Emily Phillips Galloway

Assistant Professor, ELL and Literacy Education, Department of Teaching and Learning

Emily Phillips Galloway is an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody School of Education. Rooted in her experiences as a former middle school reading specialist, Phillips Galloway’s quantitative and qualitative research explores the relationships between school-relevant language development and language expression and comprehension during middle childhood with a particular focus on linguistically- and culturally-minoritized learners. Her quantitative studies demonstrate links between school-relevant language and reading and writing performances, revealing the importance of attending to language beyond the word-level in order to support the literacy development of middle school students. Phillips Galloway’s qualitative work situated in classrooms demonstrates the potential for developing these school-relevant language skills through talk that builds on students’ out-of-school language resources (dialectal and additional languages) and that fosters agency in linguistic choice-making. With the goal of advancing anti-racist pedagogy, her work aims to positions school-relevant language as a semiotic resource for critically examining inequality, envisioning change, fostering learner agency, and nurturing minoritized learners’ socioemotional, professional, and political aspirations. With a commitment to advancing research-practice partnerships, she has also worked with teachers, school leaders, and administrators in two of the largest urban districts in the United States. The fundamentals and lessons learned from this work are featured in a recent book entitled, Advanced Literacy Instruction in Linguistically Diverse Settings: A Guide for School Leaders (2016), co-authored with Nonie Lesaux and Sky Marietta. This book offers a blueprint for leading literacy instruction that supports all learners. Phillips Galloway’s work has been featured in the Journal of Educational Psychology, Reading Research Quarterly, Applied PsycholinguisticsandReading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal. She is a recipient of the AERA-SRCD Early Career Fellowship in Middle Childhood Education and Development (2019-2021). She holds an Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, as well as an M.S.Ed. and B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

More information on Professor Phillips Galloway can be found at her website.