Benjamin James

Assistant Professor

Dr. Benjamin M. James is an assistant professor in the School of Education at the University of Delaware where he specializes in language and literacy education and teacher preparation for working with multilingual learners in K-12 schools. Dr. James has 17 years of experience in the United States and abroad as a teacher and program coordinator in bilingual and English-medium K-12 and English as a Foreign Language contexts and is dedicated to supporting teachers in providing equity- and justice-oriented instruction for multilingual learners.

Dr. James’ research focuses on preparing teachers to work with linguistically-marginalized students, who are often bureaucratically classified as English learners and multilingual learners more broadly. He also explores video-embedded teacher learning to support novice teachers in incorporating more collaborative, action-based orientations to language and literacy instruction for multilingual learners across the curriculum.

Dr. James has presented his work on teachers’ practices and beliefs about language, teacher conceptions of scaffolding and academic language, video-embedded teacher learning for working with multilingual learners, and international perspectives on bilingual education at domestic and international conferences. His work has been published in the Social Studies Review and has received multiple awards such as the 2023-2024 California State University Chancellor’s Doctoral Incentive Program dissertation fellowship, Educating Teacher Educators Doctoral Fellowship from the California Teacher Education Research and Improvement Network  and the Quality in Nordic Teaching Ph.D. fellowship from the University of Oslo.

Dr. James teaches undergraduate courses related to literacy instruction for multilingual learners and diversity in secondary education. He also works as a field instructor supervising teacher candidates pursuing the multilingual learner teacher education (formerly English as a second language) concentration and other candidates in the elementary teacher education program during their student teaching field experiences.

Educational Background

• Ph.D., Education, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, 2024
• M.A., Education, Focus in Literacy, Ball State University, Muncie, IN, 2013
• B.A., English Writing, Ball State University, Muncie, IN, 2006

Professional Experience

• Assistant Professor, School of Education, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 2024–present
• Lecturer and Teacher Supervisor, Department of Education and Leadership, California State University Monterey Bay, Seaside, CA, 2019–2024
• Teacher and Grade Level Team leader, Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, CA, 2017–2019
• Bilingual Program Director, Kansai International Academy, Kobe, Japan, 2015–2017
• Teacher, Kansai International Academy, Kobe, Japan, 2008–2015