Detra Price-Dennis

Detra Price-Dennis is a Professor of Teaching and Learning and the Director of Digital Education and Innovation in Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University's College of Education and Human Ecology.  Her award-winning scholarship draws on ethnographic and sociocultural lenses to examine the intersections of critical literacy education, technology, and equity-based curriculum development in K-8 classrooms. Dr. Price-Dennis is the co-author of Advancing Racial Literacies in Teachers Education: Activism for Equity in the Digital Age, Editor of Racial Literacy: Implications for Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Policy, Volume 1, and Co-editor of Black Girls' Literacies: Transforming Lives and Literacy practices. Her research also appears in academic journals, policy briefs, and media outlets. She brings expertise in literacy and technology research having served on the board of directors for the Literacy Research Association,  trustee for the National Council of Teachers of English Research Foundation, member of the Standing Committee for Research, member of the elementary section steering committee, chair of the National Council of Teachers of English Assembly for Research (NCTEAR),  elementary school teacher, and Associate Professor of Education in the Communication, Media, & Learning Technologies Design Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. 

• Doctor of Philosophy, Reading & Literacy in Early & Middle Childhood , The Ohio State University, 2009
• Master of Education, The Ohio State University, 1997
• Bachelor of Science, Elementary Education, The Ohio State University, 1996

• Children's Literature
• Curriculum and Instruction
• Educational/Instructional Technology
• Elementary Education and Teaching
• English/Language Arts Teacher Education
• Equity
• Learning Technologies
• Literacy
• Social Justice
• Technology Integration
• Technology Teacher Education
• Urban Education

I am an educator and researcher committed to identifying new ways that emerging technologies can transform inequities in elementary and middle childhood education, exploring culturally responsive approaches to digital literacies, and preparing educators to work in diverse communities. I engage in qualitative research to reveal the complexities of working with elementary students and classroom teachers as they make sense of social inequities across modalities. My scholarly agenda contributes to the fields of literacy teacher education, technology, and children’s and young adult literature by making visible pedagogies that attend to the social, political, and ethical realities of positioning children as competent learners immersed in multimodal literacies.

• 2022 - DREAMS: Design and Research of Educational Applications of the Metaverse for Social impact. Co-Principal Investigator. Provost Investment Grant. Teachers College, Columbia. $20,000,00.
• 2022 - Understanding a Schoolwide Thematic Inquiry: Impact on Student Belonging, Hopefulness, and Creative Problem-Solving. Co-Principal Investigator. Patricia Enciso, Principal Investigator. EHE Seed Grant. $100,000.00.
• 2021 - Understanding Teachers’ Culturally Responsive Strategies to Emergency Remote Instruction. Principal Investigator. Spencer Foundation. $49,343.00

• Price-Dennis, D. (Ed.). (2021). Racial literacy: Implications for curriculum, pedagogy, and policy (Vol. 1). NCTE Publications.
• Price-Dennis, D. & Sealey-Ruiz, Y.  (2021). Advancing racial literacies in teacher education:Activism for equity in digital spaces. Teachers College Press.
• Price-Dennis, D., & Muhammad, G. E. (Eds.). (2021). Black girls' literacies: Transforming lives and literacy practices. Routledge.
• O’Byrne, I.,  Crandall, B.R., Dail, J.S., Goering, C.Z., Mora, R.A., Price-Dennis, D., & Witte, S.(in press). Digital Wildfires: Tending to social media in the ELA classroom.Bringing Critical Media Literacy into ELA Classrooms. NCTE Publications.
• Price-Dennis, D. & Colmenares, E. (2021). Exploring the impact of field-based supervision practices in teaching for social justice. Journal of Educational Supervision, 4(2), 1.
• Price-Dennis, D & Mapes, N. (2021). “I don’t even know why this is a monument”: Exploring multimodal making in early childhood. Reading Teacher, 75(1), 91-101.

• Touloukian, C., Price-Dennis, D., & Eller-Harlan, K. (2022) “Listening and Learning from Teachers: Lessons from K-12 Educators’ Experiences at the Intersections of Culturally Responsive and Digital Pedagogies during a Historic Moment”  Paper presented at the Society for the Study of Social Problems in Los Angeles, CA.
• Price-Dennis, D., Carrion, S., & Mapes, N.(2021).Engaging the sociopolitical context: Principles and strategies for media making in the elementary classroom. Paper presented at NAMLE Virtual Conference.
• Price-Dennis, D. (2021). “I am every good thing”: Fostering racial literacy through multimodal text curation. Paper presented at the Literacy Research Association in Atlanta, GA.
• Price-Dennis, D. (November 2020). Multimodal ways of knowing in preservice education: The confluence of literacy and aesthetics in teacher learning. Paper presented at the National Council of Teachers of English in Denver, CO.
• Price-Dennis, D. & Lang, C. (November 2019). Data science for equity in literacy education. Paper presented at the National Council of Teachers of English in Baltimore, MD.