About Me
Introduction
I'm a Professor in Language and Literacy in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba. My research in language and literacies is deeply enmeshed in collaborative pedagogical inquiries committed to social justice, equity, diversity, and anti-oppressive practices in curriculum, teaching, and learning. My work draws upon sociomaterial, transcultural, decolonial, multimodal, and critical theories, with current projects in areas of post-qualitative sociomaterial practitioner inquiry methodologies, place-writing, and assessment. I am a co-founding director of the Manitoba Writing Project, and I am passionate about my work with teacher candidates designing innovative, interest-driven afterschool programs for middle and high school students. I have taught English Language Arts, grades 7-12, in both the U.S. and Canada. My research has been published in the Journal of Literacy Research, Pedagogies: An International Journal, Literacy, Language & Literacy, Language Arts, Voices from the Middle, and the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. I received my Ph.D. in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education from Indiana University, Bloomington.
Areas of interest
My research, teaching, and service interests have grown, moved, and become entangled in relationship to the people, places, contexts, and experiences that have shaped me and my commitments as an educator, researcher, and human being; they include:
My research, teaching, and service interests have grown, moved, and become entangled in relationship to the people, places, contexts, and experiences that have shaped me and my commitments as an educator, researcher, and human being; they include:
- sociomaterial theories of literacy and post-qualitative, non-representational modes of literacies inquiry and research
- critical literacies, culturally-responsive and anti-oppressive pedagogies, the teaching of language arts and literacy in ways that understand, appreciate, and engage meaningfully with diversity, equity, and inclusion in relationship to place, power, agency, all forms of (in)justice (e.g., social, racial, economic, environmental), and human and living rights;
- truth and reconciliation in education, decolonizing pedagogies, and language and literacy practices as ways of knowing and being
- transcultural literacies, multimodality and multiliteracies, multilingual writing, and the engagement and participation of educators and youth as readers/writers/producers/consumers/composers/authors/activists in their local, digital, and global communities;
- decolonizing and diversifying the literatures and texts read/taught/valued/produced in classrooms and schools;
- material, embodied, and artifactual literacies, critical and transdisciplinary place-walking and writing curriculum and pedagogies;
- creative forms of academic writing, and the growth of teachers' and students' identities as writers in writing communities;
- modes of practitioner research and reflexive practitioner inquiry that engage with difference and diversity in our ways of noticing, thinking, wondering, and feeling and that contribute to more diverse epistemologies and ontologies in curriculum, teaching, and learning;
- language and literacy pedagogy and assessment as relational, emergent, and dynamic;
- innovative approaches to teacher education through school and community partnerships and the collaborative design of interest-driven, inquiry-based, participatory learning spaces.
