Brianna Cullen Wilson

Educator, Improvement Researcher, Consultant in Boston, Massachusetts

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My mission is to build and sustain research-practice partnerships between the cognitive sciences and education to support effective teaching, deeper learning, and equitable opportunity for all students.

Teaching high school ESL, Humanities, and Special Education in Boston Public Schools raised many questions for me about how to put students' social, emotional, and cognitive development at the center of every school design. I realized that to best support the growth of students, we need to build the capacities of adults to be innovators, designers, and mindful leaders of student learning.

As a graduate student in Mind, Brain, and Education at Harvard, I explored pathways for collaboration between researchers, practitioners, and intermediaries in the cognitive sciences and education. If teachers have access and support to apply cross-disciplinary research on learning and motivation in classrooms, and researchers collaborate on the most challenging problems of practice, then schools might deliver on the promise of deeper learning for all students.

I get excited by the "in between stuff" and live for those sense-making moments when, out of complexity, a pattern emerges. I'm passionate about bringing people and ideas together to tackle shared problems.

My research interests range from adolescent development, social emotional learning, mindfulness, self regulation, and the science of stress and resilience to research on memory and transfer, novices and experts, second language acquisition, and literacy. My primary goal is to leverage knowledge on these topics to ensure every child has access to high quality, student-centered instruction.

Before teaching, I worked as an Acquisitions Editor for a publisher of local history books, recruiting, developing, managing and editing book projects for Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire authors. I'm still hooked on storytelling as a mode for exploring community, identity, and amplifying the voices that need to be heard.

When I'm not in classrooms, you can find me hiking in the woods, reading in a cozy chair, or making music with whoever will play or sing along.

  • Work
    • BPE, Research Schools
  • Education
    • Ed.M. Mind, Brain, and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
    • M.A. Education University of Massachusetts, Boston
    • B.A. English and Spanish, Middlebury College