Research Interests:  Ethnography; literacy in schools and communities; the intersection of multimedia, digital, and critical literacies; English language learners; urban schools; cultural and linguistic diversity

Primary Investigator:

Multimodal Digital Composition with English Language Learners

An ethnographic study of 3-5th grade English Language Learners engaging in multimodal composition embedded into their curricula in a public school in Southern California. This project has been supported by a sabbatical from CSULB (spring 2012).

Literacy, Language Arts Curricula, English Language Learners, High-Stakes Testing:

An ethnographic study of English Language Learners in a California Open Court classroom.  Data collection began fall 2006; analysis and writing began spring 2008.  I published a book based on my findings, titled Overtested: How high-stakes accountability fails English language learners, with Teachers College Press (2011).

Literacy, Language Arts Curricula, Social Justice, Identity:

Dissertation study, titled: “It’s not the color of their skin”: Identity politics, literacy practices, and multicultural curricula in an urban fifth-grade classroom.