Dr. Laura M. Jim\u00e9nez, BU Wheelock’s associate dean for equity, diversity & inclusion and a senior lecturer in literacy education, has always been intrigued by the ways elements such as purpose, person, text, and context, of any given reading event interact to influence reading comprehension and meaning making in the classroom. Studying both literature and literacy with a social justice lens means she focuses on the ways teachers think about and understand not only the systems of inequity and privilege at play in education, but their own roles within those systems, as well as the texts and the ways those texts are used in the classroom.<\/p>\n
Dr. Jim\u00e9nez\u2019s dissertation was a study motivated by questions around the ease of graphic novel reading. The findings have been published in the scholarly journals such as Journal of Literacy Research, and Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy.<\/em> She teaches children\u2019s literature courses within a literacy program and so her scholarship spans both literature and literacy. She is a founding advisory board member of Research on Diversity in Youth Literature (RDYL)<\/a> and a member of the Article Award Committee of the Children’s Literature Association.<\/p>\n Dr. Jim\u00e9nez believes it is her responsibility to provide a variety of avenues and opportunities for teachers to actively engage with children\u2019s and young adult literature, to keep the growing diversity of students in the K-12 classroom in the forefront of her practice, and to critically evaluate the representation of mis- and undervalued communities within literature we teach children. Keeping students interested, engaged, and invested is paramount to learning; as such, modeling the kinds of classroom experiences that are cognitively flexible, vibrant, challenging, and fun is paramount in teacher education.<\/p>\n Her scholarship appears in the Reading Teacher<\/em>, Journal of Lesbian Studies<\/em>, and Teaching and Teacher Education. <\/em>Her graphic novel reviews can be found on her blog, Booktoss<\/a>.<\/p>\nRecent News<\/h3>\n