Amma Akrofi, EdD

(Texas Tech University, 2002)

Research Area
Dr. Amma Akrofi’s research stems from a long-standing interest in literacy and applied linguistics. Specifically, she has focused on diversity and cultural issues in children’s fiction and nonfiction books, response to literature, literacy assessment, minority and immigrant parent involvement in children’s English literacy acquisition and assessment, and English as a lingua franca within the learner’s native linguistic and sociocultural context. She has conducted research in elementary classrooms in Ghana to learn about how teachers and parents of English Language Learners support children’s home literacy in the target language. She has also collaborated with parents and classroom teachers in the U.S. on effective ways of involving minority parents in the literacy development of their fourth through sixth grade struggling readers. International and national journals that have published her research include the Yearbook of the National Reading Conference, The International Journal of Social Education, TESOL Journal, Legon Journal of the Humanities, Talking Points, and The Educational Forum. She also has a book chapter in Crosscurrents and crosscutting themes: Research on education in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East, published by Information Age Press. Dr. Akrofi has regularly presented her research at the annual meetings of the National Reading Conference, the American Educational Research Association, and the International Reading Association.

Biography
Dr. Akrofi was educated in both her native country Ghana (West Africa) and the United States. She studied Linguistics, Philosophy, and English at the University of Ghana and graduated from there with a B.A. (Hons) degree in English. Ghana is also where she obtained a postgraduate certificate in Education (a K-12 teaching certificate with an emphasis on ESL methods) from the University of Cape Coast. She received two degrees in the United States: first, a master’s in the Teaching of English as a Second Language from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and then a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis on Language Literacy from Texas Tech University.

Dr. Akrofi has taught in three countries. She taught English Literature and ESL first in Sierra Leone’s and later in Ghana’s former “5 plus 2 years” secondary school system. Subsequently, she was appointed as an instructor for a freshman course in English for Academic Study at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. After completing her master’s in the U.S., she returned to the University of Cape Coast as a lecturer in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. She was later appointed senior lecturer and transferred to the Institute of Education to coordinate the English section of Ghana’s national teacher certification examination, and then to the Department of Primary Education to teach English methods and organize professional development workshops for ESL teachers at the primary level. While at the University of Cape Coast, she also spent her long vacations (summer semesters) working as a language and cross-culture coordinator for the United States Peace Corps’ In-Country Training Programs. In August 2002, Dr. Akrofi joined the Texas Tech College of Education faculty as a visiting assistant professor in Language and Literacy. She was appointed assistant professor in 2003.

Dr. Akrofi’s awards include a Fulbright African Senior Scholar Program’s Professional Development Grant to the University of Arizona in 1993 and an International Reading Association Finalist, Outstanding Dissertation of the Year Award, in 2004. Her previous service includes memberships of the following bodies: (1) The Consultative Assembly that drafted Ghana’s Fourth Republican Constitution, and (2) Literature and Basic English Panels of the Teacher Education Division (Ghana Education Service). She is currently on the editorial review board of the Georgia Journal of Reading.

Projects
Dr. Akrofi is presently engaged in the following four projects: reader response to celebrity-authored children’s books, using children’s literature to help immigrant children’s integration into mainstream American culture, examining diversity in quality children’s nonfiction literature, and examining how teachers continue to develop their knowledge about effective classroom literacy practices.

Classes Taught
EDLL 6351 Studies in Literature for Children or Adolescents
EDLL 5351 Children’s Literature for Teachers and Librarians
EDLL 5348 Applied Linguistics and the Teaching of Literacy
EDLL 5340 Foundations of Reading Instruction (Post-bac)
EDLL 3351 Foundations of Reading Instruction (Undergraduate)
EDLL 3352 Language Literacy Acquisition
EDLL 3350 Children’s Literature

Selected Publications
Janisch, C., Liu, X., & Akrofi, A. (Accepted). Exploring issues of implementing alternative literacy assessment: Opportunities and obstacles. The Educational Forum.

Akrofi, A. (2006). Procedures used, misused, and abused: English literacy instruction in a first grade classroom in Ghana, In K. Mutua & C. S. Sunal (Eds.), Crosscurrents and crosscutting themes: Research on education in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East (pp. 61-83). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Press.

Swafford, J., & Akrofi, A. (2005). Reading from efferent and aesthetic stances makes books come alive. Talking Points (Special Issue Special Issue on the Influence of Louise Rosenblatt on Whole Language Theory and Practice), 17(1), 23-27.

Akrofi, A., Swafford, J., & Janisch, C. (2005). English in Ghana revisited: Exploring perceptions on the universe of English, hegemony of English, and ecology of language paradigms. Legon Journal of the Humanities, 15, 49-79.

Akrofi, A. (2003). English literacy in Ghana: The reading experiences of ESOL first graders. TESOL Journal, 12(2), 7-12.

Akrofi, A. (2003). Play, democracy and instruction in a first grade Ghanaian ESL classroom. The International Journal of Social Education, 18(1), 17-23.         

Janisch, C., & Akrofi, A. (2001). Young Readers Academy: Opportunities for conversations about literacy teaching and learning. In J. V. Hoffman, D. L. Schallert, C. M. Fairbanks, J. Worthy, & B. Maloch (Eds.), Fiftieth Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. 287-299). Chicago, IL: The National Reading Conference, Inc.

Swafford, J., Akrofi, A., Rogers, J., & Alexander, C. (1999). Primary grade students’ interactions with one another as they read and write informational texts. In T. Shanahan & F. V. Rodriquez-Brown (Eds.), Forty-Eighth Yearbook of the  National Reading Conference (pp. 294-305). Chicago, IL: The National Reading Conference, Inc.

Vita

Vita here