Assistant Professor of Education
School of Education, Room 315
University of Colorado at Boulder
249 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309
Phone: 303-492-7946
Fax: 303-492-7090
E-mail: Elizabeth.Dutro@Colorado.Edu
Website: spot.colorado.edu/~dutro

Elizabeth Dutro is an assistant professor of education, specializing in the area of literacy. Dr. Dutro’s research focuses on two primary areas: children’s experiences in literacy classrooms and literacy education policy. A primary strand of her research explores children’s literacy practices in racially and linguistically diverse urban elementary classrooms. Her research in this area investigates the relationship between children’s identities and life experiences and the literacy practices with which they engage. Her presentations and publications have focused on how children are positioned within dichotomized views of success, class, race and gender, the relationship between gender and reading; the complexities surrounding the concept of cultural relevance in highly diverse classrooms, and literacy events as contexts for explorations of race. A recent study examines children’s experiences with federal and state-mandated literacy curricula and assessments in a high poverty school and her current project examines the role of students’ difficult life experiences in their relationships with literacy and schooling. The second strand of Dr. Dutro’s research focuses on literacy standards and assessment. She and her colleagues have investigated the form and content of state literacy standards, standards as a context for teachers’ professional development, the relationship between state and district standards, and the history of content standards development

Dr. Dutro is an active member of several professional organizations, including the American Educational Research Association, National Reading Conference, National Council of Teachers of English, and International Reading Association. She is currently Director of the Commission on Composition for NCTE and is on the editorial boards of Journal of Literacy Research, Language Arts, and Reading and Writing Quarterly.

Education:
2000 PhD, Educational Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
1993 MA, English Literature, San Francisco State University
1989 BA, Liberal Studies, La Sierra University