About
About
Education research at the intersection of language, learning, and institutions.
A short biography. For a full curriculum vitae, see the CV section below.
Background
I am an Assistant Professor at the Institut des Sciences de l’Éducation (ISE), Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique (UM6P), in Morocco. I joined ISE in December 2025, after completing my doctorate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
I was born in Morocco and trained across three educational traditions: Moroccan public schooling, the American liberal arts (at Al Akhawayn University, where I graduated magna cum laude in International Studies as a Fulbright Scholar), and the Anglo-American research university (an M.Ed. and PhD from Harvard, the latter in Human Development, Learning and Teaching). My doctoral committee was chaired by Catherine Snow, and my dissertation examined how preschool teachers in linguistically diverse English-medium classrooms use children’s home languages during instruction.
I returned to Morocco to do research and build institutions here.
Intellectual formation
My research sits at the intersection of multilingual education, early childhood quality, and teacher education. The intellectual through-line — across the dissertation, the theoretical papers in development, and the empirical projects under way — is a single question: how do education systems open or close access to knowledge for the children and teachers they serve?
I came to this question through the standard channels of the field (learning sciences, applied linguistics, classroom observation methodology) but also through traditions less easily named in an academic CV: contemplative pedagogy, embodied learning, the Sufi inheritance of attention as a curricular principle, music as a form of cognitive and developmental scaffolding. These traditions are not decorative to the empirical work. They are part of how I think about what education is for, and they have begun to shape the kind of scholar-practitioner I am becoming — one whose intellectual life moves across registers without collapsing one into the other.
Current work
At ISE, I coordinate the doctoral program, teach across the PhD seminar (EDU705 — Pedagogy of Higher Education) and the required Cedoc doctoral course (EDU720 — Teaching and Learning in Higher Education), and develop the Epistemic Access Initiative — a research program on language as the first gatekeeper of knowledge access in early education systems.
My current research program has four lines: a configurational framework for instructional quality (authentic learning activity, pedagogical mediation, meaningful learning); a construct called registerial multilingualism for the Moroccan multilingual context; a conceptual program on language, AI, and learning; and an empirical line on multilingual teaching and learning, teacher quality, and early childhood inclusion.
Alongside the academic program, I work with international organizations, ministries, and foundations on research, policy advisory, and program evaluation — most recently with the European Training Foundation, the Morocco Innovation and Evaluation Lab (J-PAL), and the Regional Center for Quality and Excellence in Education (RCQE). The Advisory page describes the sector focus and engagement model.
Languages and locations
I work in English, French, and Arabic (Modern Standard and Moroccan Darija). I am learning Amazigh (my heritage language), as well as Spanish and Portuguese. My research and teaching span these languages; my advisory work is conducted in English and French.
I am based in Rabat. My research focuses on Morocco, the Maghreb, and Francophone Africa, with active collaborators at Harvard, Notre Dame, the Université de Sherbrooke, and the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris.
Beyond the academy
I am a singer-songwriter. My album How it Began was released in 2021. The music is not separate from the intellectual work — I have an ongoing interest in the neural and developmental overlap between musical training and language processing, and in what musical practice teaches about the kind of attention learning requires. The Music section collects recordings, performance, and writing on the music–pedagogy intersection.
I am married to Tahir.
CV
A full curriculum vitae with peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, advisory engagements, teaching record, and grants is available on request — please write to mariam.dahbi@um6p.ma.
PhD Human Development, Learning and Teaching · Harvard, 2022
M.Ed. Language and Literacy · Harvard, 2015
BA International Studies, Magna Cum Laude · Al Akhawayn, 2011
Fellowships Fulbright Scholar