Ph.D. in Education, 2013
School of Education
November 1, 2009
Researcher Studying Impact of Cognitive Strategies Model of Literacy Instruction
Tina Matuchniak is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Education at the University of California, Irvine, specializing in Language Literacy and Technology. Her research interests lie in the area of academic literacy and preparation, specifically as they relate to traditionally underserved and under-represented populations. Recently, her work has focused on looking at the impact of a cognitive strategies model of literacy instruction (The Pathway Project) on preparing high school English Language Learners to be successful in their college composition courses.
Born and raised in Bombay [Mumbai], India, Tina Matuchniak began her educational career as a student of Chemistry, earning her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Bombay in 1986. As her professional interests turned toward teaching, she earned her BA in English and MA in literacy studies from CSU Long Beach. She is now an expert in the field of literacy and, since 2000, has taught in the departments of English and Liberal Studies, helping students develop their critical reading and writing skills and preparing English Education majors to become writing teachers. More recently, she has focused her efforts on CSU Long Beach’s high-risk student population, teaching developmental writing courses to first-year, academically underprepared, and predominantly first-generation students in the Beach Learning Community program. In 2007, Tina was awarded the prestigious Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award at CSU Long Beach.
This past summer, in an effort to better understand the transition from high school to college, Tina participated as a Fellow in the UCI Writing Project. There, she collaborated with K-12 teachers of English to discuss and develop quality, research-based literacy practices that serve diverse student populations. Her experiences in the Writing Project informed not only her own teaching practices but also her research into the academic literacy preparation of students and the accompanying “gaps” that exist in the pipeline from grade school to college.
Tina is also interested in studying other educational “gaps” and “divides” that exist across groups by virtue of students’ differential access to and use of technology both in the home as well as in schools. Last year she devoted much of her attention to such issues of equity both within the United States as well as internationally, analyzed current approaches and efforts to promote equitable access to and use of technologies around the globe, and co-authored two articles on the same:
Matuchniak, T., & Warschauer, M. (in press). Equity in technology access and opportunities. In The International Encyclopedia of Education (3rd ed.). London: Elsevier.
Warschauer, M. & Matuchniak, T., (in press). New technology and digital worlds: Analyzing evidence of equity of access, use, and outcomes. Review of Research in Education.