Christopher Martell

Dr. Martell’s work primarily focuses on social studies and teacher education. He

currently teaches elementary and secondary social studies methods. He was a high school social

studies teacher for eleven years in urban and suburban contexts. For most of his teaching

career, he taught at Framingham High School, which is a racially and economically diverse

urban school outside Boston with large immigrant populations from Brazil, Central America,

and the Caribbean. As a teacher, he engaged in regular examinations of his own classroom

practices through action research. Previously, Dr. Martell was an adjunct professor at BU and

UMass Boston, where he taught courses on secondary social studies methods and teacher

research, and a BU field supervisor at Chelsea High School.

Dr. Martell’s research and professional interests center on teacher development across

the career span, including preservice teacher preparation, inservice professional development,

and practitioner inquiry. He is particularly interested in social studies teachers in urban and

multicultural contexts, critical race theory, culturally relevant pedagogy, and historical inquiry.

His recent research has examined the role of race and ethnicity and the use of inquiry in the

social studies classroom.