Ewa McGrail
Professor - Language and Literacy Middle and Secondary Education- Education
Ph.D., Syracuse University
M.A., Jagiellonian University
B.A., Jagiellonian University
- Specializations
Digital writing and new media composition; copyright and media literacy; social representations of outgroups in media and literature; multiliteracies and multimodal assessment; and technology use in teaching and learning.
- Biography
Ewa McGrail is a leader in literacy research and teacher education whose publications and work reflect ground-breaking research in digital writing and multimodal composition and assessment; copyright and composition; and critical media literacy and social representations in literature and popular culture. Her interdisciplinary work has appeared in a variety of top-ranking journals, including English Education, Teachers College Record, Journal of Research in Childhood Education, Assessing Writing, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, Disability Studies Quarterly, Journal of Academic Ethics, Innovate, Journal of Technology and Literacy, Action in Teacher Education, Kappa Delta Pi Record, The Reading Teacher and Educational Leadership.
McGrail and her colleagues have been recognized with the Richard A. Meade Award for Research in English Education by the National Council of Teachers of English’s English Language Arts Teacher Educators. She is a co-recipient of the Debut Faculty Paper Award in the Law and Policy Division from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC); the Distinguished Education Research Article Award from the Journal of Research in Childhood Education; and the Distinguished Research in Teacher Education Award sponsored by the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators. She is also the recipient of the National Leadership Fellowship Award Program from the Conference on English Education, the National Council of Teachers of English and the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education. McGrail co-authored a book on online digital dialogic writing with an authentic audience and how it can transform the elementary classroom.
She is a co-founder and editor of a multi-disciplinary international multimodal online journal, Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy and the Arts, which publishes thought-provoking research, analyses of practice and creative work from urban, rural and international perspectives and contexts.
In addition to research awards, McGrail has been recognized with Georgia State University’s Teaching for Social Justice and Democracy Award for “engaging students in developing complex views of citizenship and self.” Other prominent instructional awards include: the Georgia State Instructional Innovation Award (co-recipient); the Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award for Graduate Teaching from Georgia State’s College of Education & Human Development; and the Distinguished Program in Teacher Education Award (co-recipient) from the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators for the TEEMS English Education Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.) program.
Dr. McGrail directs the M.Ed. in English Education program and teaches master’s and doctoral-level courses in writing and digital writing, multimodal composition and assessment, literature, reading, critical media literacy, and English education and literacy methods. Her mission as an educator is to empower doctoral students, teachers and their students with the help of theory and research to think critically about complex social issues represented in the literature, media and popular culture they read and produce so that they can act boldly, passionately and creatively to address them in their own lives, communities and, by extension, in the society and the world.
- Publications
Book
Davis, A., & McGrail, E. (2017). Student blogs: How online writing can transform your classroom. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield.
Articles and Book Chapters
McGrail, E., and McGrail, J. P. (2023). “Young Adolescents’ Digital Multimodal Writing in One Urban Setting.” Journal of Literacy and Technology, 24(1), 57-142.
McGrail, E., Boutelier, S., and Young, C. A. (2022). “Navigating the Hyphens in Teacher Education During the Pandemic: Three English Educators Reflect.” English Education, 54(2), 156-164.
McGrail, E., Hawley Turner, K., Piotrowski, A., Caprino, K., Zucker, L., and Greenwood, M. E. (2021). “An Interconnected Framework for Assessment of Digital Multimodal Composition.” English Education, 53(4), 277-302). The winner of the 2022 Richard A. Meade Award for Research in English Education.
McGrail, E., McGrail, J. P., and Rieger, A. (2021). “Telling the Story of Youth, Sports and Disability in Friday Night Lights.” In K. Garland, K.S. Dredger, C. L. Beach, and C. Leogrande (Eds.), “Stories of Sport: Critical Literacy in Media Production, Consumption and Dissemination.” Lexington Books.
McGrail, E., McGrail, J. P., and Rieger, A. (2020). “Friday Night Disability: The Portrayal of Youthful Social Interactions in Television’s Friday Night Lights.” Disability Studies Quarterly, 40(4).
McGrail, E., Tinker Sachs, G., and Lewis, M. (2020). “Comic Book Conversations as Pedagogies of Possibilities in Urban Spaces.” Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts, 59(3), Article 5. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizons/vol59/iss3/5
McGrail, E., and Tinker Sachs, G. (2020). “Catsperts Who Engage in Scaffolded Learning from Multimodal Informational Texts.” Illinois Reading Council Journal, 48(2), 19-40.
Tinker Sachs, G., McGrail, E., C. Myrick, and Sackor S. (2020). “The Representation of ESOL in Teacher Education Middle School Reading Curricula.” Georgia Journal of Reading, 43(1), Article 6.
Alvermann, D., Young, C., McGrail, E., Damico, N., and Zucker, L. (2019). “‘Beliefs for Integrating Technology into the English Language Arts Classroom’: Reflections from Scholars in the Field.” Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 19(3).
Rybakova, K., Rice, M., Moran, C., Zucker, L., McDermott, M., McGrail, E., Loomis, S., Piotrowski, A., Garcia, M., Gerber, H., Gibbins, T., and Marlatt, R. (2019). “A Long Arc Bending Towards Equity: Tracing Almost 20 Years of ELA Teaching Trends in CITE.” Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 19(4).
McGrail, J.P., and McGrail, E. (2018). “Blurred Lines and Shifting Boundaries: Copyright and Transformation in the Multimodal Compositions of Teachers, Teacher Educators and Future Media Professionals.” In R. Hobbs (Ed.), “The Routledge Handbook on Media Education, Copyright and Fair Use,” (pp.129-142). New York, NY: Routledge.
McGrail, E., Tinker Sachs, G., Lewis Ellison, T., Dukes, N., D., and Zackery, K. (2018). “Homeless Adults, Technology and Literacy Practices.” Journal of Literacy and Technology, 19(2), 50-98.
McGrail, E., Rieger, A., Doepker, G. M., and McGeorge, S. M. (2018). “Pre-Service Teachers’ Perspectives on How the Use of TOON Comic Books During Guided Reading Influenced Learning by Struggling Readers.” SANE Journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education, 2 (3), 1-28. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/sane/vol2/iss3/1.
Tinker Sachs, G.., McGrail, E., Lewis Ellison, T., Dukes, N. D, and Zackery, K. (2018). “Literacy Scholars Coming to Know the People in the Parks, Their Literacy Practices and Support Systems.” Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 1-21. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15427587.2017.1351880
McGrail, J. P., McGrail, E., and Rieger, A. (2018). “A Teacher Goes Gothic: Walter White, Heisenberg and the Dark Revenge of Science.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 20(4), 486-506.
McGrail, E., McGrail, J. P., Rieger, A., Fraser, A. (2018). “Friday Night Disability: The Portrayal of Parent-Child Interactions on Television’s Friday Night Lights.” Journal of Human Development Disability and Social Change, 24(1), 121-140.
McGrail, E., and Behizadeh, N. (2017). “K-12 Multimodal Assessment and Interactive Audiences: An Exploratory Analysis of Existing Frameworks. Assessing Writing, 31, 24-38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2016.06.005
McGrail, E., McGrail, J.P., and Rieger, A. (2017). “Exploring Young Writers’ Authentic Writing and Language Learning Experiences.” In E. Ortlieb, E. H. Cheek, Jr., and W. Verlaan (Eds.), “Writing Instruction to Support Literacy Success: Literacy, Research, Practice and Evaluation,” vol. 7, pp. 117-135. Bingley, United Kingdom: Emerald Publishing.