Rate My Professor Roberta Gardner

Roberta Price Gardner is an Associate Professor of Reading and Literacy Education in the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education at Kennesaw State University’s Bagwell College of Education. She earned her Ph.D. in Language and Literacy Education from the University of Georgia in 2010. Prior to her appointment at KSU in 2018, where she advanced from assistant to associate professor, Gardner served as Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education at Georgia State University. She also worked as a Teacher Consultant for the National Writing Project.

Gardner’s research explores Black childhood literacies, African American children’s literature, and sociocultural contexts of literacy, with particular emphasis on emotion and racialized trauma. Her work examines the policy implications of race, place, gender, and social class on literacy and literature. She holds leadership positions on the Executive Committee of the National Council of Teachers of English and as Co-Director of NCTE’s Professional Dyads and Culturally Relevant Teaching program. Gardner’s publications have appeared in journals such as Urban Education, Children’s Literature in Education, The Journal of Children’s Literature, Research in the Teaching of English, and Language Arts. Key works include “(Re)membering in the Pedagogical Work of Black and Brown Teachers: Reclaiming Stories as Culturally Sustaining Practice” (2019), “Overcoming English Language Arts and Literacy Education Policy 2000–2030” (2020), “Unforgivable Blackness: Visual Rhetoric, Reader Response, and Critical Racial Literacy” (2017), “The All-Heterosexual World of Children’s Nonfiction: A Critical Content Analysis of LGBTQ Identities in Orbis Pictus Award Books, 1990–2017” (2018), and “Creating Spaces for Emotional Justice in Culturally Sustaining Storywork” (2021). Her contributions advance critical literacy and culturally sustaining practices in elementary education.