Dr. Beth Maloch Wins National Early Career Achievement Award - February 16, 2007

Dr. Beth Maloch, an associate professor in the College of Education's Department of Curriculum and Instruction and an expert in literacy education, has been awarded the National Reading Conference's (NRC) Early Career Achievement Award.

The NRC, which is the foremost professional organization for literacy researchers and educators, annually honors one member of the NRC community with the Early Career Achievement Award. The award recognizes exceptional young scholars who have demonstrated a strong commitment to excellence and accomplishment in the field of literacy. Maloch is the first University of Texas at Austin faculty member to receive the award.

“Dr. Maloch has had a phenomenal early start,” says Dr. Jim Hoffman, a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, “from her elementary teacher roots through her graduate work at Vanderbilt University to her considerable contributions to both teacher education and research in the language and literacy program at UT.

“One of her major interests is the discourse of teachers and children surrounding books, and, building on this research interest, she has developed two new courses here at UT. She carries a heavy load of doctoral and many master’s students who rely on her expertise for coaching and teaching discourse analysis, and her teaching evaluations at the graduate and undergraduate level are stellar. We feel extremely fortunate to have her multiple talents and marvel at what she will become.”

Maloch joined the College of Education in 2000. In addition to focusing on teacher-student interaction around text, she also has done extensive work in the area of literacy teacher preparation programs.

“Overall, I’d say my primary interests lie in fine-grained analyses of classroom life,” says Maloch. “I examine how discussions around text influence student meaning-making and learning and the ways in which these discussions are connected to and emerge from the larger classroom community.  I’m becoming less interested in stand alone instructional events and more interested in how instruction is situated within the complex social relationships of a classroom community.”

Maloch has worked closely with Hoffman to study eight different university education programs around the nation that were deemed excellent in the preparation of literacy teachers.  In collecting data, Hoffman and Maloch followed 101 literacy teachers through the novices’ first three years in the classroom to determine if the quality of a teacher preparation program had a significant impact on the teachers’ effectiveness.  She served throughout the project as director for research at one of the eight sites for the study and directed the cross-site analysis of the qualitative data, gathering and analyzing data as well as helping to produce reports. The project yielded over 15 peer-reviewed articles

More recently Maloch has joined Dr. Nancy Roser, a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and two professors at the University of Texas-San Antonio to examine how second through eighth grade children learn genre and what practices accomplished instructors employ to teach literature genres to children.  In addition, she and Dr. Jo Worthy, who also is a professor in Curriculum and Instruction, recently received a Spencer Grant to explore grouping practices in first grade classrooms.

Maloch has been co-editor of the National Reading Conference Yearbook – an honor not normally granted to younger scholars – and also was invited to speak last summer at the Wisconsin Reading Research Symposium.

—Kay Randall, University Communications, 512-232-3910