My Ph.D. program at the College of Education is in International education and development with a focus on education policies, administration, and research. My dissertation “Integrating Traditional Values and Local Knowledge in the Formal Educational System in Senegal” 
discusses the issue of culturally relevant education in Senegal through incorporation of more local values and knowledge along with a greater community engagement. In addition, my studies included valuable courses relevant to the field of training, evaluation, monitoring, project planning and research, education and culture, and education in emergency settings.
During my doctoral program I worked from 2013-16 as a graduate assistant on a project to evaluate Vas-Y-Fille!, a girls’ education project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. My responsibilities included working on questionnaires, collecting data in the field, training local data collectors in qualitative methods, supervising the training of local teachers in gender sensitive teaching, transcribing and coding files in Nvivo, and helping to write the reports and translating them into French. I also supervised and evaluated the training of village women in savings and loans and small project development. During this period I made presentations at various professional conferences on the evaluation results from this project.
While studying at CIE in the College of Education, I also taught French in the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures department at UMass, Amherst and pursued a master's in French and Francophone Studies with a focus on African and Caribbean literature and culture.
I have developed considerable expertise in research, educational theories, management, monitoring, and evaluation of educational projects as well as second language acquisition and francophone studies. I graduated with Ph.D. in Education and a Master’s in French and Francophone Studies in May 2020.
After graduating, I taught French and Francophone Studies at Worcester Academy (High school) as a long-term substitute instructor. In 2021, I returned to Senegal where I resumed my high school teaching position as a language teacher (French and English). In addition, I am teaching part-time international development courses at a Minnesota study abroad program in Senegal. I also worked for several education programs as a short-term consultant mainly with the UK Birbeck University in Senegal.
In 2024 Routledge published a revised version of Maguette’s dissertation. The book explores the discourse of traditional values and local practices within the formal educational system in Senegal, investigating how these cultural elements are present in the daily life of the community and integrated into formal schools and teaching. Studying the integration of concepts such as Jom (hard work, pride, dignity), Kersa (decency), Fule (self-respect), Mun (endurance), Teranga (hospitality), Kal (kinship), and Suture (Protection), it looks at how values are used, perceived and understood within communities, as well as their positive and negative connotations in the postcolonial context.
Before coming to CIE, I worked as a teacher in middle/high schools where I became more aware of how wealth and traditional cultural values are interconnected in determining success and failure in schools in Senegal. [1-24]
Email: diamemaguette@yahoo.fr