Patricia A. Edwards, a member of the Reading Hall of Fame,Reading Hall of Fame. (2016). Patricia A. Edwards (inducted 2012). Retrieved from http://www.readinghalloffame.org/patricia-edwards-inducted-2012 is a Distinguished ProfessorMinicuci, A. (2009). Faculty conversations: Patricia Edwards. Retrieved from http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2009/faculty-conversations-patricia-edwards/ of Language and Literacy in the Department of Teacher Education and a Senior University Outreach Fellow at Michigan State University. She is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in parent involvement, home-school-community partnerships,Bridges, L. (2013). Make every student count: How collaboration among families, schools, and communities ensures student success--Family and community engagement 2013 research compendium. New York: Scholastic. Retrieved from http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/face/pdf/research-compendium/Compendium.pdf and multicultural, early, and family/intergenerational literacyCarrier, G. (2016). Comprehension. Reading Rockets. Washington DC: WETA Public Broadcasting. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/comprehension with a focus on poor and minority children.Chew, C. (2010, April 22). Incoming IRA president aims to prepare literacy teachers to instruct diverse classrooms. Diverse Issues in Higher Education. Retrieved from http://diverseeducation.com/article/13728/ She served on the International Literacy Association (formerly International Reading Association) Board of Directors from 1998–2001, as the first African American President of the Literacy Research Association (formerly the National Reading Conference) from 2006–2007, and as President of the International Literacy Association from 2010–2011.International Literacy Association. (2016). Past presidents and conference locations. Retrieved from http://literacyworldwide.org/about-us/our-story/past-presidents-conference-locations Edwards also served as a member of the Board of Directors for the American Educational Research Association's (AERA) Family, School, and Community Partnerships Special Interest Group (SIG) from 2014–2016 and was elected to serve as its President-Elect/President from 2016–2020.
Edwards has authored two family literacy programs (published in English and Spanish) titled Parents as Partners in Reading: A Family Literacy Training Program (1990, 1993)Edwards, P.A. (1990). Parents as partners in reading: A family literacy training program. Chicago, IL: Childrens Press. Second Printing 1993. and Talking Your Way to Literacy: A Program to Help Nonreading Parents Prepare Their Children for Reading (1990)Edwards, P.A. (1990). Talking your way to literacy: A program to help nonreading parents prepare their children for reading. Chicago, IL: Childrens Press. that have garnered national135 Cong Rec E 497. Holloway, C.C. (1989, February 23). Salute to Donaldsonville, Louisiana’s ‘Parents as Partners’ program. Congressional Record, 135(16), E497. and internationalUNESCO. (1994, October 3–5). World Symposium on Family Literacy. Paris, France. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001252/125234Eo.pdf recognition. She has also authored, co-authored, and edited numerous books, peer-reviewed articles, and book chapters focusing on home-school-community partnerships, family literacy, and multicultural literacy. She has served on several editorial boards for publications such as Educational Researcher, Journal of Literacy Research, The Reading Teacher, Language Arts, Research in the Teaching of English,Research in the Teaching of English. http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/RTE/RTEEditorialBoardVol49.pdf. Retrieved 2016-12-18. International Race and Education,Ebelt, L. (2016, Sept. 16). Global issues in urban education book talk to be held. Retrieved from http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2016/global-issues-in-urban-education-book-talk-to-be-held/ and the School Community Journal.School Community Journal. http://www.adi.org/journal/CurrentIssue/CurrentIssue.pdf. Retrieved 2016-12-18. Edwards has received many awards and honors for her research and public service related to families and literacy.
Education Edwards grew up in Albany, Georgia and graduated from Albany State College (Albany, Georgia) with a B.S. in Elementary Education in 1970. In 1971, Edwards received a M.S. in Elementary Education from North Carolina A & T University (Greensboro, North Carolina). She received an Ed.S. from Duke University in Reading Education in 1976 and a Ph.D. in Reading Education with a minor concentration in Educational Administration from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1979.
Career
North Carolina After obtaining her master's degree, Edwards worked at North Carolina Central UniversityClark, M. (1990, January 18). Parents are key to successful reading instruction. The University of Toledo Press Releases. Retrieved from http://utdr.utoledo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1527&context=ut-press-releases coordinating the Pre-Student Teaching Program while simultaneously teaching in public schools in Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill. During this time, she explored how to teach in and how to help pre-service teachers learn to teach in a variety of organizational structures (e.g. team-teaching, self-contained classrooms, non-graded classrooms, open classrooms, etc.), in addition to exploring these structures' impact on parents and children.
