Carol N. Dixon

Carol Dixon is a Senior Lecturer with Security of Employment Emeritus in the Department of Education, where she worked from 1973 to 2009. In her last bio before retiring she wrote: "I received my Ph.D. in Behavioral Sciences from the University of Delaware. This program provided a background in psychology and sociology to apply to the study of educational issues. I have been a faculty member in the Graduate School of Education since 1973. Currently, I am Assistant Dean of the Graduate School of Education and co-director of the South Coast Writing Project (SCWriP). As part of my work with SCWriP, I was co-director of a three year Literature Institute for Teachers (LIT), funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1987-1990. In addition, I have been the co-director of an advanced institute funded by the California Writing Project, the Advanced Professional Leadership Institute for Teachers of Linguistically Diverse Students in 1993-1994, and of the Advanced Institute on Literacy in 1996-1998 for the past three years. My primary areas of expertise and interest are in literacy instruction and literacy curriculum development for both first and second language students. In addition to my research publications, I have co-authored a language arts methods text for preservice and inservice teachers, and two texts for inservice teachers on developing the reading and writing skills of ESL students. In 1990, I was co-founder of the Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group, a research collaborative of university faculty, graduate student researchers, and classroom teacher/researchers within the greater Santa Barbara area. This research community uses an interactive ethnographic approach which combines ethnography from a cultural anthropology perspective with sociolinguistic/discourse analysis of classroom talk to provide an over-time look at practice within and across classroom communities. My research interests focus on the examination of exemplary classroom practice and on the ways these classrooms provide access to academic content for all students. In particular, I am interested in the processes and practices through which literate communities are established in classrooms and the opportunities for learning which are available to students as a result of living in particular classroom communities. "