Aug. 14, 2022

Melissa Hauber-Özer

Melissa Hauber-Özer is an Assistant Professor of Qualitative Inquiry in the Department of Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum, co-coordinator of the Action Research Network of the Americas Knowledge Democracy Initiative, and chair-elect of the Adult Education interest section and secretary of the Refugee Concerns interest section of TESOL International. She teaches graduate courses, including Qualitative Research Methods in Education I & II, Philosophical Perspectives on Educational Research, and Critical Participatory Inquiry. Dr. Hauber-Özer’s research employs critical participatory, ethnographic, and narrative methodologies to examine issues of educational access and equity for linguistically and culturally diverse learners. She is a co-author of Critical Participatory…

Aug. 1, 2022

Nicole Bliven

Nicole Bliven is an Instructor of Literacy in the Department of Learning, Teaching and Curriculum. She spent a decade as an elementary teacher in both charter and public schools before her experiences as a reading interventionist.  She is now applying her experiences in the classroom as a teacher educator of undergraduate students preparing to be teachers of language and literacy in diverse, elementary settings. She teaches courses in both online and face-to-face settings. She is excited to explore a practice-based model in her course to support undergraduate students in thinking about the complexities of literacy instruction in an…

Nov. 23, 2021

Francisco Palermo

Dr. Francisco Palermo earned his Ph.D. in Family & Human Development in 2009 from Arizona State University. His research focuses on strengthening families and fostering young children’s healthy development and school readiness, particularly for vulnerable families and children at risk of experiencing socioemotional and academic difficulties due to limited English proficiency and adverse childhood experiences, such as poverty.

Aug. 15, 2019

Sam von Gillern

Sam von Gillern is Associate Professor of Digital Literacies and Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum. His scholarship examines how children and educators learn, teach, communicate, and create meaning in digital environments, with particular emphases on AI literacy, video game literacies, media literacy, and digital citizenship. A central focus of his work is understanding how practicing and preservice teachers perceive digital technologies, weigh their educational benefits and concerns, and approach their integration into classroom instruction. He examines teachers’ preparedness to teach with and about emerging technologies while exploring instructional practices that support students’ literacy development,…

Aug. 12, 2018

Robert Petrone

Dr. Robert Petrone (he/him/his), Associate Professor, is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work lives between English, American Studies, and Sociology, with applications for Education. The central framework for Dr. Petrone’s integrated program of research, teaching, and service is Critical Youth Studies, which offers an important critique to the dominance of developmentalist frameworks in American society that often position people known as teenagers in deficit ways and naturalize expectations for them rooted in dominant sociocultural norms. From this foundation, Dr. Petrone’s research and teaching explores four lines of inquiry, the most recent of which takes up creative writing as a mode…

Aug. 3, 2016

Mike Metz

Mike Metz is an Associate Professor of English Education in the Department of Learning, Teaching and Curriculum at the University of Missouri. He serves as the Emphasis Area Leader for English Education. Mike’s research examines culturally sustaining pedagogies for English classrooms, with a particular focus on the teaching of Critical Language Awareness. Through this research, he explores English teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about English language variation, and students’ responses to learning about language, identity, and social power. His research also explores teacher education pedagogies that help pre-service and in-service teachers take up and enact Critical Language Pedagogies and other culturally responsive…

July 13, 2015

Angie Zapata

Dr. Angie Zapata, associate professor of Language and Literacies Education at the University of Missouri, is a longtime teacher, teacher educator and researcher. Her research and teaching contributions have been recognized as a recipient of the Early Career Research Award from the National Council of Teachers of English Children’s Literature Assembly and the National Council of Research in Language and Literacies Mid-Career Scholar and as the 2024 National Council of Teachers of English Elementary Educator and the Early Childhood Teacher Educator awardee. Primary Investigator, Family, Community, and Emergent Literacy Birth-K | Comprehensive Literacy State Development Program | U.S. Department of…