Katherine Frankel
Chair, Language & Literacy Education
Associate Professor
Dr. Katherine K. Frankel is an associate professor of literacy education and chair of the Language & Literacy Education Department at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. Dr. Frankel teaches graduate courses in literacy and qualitative methods. Her research focuses on adolescent literacy, broadly, including how to support adolescents’ literacy learning across disciplines in secondary (middle and high school) classrooms as well as in one-on-one tutoring and other intervention contexts. Drawing on critical sociocultural theories, she seeks to understand how adolescents’ multiple literacies and identities intersect with, and complicate, the literacy practices of school. Working in collaboration with young people, their teachers, and communities, she co-designs literacy learning opportunities that affirm and extend adolescents’ literacy histories, identities, and capacities in the pursuit of sustainable, expansive, and equity-oriented learning.
Previously, Dr. Frankel was a grammar and composition teacher and reading tutor at Landmark High School in Beverly, Massachusetts.
Pronouns: she/her
Recent News
- How Can Educators Improve Literacy and Instill a Joy of Reading?
- Guiding Youth to Create Change through STEM
- Four BU Wheelock Faculty Promoted with Tenure
- Study Explores How Youth Mentors Facilitate STEM Learning, Teaching, and Doing
In the Media
Education
PhD, Language, Literacy & Culture, University of California, Berkeley
MA, English & American Literature, New York University
BA, Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College
Courses
LS762: Literacy Acquisition and Development
LS792: Teaching Adolescent Readers and Writers
LW781: Processes of Writing
RS752: Seminar in Qualitative Research
Research
Recent projects
Collaborating with Adolescents in Literacy Teaching and Learning (funded by the BU Wheelock Faculty Research Catalyst Award): Secondary literacy instruction often happens to adolescents rather than with them. To disrupt this trend, this project is a collaboration between university researchers, a secondary teacher, and 11th- and 12th-grade “literacy mentors” to reimagine literacy teaching and learning with 9th- and 10th-grade mentees in public high school classrooms. In this project, students, teachers, and researchers work together to promote meaningful literacy engagement by facilitating peer-supported reading, writing, and discussion of self-selected texts. Using theories of identity and positioning, we seek to understand the positions that become available to students in this context across time, and the practices that enable and constrain those positions. We further investigate how monthly debriefs with students, designed to engage contradictions in school and peer-supported literacy practices and purposes, can complicate and disrupt hierarchical assumptions and structures by creating opportunities for collaborative imagining.
From Reading Clinic to Literacy Studio: Expanding Opportunities for Collaborative Learning among Students, Teachers, and Communities: In this project, we are exploring ways of expanding the literacy learning opportunities afforded to students and tutors who participate in a university-based reading and writing clinic through the design of interdisciplinary experiences that foreground relationality and mobility as central to literacy learning. We employ sociocultural frameworks and social design methodologies—including opportunities for co-designing, side-by-side learning, and critique with students and their tutors—to understand the literacy practices and relationships that characterize the clinic and studio spaces, and to engage contradictions and transformations that emerge within and across those spaces.
Selected Publications
Wagner, C. J., Frankel, K. K., & Leighton, C. M. (Eds.) (2023). Becoming readers and writers: Literate identities across childhood and adolescence. Routledge.
Lupo, S. M., Frankel, K. K., Lewis, M. A., & Wilson, A. M. (2023). Literacy intervention in secondary schools: Exploring educators’ beliefs and practices about supporting adolescents’ literacy learning. Journal of Teacher Education. Advance online publication: https://doi.org/10.1177/002248712311563
Frankel, K. K., Brooks, M. D., & Learned, J. E. (2021). A meta-synthesis of qualitative research on reading intervention classes in secondary schools. Teachers College Record, 123(8), 1-14.
Fields, S. S., & Frankel, K. K. (2021). A case study of one youth’s stance toward the discourse of literary analysis in a secondary English classroom. Research in the Teaching of English, 55(4), 393-415.
Frankel, K. K., & Fields, S. S. (2019). Disrupting storylines: A case study of one adolescent’s identity, agency, and positioning during literacy tutoring. Literacy Research and Instruction, 58(3), 142-163.
Frankel, K. K., Fields, S. S., Kimball-Veeder, J., & Murphy, C. R. (2018). Positioning adolescents in literacy teaching and learning. Journal of Literacy Research, 50(4), 446-477.
