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Biography

Susan V. Piazza is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Studies in the Department of Special Education and Literacy Studies at Western Michigan University. She also serves as Director of the Dorothy J. McGinnis Reading Center and Clinic in the College of Education. Dr. Piazza graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit, MI with a doctorate in Reading, Language, and Literature and a minor in Curriculum and Instruction in 2006.  Her M.Ed. degree is from Wayne State University. Her B.A. in Political Science and B. Ed in Primary Education were both completed at the University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada.  She engages in professional development with school districts in Ontario and Michigan and is a member of many local, state, and international professional organizations and journal editorial boards.

Piazza teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in K – 12 reading/language arts using sociocultural and critical perspectives. Piazza’s teaching and research interests focus on diversity and equity in relation to literacy learning, readers’ transactions with texts in and out of school, critical literacy, and pre-service and in-service teacher development.  Much of her research activity is tied to interests in serving the needs of diverse learners who have been traditionally marginalized. The following is a list of research completed or in-progress as of January, 2009.

• After-school literacy tutoring program with children of incarcerated parents (interdisciplinary research with Dr. Lonnie Duncan, Counseling Psychology)

• Clinical practicum with graduate students (assessments and culturally relevant pedagogy)

• The interrelationship of language barriers, fragmented services, socioeconomic and cultural challenges faced by migrant children and their families across the state of Michigan (Collaboration with Dr. Karen Vocke, English Education and Michigan Department of Education)

• Fourth-grade African American boys’ thinking about texts, assessments, sociocultural features of texts, and how they position themselves in relation to these.

• Critical literacy with multicultural literature in a rural context/white, female, middle-class teachers’ dispositions toward equity and literacy

 

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