Cristina Valencia Mazzanti

Cristina Valencia Mazzanti is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education and Child Study at Smith College. She studies the social construction of languages as a multifaceted phenomenon that shapes children's experiences of learning as well as the work of educators and researchers. Cristina’s scholarship is grounded on advancing more socially just education and research for minoritized young children and multilingual people by: (1) advancing disruptive theorizing of multilingual and multimodal children's language use for learning, and (2) rethinking how language mediates theorizing and thus methodology in research. Her most recent work has focused on critically examining methodologies used in early childhood research to advocate for more participatory approaches, while also co-constructing an archive of children’s theories and theorizing based at the Campus School of Smith College. These projects build on Cristina’s previous experiences researching young children's experiences with multilingualism, multimodality, and learning through a series of interdisciplinary longitudinal studies involving kindergarten students, elementary school teachers, and Latine families. Cristina teaches classes in the areas of early childhood and elementary education, as well as educational research. She also directs the Art, Language, and Learning Lab, which she created as part of the HSS (Humanities and Humanistic Social Science) labs program to promote undergraduate research at Smith College.

Selected publications

Valencia Mazzanti, C., Karsli-Çalamak, E., & Taylor, A.S. (Under Review). On researching with minoritized young children and pluralism. In Review of Educational Research.

Freeman, M. & Valencia Mazzanti, C. (2026). The evidence of the beautiful: Aesthetic returns to education. In Educational Studies, online first.

Valencia Mazzanti, C. Tiktin-Sharick, L., Ananda, T., & Zuck, M. (2026). Children's Theories on Learning to Read. In Occasional Paper Series 2026 (55), 99-115.

Karsli-Çalamak, E. & Valencia Mazzanti, C., & (2025). Teachers of refugee children opening up dialogic spaces across interruptions and change. In Early Childhood Research Quarterly (ECRQ), 72, 25-34.

Valencia Mazzanti, C., Tiktin-Sharick, L., L’Heureux, D., Winston, B., Zuck, M, & Bittel, M. (2025). A collaborative reading education at Campus School of Smith College. In M. Odell, T. Kennedy, B. Meyer, & S. Sarada (Eds.), The How and Why of Laboratory Schools: Innovations and Success Stories in Teacher Preparation and Student Learning (p. 193-221). Myers Education Press.

Valencia Mazzanti, C. (2024). Translanguaging, multilingualism, and multimodality in children’s mathematics learning. In Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood Education, 25(4), 413-428.

Valencia Mazzanti, C., & Freeman, M. (2023). The borders of theory: Towards an artful ontology of knowing in qualitative research. In Qualitative Research, 23(5), 1359-1377.

Valencia Mazzanti, C. & Freeman, M. (2022). The other in the self: The ontological metaphoricity of language. In Journal of Applied Hermeneutics, 1-45.

Valencia Mazzanti, C. & Karsli-Çalamak, E. (2022). “Kind of interrupting”: Teachers of young children understanding mathematics learning and linguistic diversity. In International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE), 35(2), 210-227.

Valencia Mazzanti, C. (2022). I am [not]. In Journal of Language and Literacy Education.

Valencia Mazzanti, C., & Cardozo-Gaibisso, L. (2022). The affective being of multilingual children’s language use in mathematics learning. In Educational Studies 58(1), 17-32.

Valencia Mazzanti, C. (2022). Learning is water reflection. In K. Guyotte & J. Wolgemuth (Eds.), Philosophical Mentoring in Qualitative Research: Collaborating and Inquiring Together. Routledge.

Valencia Mazzanti, C. (2021). On the meaning of young children’s mathematics learning. In TEEM: Teaching for excellence and equity in mathematics, 12(1), 27-33.

Tolley, B. & Valencia Mazzanti, C. (2020). The power of children’s voices: Potentials for teacher education. In Themed Issue of School-University Partnerships: Professional development school and school-university partnership efforts to support equity-based teaching, 13(3), 158-169.

Valencia Mazzanti, C. (2020). Transformative forces for education: linguistic diversity, identity, and community. In L. Cardozo-Gaibisso & M. Vasquez Domiguez (Eds.), Handbook of research on advancing language equity practices with immigrant communities (p. 245-255). IGI Global.

Valencia Mazzanti, C, & Allexsaht-Snider, M. (2019) Mathematics for borderland identities. In T. R. Berry, C. Kalinec-Craig, & A. Rodriguez, (Eds.), Latinx curriculum theorizing (p. 33-47). Lexington, Rowman & Littlefield.

Valencia Mazzanti, C. & Allexsaht-Snider, M. (2018) ¿Es lo mismo? Bilingual children counting and making sense of number. In I. Goffney & R. Gutierrez (Eds.), Annual perspectives in mathematics education (APME) 2018: Rehumanizing mathematics for Black, Indigenous, and Latinx (p. 135-146). National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). [DOAWR]

Valencia Mazzanti, C. & Allexsaht-Snider, M. (2018). Multilingual perspectives as new opportunities for seeing and learning mathematics. In Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education.

Valencia Mazzanti, C. & Allexsaht-Snider, M. (2018). Powerful knowledge: Languages and identity in children’s mathematics learning through family workshops. In Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education.

In preparation

Valencia Mazzanti, C., Allexsaht-Snider, M., Chimgee, A., Ahmad, M., & Seth, D. (Article in preparation). Lived pedagogies: Artful understandings of teachers theorizing the learning of young multilingual children. For Critical Studies in Education.

Valencia Mazzanti, C. (Article in preparation). Lost (b)orders in art and testimonio: theorizing of education in the (for)getting of fiction and fact. For Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodologies.

Valencia Mazzanti, C., (Article in preparation). Knowledge, language, and identity: How the light gets in. For Qualitative Inquiry.

 Valencia Mazzanti, C., Karsli-Çalamak, E., Tiktin-Sharick, L., Zuck, M., Ananda, T., & Echeverria, L. (Article in preparation). Children’s Theories of Mathematics Knowledge. For Research in Mathematics Education [Special Issue: Reframing Recognition: Whose Mathematics, Whose Methods, Whose Stories?].