Maria José Botelho

Maria José Botelho is interested in how school literacy practices can be re-imagined to affirm children’s cultural and linguistic knowledge as well as to offer tools for cultural production and social participation and re/organization. Her three-pronged research agenda offers some possibilities for this work. Dr. Botelho's research in critical multicultural analysis of children's and young adult literature challenges researchers, teacher educators, and teachers to reconsider how multicultural children’s literature and other texts are studied in elementary and secondary classrooms. Her current research explores how critical literacies, multiliteracies, and Waldorf language arts pedagogies converge and diverge in the research literature and in Waldorf-inspired and democratically organized public schools. Lastly, she is studying how critical collaborative inquiry and ethnographic research practices hold great promise for the professional learning of experienced and preservice teachers. Her research has taken her to Ontario, California, Massachusetts, and Finland. Dr. Botelho teaches doctoral seminars in critical literacies, reading, writing, research on children's literature, and ethnographic methodology; master’s courses in critical multicultural analysis of children’s and young adult literature and literacy assessment; and, an undergraduate course that critically surveys the field of children’s literature.