Elizabeth Birr Moje

A former high school history and biology teacher, Moje’s research examines young people’s culture, identity, and literacy learning in and out of school in Detroit, Michigan, with a particular focus on how youth learn and enact the literacies they need for specific domains, including those of school disciplines.  By documenting youth literacy practices and learning outside of schools in communities, youth popular cultural groups, and in online settings, Moje helps teachers of school disciplines consider how the disciplinary domains are like cultural settings in which certain linguistic and interactional norms and conventions dictate access, participation, and membership.  Teachers of different disciplines can serve as cultural brokers who help novices entering a new disciplinary domain to navigate within and across the school disciplines. Teachers can also build on and draw from the domain-specific strategies and assets that youth bring to school from families, popular culture, and their communities.

Moje has published 5 books and numerous articles in journals such as Science, Harvard Educational Review, Teachers College Record, Reading Research Quarterly, Socius, Journal of Literacy Research, Review of Education Research, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Science Education, International Journal of Science Education, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, and the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.  Moje’s research projects have been or are currently funded by the National Institutes of Health/NICHD, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, National Science Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation, Spencer Foundation, International Reading Association, and the National Academy of Education. Moje is a member of the William T. Grant Foundation Board of Trustees, an elected member of the National Academy of Education, and an elected member of the Reading Hall of Fame. She is recipient of the Oscar Causey Award for Distinguished Contributions in Literacy Research from the Literacy Research Association (2022); the Senior Career Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Council of Research on Language and Literacy (2023), and the  John J. Gumperz Memorial Award for Distinguished Lifetime Scholarship from the American Educational Research Association (2024). She also was recognized among Crain’s Detroit Business’ Notable Leaders in Higher Education in 2023.

In September 2018, together with the Detroit Public Schools Community District and the Kresge Foundation, Moje announced Marsal Education’s participation in the development of a cradle-to-career education system, the Marygrove Learning Community: A Detroit P-20 Partnership.  As a co-founder of this collaboration, Moje leads a research-practice partnership and the Michigan Education Teaching School on site at Marygrove.  This vertically aligned education continuum now supports the learning of children and families from before birth through age 5 as well as grades K-5, 9-12, and postsecondary educator preparation. The schools will continue to add one grade per year and until they have a comprehensive prenatal through grade 12 set of offerings for children and families in Detroit.