Alumna Joanna Wong Begins Fellowship
New Doctoral Alumna Begins Fellowship for Research on Bilingual Elementary Student Writing
Joanna Wong (PhD ’14) begins a prestigious two-year mentoring program in the Scholars of Color program funded by the Research Foundation of the National Council of Teachers of English.
The Cultivating New Voices fellowship pairs advanced
doctoral students with senior scholars who will support their
development as a junior scholar. Wong’s mentor is Sarah Freedman,
professor of education and a scholar of the teaching and learning
of writing at UC Berkeley.
“I am elated to have been selected,” said Wong. “Over the next two years,I will participate within a community of scholars who are engaged in equity focused research. As a fellow, I will receive funding to present at the annual National Council of Teachers of English conference and participate in an annual spring meeting at a university campus. Sarah has already begun supporting me with my academic job search and will be providing me with guidance as I develop papers for publication from my dissertation.”
Wong’s selection was in recognition of her research on Spanish-English bilingual elementary students’ writing experiences in school and her examination of relationships between instructional practice, opportunities to write, and students’ understandings and practices around writing. Her research is broadly focused on educational equity and literacy learning among non-dominant populations. In addition to developing papers and presentations from her dissertation research, Wong is co-authoring several papers with School of Education faculty Kerry Enright, Steven Athanases, and Chris Faltis.
She teaches “Inquiry into Classroom Practice” in the School’s teaching credential/MA program and is an elementary literacy specialist for the Oakland Unified School District.
“In the future, I hope to study how culturally and linguistically diverse students engage as literacy learners in the new era of Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the role of technology and literacy learning for students, and the implications of teachers’ practice and interpretation of the CCSS to support literacy learning for diverse students,” said Wong.
