"In Immigrant Students and Literacy, Campano has written about important and contentious topics such as accountability, language and literacy curriculum highly attuned to refugee experiences, the problematic nature of 'best practices' and 'research-based,' and teaching as ethical practice. Campano's writing on these weighty topics has benefited from a light – better, a poetic – hand, producing a graceful, accessible and moving text." – NCTE Press Release regarding the David H. Russell Award

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Biography

Professional Biography

Gerald Campano is Professor in the Literacy, Culture, and International Education Division at the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. He is a proud third generation Pinoy from the East Coast with ancestral roots in the Mindanao region of the Philippines. Gerald served as chair for his division at GSE for nine years. For close to 10 years, he worked as a public-school teacher, during which time he garnered district teacher of the year awards and was a Carnegie Scholar. Dr. Campano’s scholarly interests span elementary literacy teaching, critical ethnic studies, immigrant education, and practitioner and participatory research approaches. Throughout his academic career, he has been interested in universalizing research as an epistemic right through community-based inquiry methodologies premised on an ethics of care and interdependence.

Research Interests and Current Projects

Campano’s current research project is now an over decade-long research-practice partnership with a faith-based organization in South Philadelphia, which has been supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation and the American Educational Research Association. The partnership involves thinking and researching alongside families from diverse cultural and linguistic communities as they investigate issues of social inequity and construct a shared vision of educational justice and immigrant rights that may be shared in teacher professional learning contexts. Visit the trailer for a documentary about this project. Campano is also involved in a collaboration with colleagues from the University of Guadalajara, exploring literacy teacher education from a transnational and decolonial perspective.

Campano’s first book, Immigrant Students and Literacy: Reading, Writing, and Remembering, received the 2009 David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English from the National Council for the Teachers of English (NCTE). His most recent co-authored book, Partnering with Immigrant Communities: Action through Literacy, also received the David H. Russell Award in 2018 as well as the Edward B. Fry Book Award from the Literacy Research Association (LRA) in 2017. Campano is currently a co-editor for Research in the Teaching of English and is out-going president of the National Council of Research on Language and Literacy (NCRLL). Between 2011-2020, he served as chair of the Reading/Writing/Literacy Division and then the Literacy, Culture, and International Education Division at Penn GSE. Campano previously served as co-convenor for the Ethnography in Education Research Forum and is currently co-director for the Hub for Equity, Anti-Oppression, Research, and Development (HEARD) at Penn GSE.

Campano has directed about 35 dissertations. In 2021 he was chosen for a Spencer Mentor Award of the Spencer Foundation.

Publications

Featured

Methods for Community-Based Research: Advancing Educational Justice and Epistemic Rights

Partnering With Immigrant Communities: Action Through Literacy

Literacy Tools in the Classroom

Immigrant Students and Literacy

Selected Publications

Campano, G., Ghiso, M. P., & Thakurta, A. (in press). Community-based partnerships: Fostering epistemic rights through improvement focused research. In D. Peurach & A. Datnow (Eds.), Foundational handbook on improvement-focused educational research.

Ghiso, M. P., Campano, G., Thakurta, A., & Vazquez, O. (in press). Community-based research with immigrant families: Sustaining an intellectual commons of care, resistance, and solidarity. Urban Education.

Campano, G. (in press). Nurturing communities of inquiry across difference: Toward decolonial social formations in literacy research and practice. In D. Alvermann & D. Sumara (Eds.), Ideas that changed literacy. Myers Press.

Campano, G., Ghiso, M. P., Badaki, O., & Kannan, C. (2020). Agency as collectivity: Community-based research for educational equity. Theory into Practice.

Ghiso, M. P., Campano, G., Schwab, E., Assah, G., & Rusoja, A. (2019). Mentoring in research-practice partnerships: Toward democratizing expertise. AERA Open.

Nichols, T. P., & Campano, G. (2017). Posthumanism and literacy studies. Language Arts, 94(4), 245–251.

Campano, G., Ghiso, M. P., Rusoja, A., Player, G., & Schwab, E. (2016). “Education without boundaries”: Literacy pedagogies and human rights. Language Arts, 94(1), 43–53.

Campano, G., Ngo, L., Low, D. E., & Jacobs, K. B. (2016). Young children demystifying and remaking the university through critical play. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 16(2), 199–227.

Campano, G., Ghiso, M. P., & Welch, B. (2016). Partnering with immigrant communities: Action through literacy. Teachers College Press.

Simon, R., & Campano, G. (2015). Hermeneutics of literacy pedagogy. Handbook of literacy studies (pp. 472–486). Routledge.

Campano, G., Ngo, L., Low, D. E., & Jacobs, K. B. (2015). Young children demystifying and remaking the university through critical play. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. Published online first, April 7, 2015, doi: 10.1177/1468798415577875.

Campano, G., Ghiso, M. P., & Welch, B. (2015). Ethical and professional norms in community-based research. Harvard Educational Review, 85(1), 29–49.

