Joanne Larson joined the Warner School faculty in 1995 and currently serves as chair of teaching and curriculum. Larson, a former preschool teacher and director, teaches elementary teacher preparation and literacy courses, as well as doctoral level courses on curriculum, teaching and change, and qualitative research. In 2006, she was appointed the Michael W. Scandling Professor of Education.
Larson’s ethnographic research examines how language and literacy practices mediate social and power relations in classroom literacy events. Her recent research brings theoretical perspectives from critical geography to examine the spatiality of literacy in a global information economy. She is the editor of Literacy as Snake Oil: Beyond the Quick Fix (Lang, 2001), currently in production of a second edition due in spring of 2007. She is co-editor of Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy (Sage, 2003), which provides an overview of contemporary research into early childhood literacy. Her newly published book, Making Literacy Real: Theories and Practices in Learning and Teaching (2005) co-authored with Jackie Marsh, explores the breadth of the complex and important field of literacy studies, orientating literacy as a social practice grounded in social, cultural, historical, and political contexts. The book also presents a detailed and accessible discussion of the theories presented and their application in the primary classroom.
Larson's publications include research articles in Research in the Teaching of English; Written Communication, Linguistics and Education; Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, and Discourse and Society. She has co-authored articles in the Harvard Educational Review; Language Arts; Urban Education; and the International Journal of Educational Reform. She has served in leadership positions for AERA in the SIG Writing and Literacies and the SIG Language and Social Processes. She served on the Standing Committee on Research for NCTE and was chair of the Promising Researcher Award Committee for three years. She is past-chair of the NCTE Assembly for Research and served on the Government Relations Task Force, also for NCTE. She is currently serving on the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy.
Larson has recently branched out from traditional publication venues to collaboratively produce two films with filmmaker David Smith. The first was a professional development film that focused on teaching literacy in the current reductionist pedagogical context. The second one is a more general film that documents the teaching life of Lynn Astarita Gatto, 2004 New York State Teacher of the Year, entitled A Life Outside. This film aired on public television station WXXI in spring 2006, with plans for national broadcast at a later date.
Funding from the New York State Department of Education allows Larson to combine several area elementary teaching communities into one professional learning community of language arts educators to support progressive teaching and learning of multiliteracies. The collaboration catalyzes school-wide and institutional changes and learning reform by guiding participant teachers as they reflect on and transform their practice in a supportive environment. In addition to directly supporting literacy education reform, the collaboration is also the basis of a three-year ethnography in Rochester City School District classrooms and research into understanding how collaborative relationships between schools and universities are constructed and sustained.
Education
Ph.D., University of California – Los Angeles (curriculum)
B.A., University of California – Los Angeles (fine
arts)