Louisiana Upon completion of her Ph.D., Edwards worked at Grambling State University followed by Louisiana Tech University. While at Louisiana Tech, she received a W. K. Kellogg National Fellowship in 1983.Kellogg Fellowship Leadership Alliance. (2013). https://search.kfla.org/PublicProfile?contactid=0037000000VA2C1AAL&lang=en The program's goal was to support participants' intellectual and leadership development.Kellogg Fellowship Leadership Alliance. (2013). Frequently asked questions. Retrieved from https://www.kfla.org/en/faq#history As part of the Fellowship, Edwards focused her learning on family involvement in education. She visited many agencies and institutions of higher education throughout the United States and abroad meeting with noted experts in order to explore this topic from a variety of perspectives.
Edwards also volunteered as a parent consultant at a local Head Start center in a small rural northern Louisiana community to investigate how to support parents' efforts to foster their children's educational development.Edwards, P.A. & Panofsky, C.P. (1989). The effect of two training procedures on the book reading of lower-SES mothers and children. National Reading Conference Yearbook, 138, 135-143. Edwards continued this research in her next job at Louisiana State University. During this time, she developed many of the ideas that would become her program Parents as Partners in Reading: A Family Literacy Training Program (1990, 1993) by working with parents and teachers at Donaldsonville Elementary School located in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, a small rural southern community. The program's goal was to train parents in effective book-reading practices desired by the school. This led to the second program Edwards developed, Talking Your Way to Literacy: A Program to Help Nonreading Parents Prepare Their Children for Reading (1990).
These programs were implemented in schools and libraries; Early Reading First grants, Even Start, Head Start, and Title I programs; and in teenage parent and family centers across the nation. For this work, Edwards received commendations from former Louisiana Congressman Clyde Holloway and the national press—e.g. The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and the Milwaukee Journal. Former First Lady Barbara Bush included Edwards's Parents as Partners in Reading program as one of ten promising family literacy programs nationwide in her book First Teachers. In October 1988, Edwards and her Parents as Partners in Reading program were featured in a nationally televised documentary hosted by Phylicia Rashad, "First Things First" sponsored by Project Literacy U.S. and ABC/WQED Productions. In October 1989, Edwards was highlighted on Dan Rather's Nightly News Series "The Best of Us" as one of five Americans everyone should know. For Edwards's work with families and children, she received honors from the University of Wisconsin–Madison: Outstanding African American Alumni Award (1991) and the School of Education Alumni Achievement Award (1995).
Illinois Resulting from Edwards's family literacy work in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, she was invited to the Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign during the 1988–89 school year. There, she continued her investigation into successful approaches for communicating with diverse family populations and transferred her knowledge about families and book reading from her initial research in a rural setting to an urban setting. This work further contributed to her Parents as Partners in Reading and her Talking Your Way to Literacy programs.
Michigan In the fall of 1989, following her year at the Center for the Study of Reading, Edwards came to Michigan State University. In 1990, Edwards was appointed by U.S. Assistant Secretary John McDonald as an adviser to the First National Goal Readiness for School and was appointed to the Michigan State University Institute for Families, Youth and Children. In 1994, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) invited Edwards to the first World Symposium on Family Literacy in Paris, France as one of fifty researchers asked to participate in developing a world policy on family literacy and to share current and past research initiatives.
At Michigan State University, Edwards, now a Distinguished Professor, continues to investigate ways to involve and support families in their children's literacy development. For example, she worked with a professional development school in Lansing, Michigan coordinating the Home Literacy ProjectThompson, S. (1991, April 2). Proceedings of the International Roundtable on Family-Community-School Partnerships (p. 10). Boston: Center on Families Communities, Schools and Children's Learning. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED344695.pdf to help educators develop a scope and sequence of family involvement activities related to the grade-level literacy curriculum.Edwards, P. A. (2004). Children literacy development: Making it happen through school, family, and community involvement. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. In 2008, Edwards became a Senior University Outreach Fellow at Michigan State University for her service to educators throughout the state of Michigan.
Major topics of research