Research Interests

My research interests are related to school readiness, language development, young children’s play, creativity, emergent literacy, caregiver literacy, and contemporary literacies. I have strong interests in the academic and social skills of early childhood students from diverse cultural backgrounds, including the ways in which children are classed and gendered. I explore these areas in educational institutions and peer cultures in and out of school settings. My recent publications have been framed from the sociological and philosophical theories of Mikhail Bakhtin; only a few international scholars have operationalized early education from a Bakhtinian perspective.