Frankel, K. K., & Murphy, C. R. (2018). Collaborating with youths as co-teachers in literacy learning. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(2), 227-231.
Frankel, K. K., & Brooks, M. D. (2018). Why the “struggling reader” label is harmful (and what educators can do about it). Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(1), 111-114.
Frankel, K. K. (2017). What does it mean to be a reader?: Identity and positioning in two high school literacy intervention classes. Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 33(6), 501-518.
Frankel, K.K. (2016). The intersection of reading and identity in high school literacy intervention classes. Research in the Teaching of English, 51(1), 37-59.
Frankel, K. K., Becker, B. L. C., Rowe, M. W., & Pearson, P. D. (2016). From “what is reading?” to what is literacy? Journal of Education, 196(3), 7-18.
Frankel, K. K., Jaeger, E., Brooks, M. D., & Randel, M. (2015). Struggling readers?: Using theory to complicate understandings of what it means to be literate in school. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 64, 307-322.
Frankel, K. K. (2013). Revisiting the role of explicit genre instruction in the classroom. Journal of Education, 193(1), 17-30.
Frankel, K. K., Pearson, P. D., & Nair, M. (2011). Reading comprehension and reading disability. In A. McGill-Franzen & R. L. Allington (Eds.), Handbook of reading disability research (pp. 219-231). New York, NY: Routledge.
Selected Presentations
Frankel, K. K., Brooks, M. D., & Learned, J. E. (April, 2023). Reading intervention teachers’ practices and perspectives: A meta-synthesis of qualitative research. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.
Frankel, K. K., Fields, S. S., & Houston-King, A. A. (July, 2022). Positioning theory as design principle in literacy research. Paper presented at the 2022 Positioning Theory Conference, Buffalo, NY.
Frankel, K. K., & Wright, M. K. (April, 2021). Students’ and tutors’ perspectives on meaningful literacy learning in a university-based reading and writing clinic. Paper presented at the American Educational Association Annual Conference (Virtual).
Frankel, K. K., & Fields, S. S. (December, 2020). Adolescents’ identities as readers and mentors in a high school literacy mentorship class. Paper presented at the Literacy Research Association Annual Conference (Virtual).
Frankel, K. K., & Brooks, M. D. (December, 2019). A synthesis of qualitative research on secondary reading intervention classes. Paper presented at the Literacy Research Association Annual Conference, Tampa, FL.
Frankel, K. K., & Brooks, M. D. (April, 2019). Interrogating oral reading in secondary literacy intervention classrooms. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Frankel, K. K., Fields, S. S., & Ward-Goldberg, A. (November, 2018). If it’s not about the test, what’s the point? Confronting constraints in the design of a school-based literacy community. Paper presented at the Literacy Research Association Annual Conference, Palm Springs, CA.
Frankel, K. K. (October, 2018). Collaborating with adolescents in literacy teaching and learning: Positions, practices, possibilities. Paper presented at the Wheelock College of Education & Human Development Educational Research Seminar, Boston, MA.
Frankel, K. K., Fields, S. S., & Ward-Goldberg, A. (April, 2018). Navigating contradictions: Shared and contested tools in the design of literacy learning opportunities with/for adolescents. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Conference, New York, NY.
Frankel, K. K., Fields, S. S., Kimball, J., & Thomas, S. (November/December, 2017). Contradictions, transformations, and nested activity systems: Designing a peer mentorship approach to literacy learning for adolescents. Paper presented at the Literacy Research Association Annual Conference, Tampa, FL.
Frankel, K. K. (July, 2017). (Re)Positioning readers in a peer mentorship model of literacy instruction for adolescents. Paper presented at the 2017 Positioning Theory Conference, Oxford, UK.
Brooks, M. D., & Frankel, K. K. (November, 2016). The transition to high school: Examining reading practices in three ninth-grade literacy intervention classrooms. Paper presented at the 2016 Literacy Research Association Conference, Nashville, TN.
Frankel, K. K., Fields, S. S., & Miller, T. (December, 2015). Negotiating reading and identities: Applying identity theory to research in literacy intervention settings. Paper presented at the 2015 Literacy Research Association Conference, Carlsbad, CA.
Frankel, K. K. (April, 2015). Re-mediating reading: A Tier 2 Response to Intervention (RTI) in a secondary school. Paper presented at the 2015 American Educational Research Association Conference, Chicago, IL.