Emily Rainey is an associate professor of language, literacy, and culture at the University of Pittsburgh, where she also serves as the coordinator of field coaching in teacher education. She is the co-associate chair of the department of Teaching, Learning, and Leading.
Rainey is a literacy education researcher who is informed by sociocultural theory and committed to improving adolescents’ literacy learning opportunities in school. A former middle school English teacher, Rainey is especially committed to improving the quality of literacy instruction in typically underserved school and community contexts. Her scholarship includes three strands: (1) advancing the teaching and learning of disciplinary literacy; (2) designing and studying literacy teacher education; and (3) historicizing literacy education and exploring deficit discourses through machine learning.
Literacy preservice teacher education
Qualitative research methods
Writing in the social sciences
Disciplinary literacy
Adolescent literacy
Teacher education
History of literacy education
Rainey, E.C., & Storm, S. (in press). Tracing discourse across a century of Language Arts. Language Arts.
Rainey, E.C., & Storm, S. (2022). Teaching literary literacy. In K.A. Hinchman & H.K. Sheridan-Thomas (Eds.), Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction (3rd ed.). Guilford.
Rainey, E.C., & Storm, S. (2021). English teacher interpretive communities: An exploratory case study of teachers’ literacy practices and pedagogical reasoning. Literacy Research and Instruction.
Rainey, E.C., Maher, B.L., & Moje, E.B. (2020). Learning disciplinary literacy teaching: An examination of preservice teachers’ literacy teaching in secondary subject area classrooms. Teaching and Teacher Education, 94.
Rainey, E.C., Maher, B.L., Coupland, D., Franchi, R., & Moje, E.B. (2018). But what does it look like? Illustrations of disciplinary literacy teaching in two content areas. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 61(4), 371-379.
Kavanagh, S.S., & Rainey, E.C. (2017). Learning to support adolescent literacy: Teacher educator pedagogy and novice teacher take up in secondary English language arts teacher preparation. American Educational Research Journal, 54(5), 904-937.
Rainey, E.C. (2017). Disciplinary literacy in English language arts: Exploring the social and problem-based nature of literary reading and reasoning. Reading Research Quarterly, 52(1), 53-71.
Principal Investigator (2021-2023). Exploring discourses of literacy scholarship: Topic modeling the field of literacy education. With Scott Storm. Spencer Foundation ($49,644)
Co-Principal Investigator (2019-2024). Analysis of a teaching school model for improving STEM undergraduate teacher education and professionalism (PI: Elizabeth Birr Moje). National Science Foundation ($2,545,060)
Co-Principal Investigator (2018-2020). Promoting disciplinary literacy and learning through multi source text inquiries: An instructional study of middle school learners (PI: Byeong-Young Cho). Spencer Foundation ($50,000)
Awards and Honors:
- Outstanding Peer Reviewer Award (2023), AERA Open and the American Educational Research Association
- Dean’s Distinguished Mentoring Award (2023), University of Pittsburgh School of Education
- Best Symposium Award (2020), Literacy Research Association Area 6
Editorial Review Board, Reading Research Quarterly and Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy
