Making sense of literacy from print to pixel.
A brief account of the degrees and path that led from English and secondary teaching into research on literacy, cognition, and digital environments.
- Dec 2012
- Ph.D., Educational Psychology (Cognition & Instruction) — University of Connecticut
- May 2001
- M.Ed., Secondary Education — University of Massachusetts Amherst
- May 1997
- B.A., English — University of Massachusetts Amherst
My path into this work started in English and secondary teaching, not literacy research. A B.A. in English and an M.Ed. in Secondary Education led into public-school classrooms, teaching middle and high school English in Massachusetts. Graduate study in Educational Psychology, with a concentration in Cognition and Instruction, gave that classroom experience a research frame — how people read, think, and learn, and what changes when the tools for doing those things change. That question is still the throughline, from doctoral research on new literacies and online reading comprehension to the work on this site now.
For the roles, institutions, and appointments this became, see Experience. For the research it produced, see Publications.