Literacy Studies
The Literacy Studies Department provides students with a strong core in literacy, theory, research and practice with the aim of cultivating scholarly and reflective practitioners who are prepared to foster culturally-responsive, effective literacy learning across diverse contexts. Our M.Ed. and Ed.D. programs emphasize a sociocultural perspective for understanding and developing literacy education. We are committed to nurturing the next generation of educational professionals, who will advance knowledge of the field to address problems of literacy practice in diverse educational settings, spanning early education to post-secondary contexts.
Our Mission and Values
The mission of the Department of Literacy Studies is to develop reflective and scholarly practitioners.
Therefore, we commit to the following core values:
- Collaboration: We work together to foster open communication and the productive exchange of ideas toward shared goals and interests.
- Community: We see ourselves as participants within communities across many social and professional strata. Thus, we pursue professional activities in the service of enriching our own lives and the lives of those around us.
- Diversity: We appreciate difference as a fundamental quality of our lives and through our work aim to achieve equity, access, and opportunity for all people.
- Innovation: We promote a creative environment where faculty, staff, and students enthusiastically search for inventive solutions to everyday problems.
- Professionalism: We are trustworthy, dependable, and fair.
- Respect: We treat all people with dignity and respect.
We encourage students to explore their own inquiries rather than working toward 'the single correct answer.’ We support students negotiating diverse perspectives to interpret literacy research and pedagogy in dialogue with their own literacy experiences
Guidelines for Collegial Discourse
We appreciate the cultural and linguistic heterogeneity that characterizes a diverse society and we respect the full range of representational means through which people may express themselves. We understand that standardized language is a social construct, and that language use is deeply embedded in our identities. We expect that all interaction, verbal, written, or otherwise, is carried out in a milieu of collegiality and productive toward the attainment of knowledgeable consensus.
Financing Graduate Education
There are many sources of aid available for graduate study in our program. Please see the following resources.
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6 Core Values
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6 Program Goals
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60 Graduate Study Hours