Angie Zapata Powers Fellow and Doctoral Student in Curriculum and Instruction

Angie Zapata is pursuing her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education. As a recipient of the Powers Fellowship, Angie has been afforded the time to focus on conducting a deep analysis of her dissertation data, which in turn has brought her closer to the goal of completing her doctoral program sooner than expected. As a Powers Fellow, she is momentarily relieved of the demands of teaching so as to focus on a nationwide job search in the field of Language and Literacy and to fulfill her role as Associate Director of the Heart of Texas Writing Project. The funds have also provided support for her travels to professional conferences for networking, presenting, and educational purposes. Most importantly, it has relieved her family from the financial commitment that comes with completing a degree in higher education, and for that she is most grateful.

Angie’s research proposes that all languages, modes, and modalities share legitimacy as classroom resources for meaning making and that they may enable (with their unique accordances and constraints) the acquisition and demonstration of language and literacy learning when creatively integrated into the writing classroom. Recently, she collected classroom data to examine the exploratory talk and designs of students within a predominantly Latino third-grade classroom as they participated in a study of quality Latino children's picture books. Presently, she is analyzing the data for the ways heritage resources, like languages and other cultural ways of learning are called upon, and for the multilingual and multi modal composing processes the children demonstrate from experiences with the Latino picture book models they select as they craft their own picture books.

Related Links:

Powers Fellow

Heart of Texas Writing Project