Dr. Joanne E. Marciano is Associate Professor of English Education in the College of Education’s Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University.
Her co-authored paper (with Vaughn W.M. Watson) “This is America”: Examining Artifactual Literacies as Austere Love Across Contexts of Schools and Everyday Use has been selected for the 2021 Outstanding Publication of the Year Award by the Narrative Research SIG of the American Education Research Association.
Joanne received her doctorate from the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is the recipient of a 2019-2021 Reading Hall of Fame Emerging Scholars Fellowship.
Joanne is co-author of the newly released book Classroom Cultures: Equitable Schooling for Racially Diverse Youth (Teachers College Press) with Michelle G. Knight-Manuel. Joanne has also published research findings in Urban Education, the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, The Urban Review, Journal for Multicultural Education, English Journal, The International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, Literacy, and the eJournal of Public Affairs. Her published research findings also include, with Dr. Michelle G. Knight, College Ready: Preparing Black and Latina/o Youth for Higher Education – A Culturally Relevant Approach (Teachers College Press, 2013), named by the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Urban Education as one of its 2017 “Must Read Titles in Urban Education.” She has presented research findings at numerous national and international conferences, including the annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association, the Literacy Research Association, and the National Council of Teachers of English.
Joanne’s research focuses on assets-based considerations of Black and Latinx youth to highlight approaches for supporting their college-going new media literacy practices. In doing so, Joanne seeks to extend understandings of how curriculum and instruction, co-designed and co-authored with youth, and emerging from and with youth’s communicative repertories, reimagines enactments of teaching and learning toward social justice. Joanne’s work builds upon culturally relevant and sustaining educational and research approaches and Youth Participatory Action Research to highlight how and why Black and Latinx youth engage in “culturally relevant peer interactions” supportive of their literacies learning, and college readiness and access, within and across school contexts.
In her work, Joanne highlights possibilities for educators to work against prevalent deficit-oriented notions of youth peer groups, creating opportunities for youth to draw upon their shared cultural and lived experiences as they seek collective goals of academic achievement and college access. Moreover, Joanne’s work calls for the inclusion of youth’s social media practices in curricular, instructional, and institutional strategies and policies, and educational research, highlighting new directions for assisting youth in supporting their own and peers’ literacy practices, college-readiness, and college access.
Joanne’s current recent research projects include collaborating with youth in a community-based Youth Participatory Action Research initiative. The initiative has received funding from the AERA Education Research Service Project (ERSP) Initiative, the AERA Division K Re-envisioning Teaching and Teacher Education in the Shadow of the COVID-19 Pandemic (RTTE) small grants program, the AERA Division G small grants program, the Educational Scholarship Consortium, the Michigan College Access Network, and the Michigan State University College of Education. Joanne is also co-developing and co-facilitating a series of professional development workshops for educators in Newark, New Jersey seeking to develop culturally responsive learning contexts for students.
From 2002 to 2015, Joanne taught secondary English at a public high school in Brooklyn, NY.