How do students make sense of the texts they encounter
in and out of school?
How do teachers best foster students’ communication of
their ideas?
How do community practices mediate and reflect meaning-making?
What happens when these processes do not work smoothly?
Faculty and students in the Literacy, Language, and Culture (LLC) program within the University of Michigan's School of Education are exploring questions like these in their efforts to improve the learning of children and adolescents, both at home and in the community.
What does it mean when you become a student in the LLC program? It means commitment to the understanding and fostering of language and literacy development for individuals of many different backgrounds and capabilities. Our research and teaching focuses on a broad age range, from preschool through adolescence; it takes place in both school and community settings; and it is motivated by a range of theoretical, methodological, and practical perspectives. What binds our work together is the commitment to understanding the dynamics of how individuals make sense of, and communicate, meaning.
How do students make sense of the texts they encounter in school?
How do community practices influence sense-making?
How can teachers best foster students’ communication of their ideas?
What happens when these processes do not work smoothly?
Faculty and students affiliated with the Literacy, Language, and Culture (LLC) area are exploring questions like these in their efforts to foster the success of children and adolescents, both at home and in the community. The LLC unit is focused particularly on issues of language and literacy learning, both typical and atypical, in school and community settings. We approach these issues from a range of perspectives, including sociocultural, cognitive, and developmental theories and methods. Students are encouraged to develop familiarity with a range of perspectives and issues, but to develop a particular specialization.
Examples of current projects include:
The School of Education offers Literacy, Language, and Culture degrees at both the Master's and Doctoral levels.
This degree specialization is housed within the Educational Studies program, which fosters links among students and faculty in a number of specializations sharing a commitment to the integration of theory and research on teaching, learning, and educational access in P-12 settings.
Special note about Early Childhood Education
Several faculty members in
the Literacy, Language, and Culture area have strong research programs related
to early literacy practices and policies and are prepared to support the academic
program of students who wish to focus on Early Childhood issues related to language
and literacy. Students interested in specializing in a particular age range such
as early childhood may do so by working with their advisor to choose electives,
internship experiences, and research experiences that are consistent with this
specialization.
The Ph.D. program in Literacy, Language, and Culture focuses on the learning and use of multiple literacies among diverse groups of people. The internationally recognized faculty brings multiple theoretical perspectives (e.g. cognitive, sociocultural , critical, and feminist) to the study of literacy and language among children, adolescents, and adults. Faculty members have expertise in disciplines such as psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and sociology. Students in this interdisciplinary Ph.D. program are members of nationally funded research groups engaged in cutting-edge scholarship to advance educational theory and practice. Graduate students also participate in school and university seminars, university teaching internships, national conferences, and other outreach efforts.
Core courses will familiarize you with a number of theoretical perspectives that have informed literacy research and teaching practices over the last 100 years, as well as with current perspectives on literacy research and practice. In addition, faculty offer special seminars related to their specific research interests on a rotating basis. Such courses are designed to provide in-depth treatment of particular areas of literacy theory, research, and practice. Examples of such courses include seminars in Comprehension Research; Youth Literacy, Culture, and Identity; Literacy as Cultural Practice; and Early Literacy Development.
Upon completion of the Ph.D., graduates are prepared for faculty positions at research and teaching universities or for positions as research scientists and post-doctoral fellows at research centers. Some graduates also take positions as curriculum and professional development leaders in literacy and language education in school districts or community organizations.
It is also worth noting that, as a unit within Michigan's Educational Studies Program, the Literacy, Language and Culture PhD program is a national partner in the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of teaching.
I would like to see a list of LLC faculty and their research interests.
What kind of work can I do in this program?
I would like to see a list of Doctoral degree requirements.
I have questions about the Doctoral program which still need answering.
I would like to talk to an LLC Doctoral student about the program.
The MA program in Literacy, Language, and Culture seeks to engage students in an appreciation of social, cognitive and cultural perspectives on literacy theory and research that can be applied to a variety of different vocational goals. Rather than offering a master’s degree that focuses primarily on literacy instruction at the secondary or elementary levels, we seek to provide students with a rich understanding of language and literacy that would be desirable in a number of different possible career paths after completion of the MA. One path might be in the role of classroom teacher who is particularly fluent in literacy theory and research relevant to K-12 learners. A second path might be an
The Reading Specialist (BR) Endorsement The MA program in Literacy, Language, and Culture is approved by the State of Michigan to offer an endorsement as a Reading Specialist to students who have a Michigan elementary or secondary teaching certificate and who complete the LLC degree requirments, along with a specialized internship (a 4-credit, modified version of the required ED638 Internship course). The Reading Specialist endorsement will enable a teacher to be employed as a school reading consultant/teacher consultant, to teach in special remedial or developmental programs, and to teach reading as a special subject at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. In addition to completing the LLC MA requirement, the reading subject area test must be passed in order to qualify for the endorsement. |
administrative role, which could involve such responsibilities as the development and implementation of classroom and school literacy curricula, English language arts curricula, professional development and the development of district-wide assessments in literacy across the grade levels and content areas. For either of these career paths, the program offers the option of pursuing an endorsement fromt he State of Michigan as a Reading Specialist. A third path might be that of university researcher and teacher educator. Thus, our MA offers the option of preparing to go on to pursue a Ph.D. in literacy, language and culture, to lead professional development for literacy teachers, or to engage in school-based practice informed by current perspectives on literacy theory and research.
