal digital compositions from in-class work by pre-service teachers, expert teacher demonstrations, online use logs, and fieldnotes on classroom activities. This research identified and described the affective literacies and new relationships for meaning-making that emerged as educators engaged in digital, participatory networks. The study extends understanding of the roles of affective literacies and collegial meaning-making in the process of learning to design digitally mediated instruction.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Deconstructing Race: Multicultural Education Beyond the Color-Bind (Multicultural Education Series)

  2017-07-28

  book1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Introduction: multicultural education 2.0

  Multicultural Education Review · 2017-07-03 · 885 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Digital media offers people new ways to understand themselves and others, to exercise significant choices in the production and consumption of information and ideas, and to engage in wide-ranging s...

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction: multicultural education and micro-cultural youth

  Multicultural Education Review · 2017-04-03 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Multicultural education’s pedagogies and perspectives work to increase equity and achievement for all students. This article suggests, however, that more emphasis be placed on the unique affinities and contingencies that constitute the identities of each individual, particularly beyond broad, relatively static categories of identification like race or ethnicity. A concept of micro-cultures is proposed to understand the personal-cultural practices and positionality of contemporary youth and adults in more complex and nuanced ways.

  PublisherDOI

• Literacies in the Lives of Global Youth

  2017-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Responding to Educational Inequality

  eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2017-07-03 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  This policy brief reviews scholarship by members of the Race, Diversity, and Educational Policy Cluster of the Haas Institute to advance a broader and more complex understanding of the persistent failure of U.S. schools for youth from non-dominant communities. This report takes up a critical issue in education: the continuing reproduction of educational inequality in relation to race and social class. In doing so, it highlights several key issues in how we study and attempt to ameliorate disparities through educational policy. It concludes with a set of recommendations for policymakers and advocates.

  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Arnetha F. Ball

  7 shared

• Linda Castañeda

  Universidad de Murcia

  3 shared

• Danah Henriksen

  Arizona State University

  3 shared

• Marta Marimón

  3 shared

• César Coll Salvador

  Universitat de Barcelona

  3 shared

• Elena Barberà

  Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

  3 shared

• Carles Monereo i Font

  Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

  3 shared

• Punya Mishra

  3 shared

Education

• PhD, English

  University of Illinois at Chicago

Awards & honors

• UC Berkeley's Chancellor's Award for Advancing Institutional…
• Chancellor's Award for Community Service
• Leon Henkin Citation for Distinguished Service and Commitmen…
• American Educational Research Association, Division G, Outst…