- Email:
- marredon@iu.edu
Dr. Mariella I. Arredondo is an Associate Research Scientist with the Center on Education and Lifelong Learning at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community (IIDC) at Indiana University. She is a qualitative and mixed-methods researcher whose scholarship examines how educational and public institutions interpret, adapt, and enact policy across diverse cultural and organizational contexts. Her work centers on inclusive institutional change—understanding how organizations learn, adapt, and transform in ways that expand participation, strengthen belonging, and create more responsive and democratic systems across education, disability, workforce, and multilingual communities.
Grounded in Educational Policy Studies and Comparative and International Education, Dr. Arredondo investigates the relationship between policy, organizational practice, and lived experience. Her research explores how institutions translate policy into everyday practice, how organizational cultures shape implementation, and the conditions that enable meaningful and lasting systems transformation. She partners with educators, policymakers, government agencies, and community organizations to produce research that informs both scholarship and practice.
Earlier in her career, Dr. Arredondo served as a researcher with the nationally recognized Discipline Disparities Research-to-Practice Collaborative, an initiative funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies and the Open Society Foundations and let by The Equity Project at Indiana University, that brought together researchers, educators, advocates, families, and policymakers to advance evidence-based approaches to reducing disciplinary disparities. Working in partnership with UCLA's Center for Civil Rights Remedies, she contributed to national research, policy briefs, and dissemination efforts that informed conversations on school discipline reform and the school-to-prison pipeline.
At the IIDC, Dr. Arredondo has led and contributed to statewide research and technical assistance initiatives spanning PreK–12 education, disability services, workforce development, and early childhood systems. For more than six years, she partnered with Indiana school districts identified under IDEA Indicators 4, 9, and 10, facilitating collaborative inquiry with district leadership teams to examine disproportionality, strengthen inclusive practices, and develop evidence-informed improvement strategies. Her recent scholarship includes statewide research on the transition from sheltered workshops to Competitive Integrated Employment (CIE), multilingual family engagement, educational opportunities for English learners with disabilities, and qualitative studies of school districts successfully reducing racial and disability discipline disparities. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including an invited symposium in Germany on lessons from successful school districts advancing equitable discipline reform and presentations through the Comparative and International Education Society on educational peacebuilding and inclusive education.
Dr. Arredondo's scholarship is informed by a comparative perspective developed through ethnographic research on education policy, citizenship, language, culture, and belonging in Peru, where she examined how national reforms were interpreted and enacted within local schools and communities. Across diverse institutional settings, her research seeks to understand how public institutions cultivate democratic participation, foster belonging, and build the organizational capacity needed to create more inclusive societies.
Degrees
- Ph.D., Educational Policy Studies, Indiana University Bloomington
- M.A., Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Indiana University Bloomington
- M.A., Applied Linguistics, Ohio University
- B.A., Global and Social Studies, Antioch College
Publications
Awards and Honors
Walter Anderson Award (2023)
Antioch College Alumni Association. Awarded in recognition of contributions to breaking down racial and ethnic barriers and advancing diversity within the Antioch community and beyond.
Exemplary Annual Performance Recognition (2014)
Center for Evaluation and Education Policy, Indiana University.
Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship (2006)
U.S. Department of Education. Competitive fellowship supporting advanced study of Quechua and Latin American area studies.
Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship (2005)
U.S. Department of Education. Competitive fellowship supporting intensive Quechua language study.
Competitive Graduate Travel Awards (2004–2013, selected)
Indiana University and professional associations, supporting presentations at national and international conferences in comparative and international education, anthropology, and Latin American studies.