Laura Ascenzi-Moreno

Dr. Laura Ascenzi-Moreno earned her Ph.D. in Urban Education at the Graduate Center CUNY with a focus on bilingual education. She is currently an associate professor and the bilingual program coordinator at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Dr. Ascenzi-Moreno’s research is focused on the literacy development of emergent bilinguals, the literacy assessment of emergent bilinguals, the development of teacher knowledge, and how these intersect with equity. She is particularly interested in investigating how to shift and reimagine standardized literacy spaces by centering them onf children’s multilingual and multimodal practices. Her article, “Translanguaging and Responsive Assessment Adaptations: Emergent Bilingual Readers through the Lens of Possibility,” won the National Council of Teachers (NCTE) Language Arts Distinguished Article Award in 2018. Dr. Ascenzi-Moreno’s articles can be found in Language Arts, The Reading Teacher, the Journal of Literacy Research, Literacy Research and Instruction, Voices from the Middle, among others.

As an applied researcher, Dr. Ascenzi-Moreno work is deeply connected to the lived experiences of students and teachers. She worked in New York City public school classrooms as a bilingual teacher assistant, a bilingual teacher, a literacy coach, and new teacher mentor. At Brooklyn College, she coordinates the bilingual program and works with pre-service and in-service teachers to support their development as critical practitioners ready to support emergent bilinguals in their classrooms and beyond.