Current Research and Outreach

LLED faculty are engaged in numerous forms of research and outreach locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Faculty pages [hyperlink] showcase each person’s profile. Below is a list of current and active projects by faculty who are interested in collaborators. Doctoral students may consider work on any of these projects as part of their research apprenticeship responsibilities. Contact individual faculty to inquire further.

JoBeth Allen

JoBeth Allen conducts critical action research with teachers who are exploring issues of educational equity and social justice in relation to literacy teaching and learning at home, in schools, and in the community.

Creating Welcoming Schools
Two recent books highlight the work of teachers and focus on family-school partnerships: Creating Welcoming Schools: A Practical Guide to Home-School Partnerships with Diverse Families and Literacy in the Welcoming Classroom: Creating Family-School Partnerships that Support Student Learning. The books are written for study groups – teachers, family members, teacher educators, and community members – to read together and discuss ways in which they can become partners in supporting learning in grades K-12. This ongoing work will focus on rural communities affected by poverty in 2012-13.

Critical Inquiry Communities  
2006-present. Red Clay Writing Project’s K-12 Project Outreach action research team: teachers and students co-constructing critical pedagogies that employ the UN Rights of the Child as a critical content framework. Critical Inquiry Through the Rights of the Child, written by the teacher researchers and co-edited with Lois Alexander, is in press with Teachers College Press.
2010-present. Red Clay Writing Project’s Family Dialogue Journal action research team: teachers, students, and families from kindergarten to AP English classrooms dialogue weekly about what students are learning and what families contribute through their funds of knowledge related to that learning. Family Dialogue Journals is our co-authored book, in preparation.

Alvermann, Donna

Adolescents’ Digital Literacies across Space, Time, and Place (2006- present)

In what might appear to be deregulated out-of-school spaces (e.g., public libraries, museums, boys and girls clubs, social networking sites), adolescents repeatedly engage in both online and offline literacy practices that demonstrate they know how to “do school”— to be attentive learners and to seek assistance from more knowledgeable others. Their literacy practices are not a function of particular institutions or boundaries, but of identities they choose to assume in order to convince themselves and others that they are who they say they are.

Literacy Tutoring Programs in Public Libraries  (1994 – present)

Literacy tutoring programs in public libraries were funded across the U.S. in 1994. Since that time with budget cuts to public libraries, it is assumed that most of these originally funded programs are non-existent. However, to verify that hunch, this project will involve calling approximately 75 public libraries to see if a literacy tutoring program exists, and if it does, is there anyone on staff who could address a set of 20 questions about the materials used, the number of library patrons served, the number of tutors, and their source of training. This will be the last phase of a longitudinal study that spans 18 years.

Cahnmann-Taylor, Melisa

Teachers Act Up! Research and Pedagogy that Nurtures Creativity, Compassion, and Positive Social Change.
www.teachersactup.wordpress.com
2003-Present: Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor has been using theatre and pedagogy of the oppressed methods with TESOL, Bilingual, Foreign Language, English, and Elementary Educators, creating multicultural communities through theatre

FLAPping our wings to fly: Bilingual Education in Georgia
2009-Present: Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor has partnered with Judia Jackson Harris Elementary school on a Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant to develop the first Spanish-English programming in Clarke County and become the 4th public elementary school in the state to offer a form of dual immersion bilingual education.  She follows the leadership of LLED alum, Dr. Dell Perry Giles, who opened the first dual immersion bilingual program in Georgia, Unidos Elementary school in Clayton County.

Harklau, Linda

Georgia ESOL for Content Area Teachers (GECAT) Project

2012-2017 GECAT is a five year Title III federally funded initiative begun in summer 2012. It is a partnership between the TESOL & World Language Education Program at the University and the Barrow County Schools, Habersham County Schools, and Hall County Schools. Its goals are to 1) increase the number of ESOL-endorsed educators in Georgia schools, 2) adapt and improve the ESOL endorsement curriculum for Georgia in-service educators, and 3) through this professional development, improve the academic achievement of English learners in Georgia.