Campano, G. (2013). Literacy in/for action: Prefigurative pedagogies and collective knowledge projects. Journal of Literacy and Composition Studies, 1(2), 78–85.

Campano, G., Ghiso, M. P., & Sánchez, L. (2013). “No one knows the…amount of a person”: Elementary students critiquing dehumanization through organic critical literacies. Research in the Teaching of English, 48(1), 98–125.

Ghiso, M. P., & Campano, G. (2013). Coloniality in education: Negotiating discourses of immigration in schools and communities through border thinking. Equity and Excellence in Education, 46(2), 252–269.

Campano, G., Ghiso, M. P., Yee, M., & Pantoja, A. (2013). Toward community research and coalitional literacy practices for educational justice. Language Arts, 90(5), 314–326.

Campano, G., & Ghiso, M. P. (2011). Immigrant students as cosmopolitan intellectuals. In S. Wolf, P. Coates, P. Enciso, & C. Jenkins (Eds.), Handbook on research on children’s and young adult literature (pp. 164–176). Lawrence Erlbaum.

Campano, G., Honeyford, M., Sánchez, L., & Vander Zanden, S. (2010). Ends in themselves: Theorizing the practice of university-school partnering through horizontalism. Language Arts, 87(4), 277–286.

Beach, R., Campano, G., Edminston, B., & Borgmann, M. (2010). Literacy tools in the classroom: Teaching through critical inquiry. Teachers College Press.

Campano, G. (2009). Teacher research as a collective struggle for humanization. In M. Cochran-Smith & L. Lytle (Eds.), Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research for the next generation. (pp. 347–381). Teachers College Press.

Vasudevan, L., & Campano, G. (2009). The social production of risk and the promise of adolescent literacies. Review of Research in Education, 33(1), 310–353.

Campano, G. (2007, October). Honoring student stories. Educational Leadership, 65(2), 48–54.

Campano, G. (2007). Immigrant students and literacy: Reading, writing, and remembering. Teachers College Press.

News & Media

Penn GSE News

New books by Penn GSE faculty tackle burnout immunity, fostering community-based research

Both books publish April 23 and explore topics deeply important to their authors.

April 19, 2024

Penn GSE faculty and students to share expertise at AERA 2024 in Philly

Gerald Campano will also be honored with a lifetime achievement award for his professional achievements and mentorship work.

April 8, 2024

Penn GSE researchers team up with Philly community to make a difference through CARE Initiative

The community-based research partnership aims to effect change through community members’ own research into the educational issues they face.

December 21, 2023

Shaping a legendary literacy journal’s future

Penn GSE’s Gerald Campano, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and Amy Stornaiuolo are now editing Research in the Teaching of English.

January 31, 2019

Penn GSE Team Fosters Truly Collaborative Community-Based Research in South Philly

A Spencer Foundation grant will enhance the collaborative work over the next three years.

December 4, 2017

Awards & Honors

Gerald Campano, Professor and Chair of the Literacy, Culture, and International Education Division, has been awarded the 2021 Spencer Mentor Award. This award provides $10,000 grants to mentors who have demonstrated extraordinary contributions to supporting the research training and career trajectories of graduate students and junior scholars who engage in education research, broadly construed.

His nomination letter from Tamara Spencer of Saint Mary’s College of California describes his work: “Dr. Campano has created a structure that fosters long-term mentoring relationships between university researchers and public school students and their families, forming bonds and connections that have persisted for a decade. Through his mentorship, families and youth of color have made their voices and research public, cowriting and co-presenting their work to national audiences. These collaborations have been transformative for all involved…Middle schoolers and immigrant parents who could speak directly to educators about educational change; graduate students who as a result can see other ways of being in the academy; and audience members who are inspired by the activist and scholarly research of community leaders and young people in today’s schools.”

For nearly 10 years, Campano worked as a public school teacher, during which time he earned district teacher of the year awards and was a Carnegie Scholar. Throughout his academic career, he has been interested in universalizing research through community-based inquiry based on an ethics of care and interdependence.

The grant is intended to support the ongoing mentorship of the winner. Campano is one of three recipients chosen for the 2021 award.

Posted on March 4, 2021

Gerald Campano, with María Paula Ghiso of Teachers College, Columbia University and Bethany Welch of the Aquinas Center, has received the 2018 David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English from the National Council of Teachers of English for the book, "Partnering with Immigrant Communities: Action Through Literacy."

Posted on January 7, 2019

Penn GSE’s research-practice partnership with the Aquinas Center, a faith-based community organization, received a $400,000 grant from the Spencer Foundation to fund the expansion of methodologies, solidify technological infrastructure, and support Aquinas Center community members. The long-term partnership draws on the diverse linguistic and cultural experiences of immigrant, refugee, and historically disenfranchised families and communities in American cities to illuminate ways these groups cooperate across social and linguistic boundaries to access educational resources.

Posted on January 19, 2017

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