Mary Bridget Burns

Mary Bridget Burns is a researcher at AIR. Dr. Burns has over a decade of experience as an educator, from teaching elementary school and preparing pre-service teachers, to conducting research studies on educational practices and policies. Dr. Burns brings her background in educational leadership, bilingualism, school improvement, and systems thinking to bear through her work as a site lead on several state-level projects. She is also an active participant on research proposals focused on bilingual program evaluation, district evaluation, and state-wide instructional improvement.

Dr. Burns's research interests include gender and teachers’ experiences, bilingualism, systems thinking in education, and school improvement. The former inaugural managing editor for the Journal of Professional Capital and Community, Dr. Burns’ work has been published in Education Administration Quarterly, the NABE Journal of Research and Practice, and Global Educational Review.

After interning and training in Illinois and Ohio, Dr. Burns taught in classrooms in Texas, Florida, and Massachusetts. She was a Fulbright grantee to Hungary, where she taught at the University of Szeged’s Juhász Gyula Teacher College. She has also taught at Cisco Junior College in Abilene, Texas and at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development.