Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum and Educational Studies
Email: jacorie.maxwell@ou.edu
Phone: (918) 406-7129
Office: Collings Hall 335
Dr. Ja’Corie Maxwell is an Assistant Professor of First-Year Experience in the Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum and Educational Studies within the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education at the University of Oklahoma. His research examines Black educational experiences, educational memory, and the enduring consequences of school desegregation, while his teaching supports students as they transition into higher education and prepares future educators to become reflective practitioners and educational leaders.
Drawing on Critical Race Theory and Afropessimism, Dr. Maxwell investigates how race, history, trauma, and broader systems of power shape educational experiences across the P–20 continuum. His research program develops the concepts of Black educational memory and sonic memory to examine how Black communities remember, interpret, and transmit educational experiences across generations. Through qualitative, narrative, and interpretive methodologies, he explores the afterlives of school desegregation and the ways educational policy, institutional structures, and historical narratives continue to shape opportunity, belonging, identity, and educational equity. His scholarship also contributes to conversations surrounding curriculum studies, teacher preparation, educational psychology, and first-year student success.
Dr. Maxwell earned his Ph.D. in Instructional Leadership and Curriculum from the University of Oklahoma. His scholarship has appeared in peer-reviewed journals spanning teacher education, mathematics education, and educational technology, and he continues to expand his work on Black educational memory, sonic memory, and the historical and contemporary implications of racialized schooling.
Committed to preserving and elevating Black educational histories, Dr. Maxwell seeks to advance new theoretical and methodological approaches for understanding race, memory, and schooling. Ultimately, his scholarship not only documents the educational experiences of Black communities but also reimagines how those histories can inform more just, equitable, and humanizing educational futures.
