Emily Rainey is an assistant professor of language, literacy, and culture at the University of Pittsburgh, where she serves as the faculty advisor for the English Education MEd program. Emily researches disciplinary literacy practices, disciplinary literacy teaching, and preservice teacher education. Two big questions guiding her work are 1) What does it mean to teach adolescents to read, write, and learn within and across the many discourse communities of their lives, including the academic disciplines? and 2) How do we best prepare the next generation of middle and high school classroom teachers to support adolescents’ sophisticated literacy learning? Emily is especially committed to improving the quality of literacy instruction in typically underserved school and community contexts.
School Affiliations
Recent Grants
Co-Principal Investigator (2019-2024). Analysis of a teaching school model for improving STEM undergraduate teacher education and professionalism. With Elizabeth Birr Moje [PI] and Angela Calabrese Barton, Kendra Hearn, Tim McKay, and Shari Saunders [co-PIs]. 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. With Byeong-Young Cho [PI]. Spencer Foundation ($50,000).
Recent Publications
Rainey, E.C., & Storm, S. (forthcoming). Teaching literary literacy. In K.A. Hinchman & H.K. Sheridan-Thomas (Eds.), Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction (3rd ed.). Guilford.
Cho, B.-Y., Kucan, L., & Rainey, E.C. (2020). Students' perspective learning in a disciplinary multisource task environment. In A. List, P. Van Meter, D. Lombardi, & P. Kendeou (Eds.), Handbook of Learning from Multiple Representations and Perspectives. Routledge.