Cynthia McCallister is the creator of Genre Practice, a progressive approach to literacy education, and founder of Genrepractice.org, a collaborative of educators and members of the general public who support the curriculum reform mission of Genre Practice. She is also Associate Professor and founding Director of New York University’s program in Literacy Education.
The commitments that Cynthia brings to her research and school reform work have origins in her early professional life as a teacher of young children when she became intrigued by how readily children mastered reading and writing in the context of activities that made literacy engaging and playful. These experiences led her to understand that learning depends on engagement, curiosity and commitment to the objects of learning. Through the years she has also come to understand how schooling practices—particularly pedagogical interactions between teachers and children—often perpetuate school failure for many children which, on a large scale, result in patterns of social inequality that democratic education is responsible for ameliorating. Finding ways in which schooling practices can help the most vulnerable students be successful continues to be her central concern.
Throughout her professional life Cynthia has pursued a career with one foot in the world of academia and the other in the world of elementary and middle school classrooms. While probing philosophies about the workings of the social mind, Cynthia has applied them in classrooms to reconceptualize and transform traditional practices of reading and writing instruction. In her various roles as a mother of three New York City public school children, a K-5 teacher (in rural Maine and New York City), a teacher educator, staff developer and school reformer with extensive involvement in a wide range of culturally- and linguistically-diverse K-8 schools. The literacy instruction approach known as Genre Practice was forged across nearly two decades of her work as a scholar-practitioner.
Cynthia pursued a doctoral degree at the University of Maine (1995) where her fascination with socio-cultural theories of development was ignited. Unlike reductionist theories of educational psychology that dominate curriculum, and only offer partial explanations of learning and development, cultural perspectives take social practices to be the focus of concern in pedagogy, offering both a way to improve educational outcomes and as well as a way to restore to education its potential to advance the liberal democratic ideals of social equity, opportunity and progress.
Cynthia’s current work continues along the interacting trajectories of theory and practice. She is working on a study of successful teachers of children who have difficulty learning to read; a Genre Practice guidebook designed to assist teachers in implementing the approach in their classrooms; a capacity building study designed to describe and guide a process for bringing Genre Practice to scale; and a number of scholarly studies relating to the way in which Genre Practice supports children’s learning.
Degrees
Ed.D., Education, University of Maine, Orono, 1995
M.Ed., Literacy Education, University of Maine, Orono, 1989
B.S., History/Political Science, Ball State University, Muncie, IN, 1984
Professional Appointments
Associate Professor, New York University, 2004-Present
Assistant Professor, New York University, 1998-2004
Assistant Professor, Hofstra University, 1996-1998
Assistant Professor, Muhlenberg College, 1995-1996
Teacher, K-5, Lewis Libby School, Milford, ME, 1988-1992
Teacher, The Buckley School, New York, NY, 1987-1988
Professional Credentials
New York State Public School Teacher Certificate, Permanent, Pre Kindergarten, Kindergarten and Grades 1-6
New York State Public School Teacher Certificate, Permanent, Reading Teacher
Selected Publications
McCallister, C. (September, 2008). “The Author’s Chair Revisited.” Curriculum Inquiry, 38, 4, p. 455-472.
McCallister, C. (Winter, 2004). “Schooling the possible self.” Curriculum Inquiry 34 (4): 425-461.
McCallister, C. (September, 2002). The power of place and time in teaching.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. A journal of the International Reading Association 4 (1): 2-9.
McCallister, C. (September, 2002). “Letting them learn: Yielding power to students in a literacy methods course.” English Education. A journal of the National Council of Teachers of English 34 (4): 281-301.
McCallister, C. (November, 2000). “Making history with a reader.” Language Arts. A journal of the National Council of Teachers of English 78 (2): 138-147.
McCallister, C. (1998). Reconceptualizing literacy methods instruction: To build a house that remembers its forest. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
