Iesha Jackson is an associate professor of teacher education in the Department of Teaching and Learning. She received her Ed.D. in curriculum and teaching, with an emphasis in urban and multicultural education, from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her published research calls attention to the need for equity-based reforms in education practices and policies across the secondary through post-secondary spectrum. In order to address this, her work frequently applies critical race theory and is situated in three main areas: student voice, culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies, and equity-based, macro-level education policies.

Jackson was featured in several Las Vegas news outlets for her leadership of UNLV’s Rebel Academy, a summer program in which alternative route to licensure (ARL) graduate students complete their practicum with middle school students in North Las Vegas. Her service to the North Las Vegas community includes volunteering with several community-based organizations that serve Black and Latinx youth in the area.

In 2021, Jackson concluded a grant project that examined the life histories of in-service Black and Latinx ARL teachers of color and professional development needs for these teachers’ retention. This work has become essential to her current framing of healing-centered pedagogies in urban education and is the basis of her co-edited book The History of Now: Urban education, alternative routes to licensure, and the oral histories of Black and Latinx educators.