Blaine E. Smith is an Associate Professor of New Literacies and Bi/Multilingual Immigrant Learners in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies. She is affiliate faculty with the Second Language and Teaching (SLAT) program and a member of the interdisciplinary Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL) cluster at the University of Arizona. She is also currently the Co-Director of the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab (DIALL) in the College of Education.
Dr. Smith's research examines bi/multilingual adolescents' digital literacies across contexts, with special attention to their multimodal composing processes. The main goals of her scholarship are to understand how collaborative multimodal composing can foster literacy and content learning, as well as an empowering means of expression for youth. Her research also focuses on developing scaffolded instructional strategies for supporting teachers’ integration of technology in diverse classrooms. Finally, she works to design innovative multimodal research methods for capturing, analyzing, and representing youth’s complex digital literacies. Dr. Smith’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL), and a Research, Discovery, and Innovation Faculty Seed Grant from the University of Arizona.
Dr. Smith received a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Literacy Research Association’s Outstanding Student Research Award, and an Emerging Scholars Fellowship by the Reading Hall of Fame. In addition, her 2014 dissertation was a finalist for the International Literacy Association’s Outstanding Dissertation of the Year Award. Her work has appeared in Reading Research Quarterly, Computers & Education, Research in the Teaching of English, Journal of Literacy Research, Journal of Second Language Writing, Written Communication, and the British Journal of Educational Technology, among others. Dr. Smith received her Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University.