Core courses will familiarize you with literacy theory and policy, typical and atypical patterns of development in reading and writing, instructional approaches for fostering literacy across the age span, and cultural variations in the mastery and expression of literacy skills. Although most students in the MA program are full-time, the program is also open to full-time teachers who want to pursue the degree on a part-time basis.
Upon completion of your M.A., you will have the grounding for the various career paths described above. Some graduates continue directly into a Ph.D. program, either at Michigan or other institutions. Others take positions as teacher leaders or policy personnel in school systems.
To assist those interested in the various concentrations, here are the names of faculty members and student ambassadors involved with the Literacy, Language, and Culture specialization. If you have a general question about the program, or would like to talk to a current student about the program, please visit the LLC Contact page.
Faculty: To view a faculty member's research interests, click on their name (links open up a new window).
Affiliated Faculty
Ambassadors are students who have agreed to answer your questions about the program. We know there are times when you really want to hear about the program from a student's perspective, and these students have agreed to share their experiences. If you have general LLC questions, please contact the program directly here. Remember: To help us alert you to recruitment events and the latest admissions updates, be sure to also fill out a graduate program inquiry form
.
Ambassadors:
Ruth Athan rathan@umich.edu
Debi Khasnabis debik@umich.edu
Ritu Radhakrishnan rradh@umich.edu
Leah van Belle vanbelle@umich.edu
Ambassadors are students who have agreed to answer your questions about the program. We know there are times when you really want to hear about the program from a student's perspective, and these students have agreed to share their experiences. If you have general LLC questions, please contact the program directly here. Remember: To help us alert you to recruitment events and the latest admissions updates, be sure to also fill out a graduate program inquiry form
Ambassadors:
Hardeep Gosal hgosal@umich.edu
Nicole Hughes nahugh@umich.edu
Laura Chavez lchavez@umich.edu LLC MA
Shailaja Menon Shailaja.Menon@Colorado.Edu
Ellen Pesko mpesko@umich.edu
Alison Tan alisonta@umich.edu LLC MA
Majoring in LLC at the University of Michigan gives you many opportunities to work with faculty members who are leaders in Literacy, Language, and Culture.
Here is a list of some of the projects that LLC faculty and students are working on now, or have been involved with in the past. Links on this page will open in a new window. To return to this page, please close the window.
Addison Stone is facilitating a collaboration among special education, speech-language, and ESL specialists from U of M and Wayne State Univ. on a federal model demonstration project focused on enriching the language and early literacy skills of children in local Head Start and high-risk preschool programs, with an eye to maximizing the engagement of students with disabilities.
Lesley Rex and her colleagues study the classroom interactions of White and African American teachers to explore how teachers and students manage conflict when race is a confounding factor. In research on professional development contexts, Lesley and doctoral student, Laura Schiller investigate how practitioners re-conceptualized and contextualized complicated problems of practice—even when socially threatened—by sustaining norms for exercising power and politeness.
Jay Lemke is interested in sociocultural approaches to the role of language and literacy in learning across multiple sites and timescales. He is currently doing a pilot study towards a larger project"I3W: Investigating Interactive Immersive Worlds" that will examine what we can learn from commercial computer and video games about designing next-generation learning environments that integrate language and multiple visual representations.
Seeking to understand the complex relationship between the cognitive and linguistic demands posed by increasingly advanced content area reading and writing tasks and the motivational demands posed by adolescents’ development and exploration of many different pathways to adulthood, Elizabeth Moje and her colleagues are using an array of methods to understand what motivates adolescents in Detroit schools and communities to persevere in the face of content literacy challenges. In a second project, Professor Moje seeks to provide a model for discipline-based adolescent literacy teacher education.
Joanne Carlisle directs the state of Michigan’s assessment project for the Reading First initiative. In addition, she and her colleagues are engaged in an effort to develop measures to assess the content and pedagogical content knowledge that teachers use in the teaching of reading.
In efforts to support the achievement of students who struggle with literacy demands in subject matter learning, Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar and her research group are investigating the effects of various digital environments designed to help students to interpret graphics, and integrate prose and graphics, particularly in science text. In addition, they are designing video case materials to support collaborations between subject matter teachers and literacy coaches in the middle school grades.
