Peggy Albers
Professor - Founder of Global Conversations in Literacy Research Middle and Secondary Education- Education
Ph.D., Indiana University
M.A., University of South Dakota
B.S., Dakota State University
- Specializations
Critical literacy
Visual discourse analysis
Children's literature
English education
- Biography
Peggy Albers is a full professor in the Department of Middle and Secondary Education. Albers is a Fulbright Specialist who conducted literacy-based work in Colombia, and is a Fulbright finalist with focused work in South Africa with children’s literature and literacy.
Albers is the author of five research and practitioner books, has published approximately 110 journal entries, and has delivered nearly 200 keynote and conference papers and workshops at international and national conferences.
Albers has published widely in professional literacy journals including, Journal of Literacy Research, Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, The Reading Teacher, Language Arts, English Education and Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, to name a few.
She has also has authored and/or co-authored five books on the integration and practice of the arts in teaching including her most recent book (2017) published by Routledge, Global Conversations in Literacy Research: Critical and Digital Literacies.
She was also co-editor of Language Arts, the premiere language arts journal for teachers pre-K through grade 8, and Talking Points, a leading journal in whole and critical literacy.
Albers has a strong interest in international work, and has done consultant work in Colombia, Canada, Holland, Sweden, and most recently in South Africa having recently completed a 3-year USAID funded project, Project Partnerships Achieve Literacy (PAL). Project PAL engaged her in work with rural elementary teachers (K-3) in the Western Cape of South Africa to integrate digital technologies into their literacy instruction and assessment.
Albers is well known for visual discourse analysis, a method of analyzing children’s art works for children’s understanding of content and discourses that emerge in these texts (Albers, 2007).
In 2011, Albers founded Global Conversations in Literacy Research (GCLR; https://globalconversationsinliteracy.wordpress.com), a series of interactive open access web seminars that featured cutting-edge literacy research conducted by international literacy researchers. GCLR is grounded in critical literacy, and saw as its mission to use networked technologies to connect global audiences in a virtual space that allows participants to exchange ideas on literacy theory, research, and practice.
Adding yet another dimension, Albers is a practicing ceramicist, studying at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center for over 20 years. This work with the arts has integrally informed her scholarship in literacy.
- Publications
Albers, P. with Angay-Crowder, T., Turnbull, S., Cho, A., Shin, J., Pang, M., Pace, C., Sena, M., Wang, H. (2017). Global conversations in literacy research. New York, NY: Routledge.
Seely Flint, A., Albers, P., & Matthews, M. (2017). Interrupting situated practices: Critical incidents in international partnerships. Teacher Development, 14(3), 1-22.
Albers, P., Pace, C. L., Odo, D.M. (2016). From affinity and beyond: Online literacy collaborations. Journal of Literacy Research, 48(2), 1-30.
Albers, P., Cho, A., Shin, J., Pang, M.E., & Angay-Crowder, T., Jung, J., Pace, C., Sena, M., & Turnbull, S. (2015). Critical spaces for critical times: Global Conversations in Literacy Research as an open professional development and practices resource. Global Education Review, 2(3), 14-31.
Albers, P., Turnbull, S., Angay-Crowder, T., Cho, A., Shin, J., Pace, C., Pang, M.E., Sena, M., & Jung, J. (2015). Questions of matter: Critical conversations in online spaces. Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy, 59(2), 171-181.
Albers, P., Holbrook, T., & Flint, A. (Eds.) (2013). New methods in literacy research. New York, NY: Routledge.
Albers, P. & Frederick, T. (2012). “We teach who we are:” A study of two Latino transformative educators. TESOL Journal, 4(2), 233-260.
Albers, P. & Sanders, J. (Eds.) (2010). Literacies, the arts, and multimodality. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Albers, P. (2007). Finding the artist within: Creating and reading visual texts in English language arts classrooms. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Book of the month for International Reading Association.
Albers, P. & Murphy, S. (2000). Telling pieces: Art as literacy in middle school classes. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.