Kris D. Gutierrez, Ph.D.
1026 Moore Hall, 405 Hilgard Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90095
310.825.7467
Kris Gutierrez is a Professor in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and serves as the Director of the Center for the Study of Urban Literacies, as well as the Director of the Education Studies Minor. Professor Gutierrez’ research focuses on studying the literacy practices of urban schools. In particular, her research concerns itself with the social and cognitive consequences of literacy practices in formal and non-formal learning contexts. Across her work, she examines the relationship between literacy, culture and human development. Professor Gutierrez’ long term ethnographic studies in Los Angeles area schools across various school districts have afforded opportunity to study the following:
1) the social and discursive practices of literacy instruction
2) how effective literacy practices are constructed and sustained
3) the effects of teacher assistance programs (e.g., coaching) on transforming learning contexts
4) the effects of new policies and reform initiatives on English language learners and urban schooling practices
5) reading and writing development in elementary school-aged English Language Learners.
Issues of equity and excellence become important and recurrent themes throughout her work. Professor Gutierrez is a highly visible leader in the area of literacy, biliteracy and urban education and serves on a number of national policy making and academic advisory boards/committees and is a keynote speaker at a number of state, national, and international conferences including Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Mexico, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, and Switzerland, for example. She is currently the Chair of the Standing Committee on Research for the National Council of Teachers of English. Professor Gutierrez’s research has been published in Human Development, Mind, Culture and Activity, Reading Research Quarterly, the Harvard Educational Review, Linguistics and Education, Discourse Processes, The Bilingual Review Journal, Urban Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, for example. Additionally, Professor Gutierrez is also the principal investigator of an after-school computer mediated learning club and the UCLA Migrant Scholars Leadership Program, a residential summer academic program for high school students form migrant farm worker backgrounds.
