Research Interests
I am interested in how school literacy practices can be re-imagined to affirm children’s cultural and linguistic knowledge as well as to offer tools for cultural production and social participation and re/organization. My three-pronged research agenda offers some possibilities for this work. My research in critical multicultural analysis of children's and young adult literature challenges researchers, teacher educators, and teachers to reconsider how multicultural children’s literature and other texts are studied in elementary and secondary classrooms. I am also exploring how critical literacies, multiliteracies, and Waldorf language arts pedagogies, under-explored practices, converge and diverge in the research literature and in Waldorf-inspired and democratic public schools. Lastly, I am studying how critical collaborative inquiry and ethnographic research practices hold great promise for the professional learning of experienced and preservice teachers. My research has taken me to Ontario, California, Massachusetts, and Finland.
I am the lead author of Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children’s Literature: Mirrors, Windows, and Doors (Routledge, 2009) and several book chapters and articles on critical multicultural analysis, critical literacies, multiliteracies, and the professional learning of pre-service and in-service teachers. “Respecting Children’s Cultural and Linguistic Knowledge: The Pedagogical Possibilities and Challenges of Multiliteracies in Schools” is noteworthy book chapter. I am working on a book that will support teacher educators, teachers, and preservice teachers to understand what children know.
I teach doctoral seminars in writing, critical literacies, reading, and ethnographic methodology; master’s courses in critical multicultural analysis of children’s and young adult literature, literacy assessment, and pre-service elementary language arts; and, undergraduate courses – critical survey of children’s literature course and critical literacies as social justice language practices. I was a children’s librarian for the Cambridge Public Library and an elementary school teacher and teacher educator for the Somerville public schools in Massachusetts. I live in Amherst with my husband and our two children, one golden retriever, and eight chickens.