Our mission is to link theory and practice through inter-disciplinary research, professional development and community partnerships to understand the challenges and opportunities for adults with low literacy skills.
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Faculty Corner

Scott Crossley, Ph.D. is a professor in applied linguistics and learning sciences whose work focuses on developing linguistic models of text difficulty (for reading) and writing quality. He has been at Georgia State for 11 years. He currently has three funded projects to develop the Writing Assessment Tool (WAT) to create an interface for students, teachers and researchers to better understand writing quality. Crossley is also working on the feedback prize, which will develop algorithms to better assess argumentative structures in essays. Lastly, he is working on the readability prize, which will develop new readability formulas. His grants provide funding for M.A. and Ph.D. students, and he trains about four interns a year with partners at the Learning Agency. Students are involved in language and data analyses, learning analytics, learning to engineer and educational data mining.
The ALRC’s mission overlaps with Crossley’s goals of increasing opportunities for literacy development in adult learners. In relation to adult literacy, he teaches courses that focus on text and language processing and the quantitative analyses of language. Specifically, he teaches a course on psycholinguistics that has a heavy focus on the reading and writing processes found in both adults and children. He also teaches statistics courses that introduce students to methods for quantifying language data.
In his spare time, Crossley enjoys skateboarding, hiking, tennis, badminton, brewing beer and collecting music.
ADULT LITERACY
With one in six adults reading at elementary levels, many adults have difficulty with daily tasks that involve reading, numeracy and problem solving1.
Adult literacy difficulties are pervasive and require a multi-pronged approach to addressing low adult literacy skills in our country. Our research focus is broad and includes both programmatic interventions and more general areas of adult literacy.
Our website offers resources and information about our research in this area.
The U.S. PIAAC Skills Map is a new interactive mapping tool that allows users to access estimates of adult literacy and numeracy proficiency in all U.S. states and counties. These estimates are based on data collected in the three rounds of U.S. PIAAC data collection (in 2012, 2014 and 2017) as well as data from the American Community Survey (2013-2017). Please view this page to find important state and county literacy level estimate.
FOLLOW US
Nursing Students ‘Teach Back’ to Promote Health Literacy
Staffed by medical professionals who volunteer their time, and organized by members of Snellville’s Grace Fellowship Church, Grace Village Medical Clinic is now one of the newest clinical sites for nursing students from Georgia State University’s Perimeter College. Read more about this project »
ALRC Research Support Grants Program
In FY2019, the ALRC awarded three grants to student affiliates. Read more about their projects »
OUR PROGRAMS
Our interdisciplinary research, professional development and community partnerships all center around six areas of focus. Click on the links below to see what our faculty affiliates are working on.
Answers to Coronavirus Questions
Download our easy-to-read flipbook with answers
to many common questions about Coronavirus.
High Interest/low literacy coronavirus materials
Contact Us
For more information, contact Iris Feinberg, associate director, at ifeinberg2@gsu.edu