"Taking a Stance": Resolving Frame Clashes in a High School English Professional Learning Community
Second language acquisition in a Head Start classroom
Below is a list of the course offerings tailored to the M.A. and/or Ph.D. degrees in LLC. In conjunction with their advisors, students select a subset of these courses, as well as electives from offerings elsewhere in the School of Education and in cognate disciplines (e.g., Anthropology, Linguistics, Psychology, Sociology).
501. Literacy Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment: Primary/Elementary.
505. Literacy Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment: Middle/Secondary.
621. Teaching Writing in the Elementary and Secondary Schools.
638. Internship and Directed Field Experience.
645. Education and Cultural/Multicultural Studies.
703. Historical Perspectives on Literacy Research.
704. Contemporary Perspectives on Literacy Research
706. Seminar: Issues in Research on Literacy.
Are you interested in applying to our program? If so, you've come to the right place. Just follow the steps below. Note: If you are applying to the Doctoral program, be sure to check out the guidelines on how to write an ideal LLC Ph.D. essay. Links will open up in a new window, close the window to return to this page.
1. Do you have any questions you would like answered before you
apply? If so, view the School
of Education Frequently Asked Questions or contact
the program. If not, continue on
to item 2.
2. Fill out a Rackham program inquiry form to get you into our
system, so we can inform you of the latest recruiting events and other admissions
updates. You can fill
out a program
inquiry form by clicking here (be sure to close the new window to return
to this page).
3. Application Process: You will need to complete an application
to the Horace H. Rackham Graduate School,
which is the overall administrative unit for graduate programs. It is mandatory
that you use the Rackham Web application to apply to our programs.
You also need to send us a statement of purpose, official transcripts from every institution you have attended, three letters of recommendation, and your GRE scores. International students should also send in their TOEFL scores.
We created an application checklist for your use in keeping track of where and when you sent application materials. We recommend that you download and print up an application checklist.
Application Checklist
Fee waivers are available through the Rackham Graduate School for prospective students who qualify for Specialized Fee Waiver Groups. Please check Rackham's fee waiver Web page to see if you are eligible for one of these groups.
Note: The Office of Student Services matches documents to an application using the name appearing on the Rackham application. If the name on your documents, i.e., transcript, letter of recommendation, etc., is different from the name appearing on your application, please be sure to indicate all former last names or other first names on the Rackham application. Contact the Office of Student Services if you have information about your name that you did not include on the Rackham application.
For the latest deadline, please see our deadlines page
5. We hope you will get acquainted with us through our web materials,
e-mail correspondence, and when possible, a personal
visit. Be sure to
check out the University of
Michigan Web site, the Rackham
Graduate School Web site, and the rest of the resources in this program
site along with the School of Education Web site. In addition, you may want
to view the SOE
Bulletin.
There are opportunities through both the School of Education and the Rackham
Graduate School for merit and need based fellowships. To find out more, we
encourage you to review the
Graduate Financial Aid Resource Guide.
The Office
of Fellowships and Recruitment
is the contact for the Rackham Graduate School (734-764-8119).
We are delighted to learn of your interest in the University
of Michigan and this program. We encourage you to visit the campus to
discuss your interests with faculty and students. Visits are most helpful if
made prior to or during the application process. In addition to arranging individual
campus visits, you are encouraged to attend the annual Graduate Information Day. This is a great opportunity
for you to meet with School of Education faculty and staff, some of our current
students, and other prospective students. We wish you the best of luck in pursuing your
graduate studies and encourage you to contact us (above) if you have any questions
about the University of Michigan or your program.
Still have questions? If so, please visit the School
of Education Frequently Asked Questions, or contact the Office
of Student Services.
Questions about the status of your application? Check your application data and status online, via Wolverine Access. Please allow 7 days after submitting your application before checking your web application status on Wolverine Access. To do this you will need to use a login ID and password, and confirm some personal data before viewing your application:
For applicants who are current students or employees
1. Log into Wolverine Access using your existing UMICH uniqname login and click "New and Prospective Student Business."
"For applicants who are new to the University you will
need to create a secure login using a UM Friend Account and then log into Wolverine
Access at https://friend.weblogin.umich.edu/
1. Create a Friend Account by clicking on the following link: Create a Friend Account.
NOTE: If you have questions about creating a UM Friend Account you may go to http://www.itd.umich.edu/itcsdocs/s4316
2. Log into Wolverine Access at https://wolverineaccess.umich.edu/ and click "New and Prospective Student Business."
If you have any further questions, contact the Office
of Student Services at
(734) 764-7563 or
ed.grad.appl@umich.edu.
If you are interested in other School of Education programs, return to the "Academic Programs" home by clicking on the tab above or by clicking here.
