The program in Language, Literacy, and Culture (LLC) offers a Ph.D. that brings together scholarly traditions and contemporary theory in literacy and cultural studies. Course work provides both a broad background in relevant theoretic and research literature and opportunities to conduct original studies that explore the nature of literacy practices both in and out of school. Our graduates secure careers in university and college teaching, research, curriculum development, and administration of literacy programs.

The LLC program provides a home in which advanced graduate students work with a faculty advisor to design a course of study. Students choose from multiple doctoral level courses within the program and advanced, interdisciplinary courses across the University of Iowa campus. Building on a foundation of socio-cultural language and literacy theory and with a firm grounding in research methodologies and the history of the field, our students pursue original studies that explore the nature of literate practices throughout childhood and adulthood, in and out of school.

Progress Through the Program

Doctoral students admitted to the LLC program are assigned an academic advisor who provides strong mentoring through the phases of coursework, comprehensive examinations and individual dissertation research.

Course of Study

The student and advisor collaboratively determine a course of study that focuses on several key strands for review and synthesis. The program requires a minimum of 78 semester hours of approved course work beyond the B.A., plus 10-12 semester hours of dissertation credits. Course work includes the following:

• A 3-semester hour Ph.D. Seminar in Language, Literacy, and Culture: Theoretical and Historical Foundations in Literacy Education

• 9 additional semester hours of Ph.D. seminars in Language, Literacy, and Culture

• 6 semester hours (2 courses) chosen from among three course options: one on American schooling, one on teacher education, and one on educational research

• 6 semester hours of course work in research methodology

• 9-12 semester hours of graduate course work taken outside the Department of Teaching and Learning (with 6 of these credits taken outside the College of Education).

Comprehensive Examinations

Each student writes the following three sections of the comprehensive examination and meets with a self-selected committee of five faculty members for an oral defense.

See the detailed description of the Comprehensive Exam Components and Procedures ( file or file).

• Section 1 - An academic paper that demonstrates the student's ability to analyze and synthesize knowledge in at least one key focus of study. The final paper for this section is intended to be ready to submit for a scholarly publication.
• Section 2 - A take home exam that demonstrates the student's comprehensive knowledge of two areas of literacy study selected from a set of options.
• Section 3 - A course syllabus for a future literacy course accompanied by a reflective commentary that illustrates the student's understanding of theory-practice relationships.

Memo of Intent
Students submit a memo of intent the semester before taking comprehensive exams. This brief memo includes a description of the student’s comprehensive exam areas and verifies that the student has no outstanding grades of “Incomplete.” Students submit this memo to their advisors who must approve the plan before distributing the memo to all other LLC faculty members.

Deadlines for submitting the comprehensive exam memo:

• Fall exams: Mid-June
• Spring exams: Mid-November
• Summer exams: Mid-April

Dissertation Research

Successful completion of the course of study and the comprehensive examination process leads a student toward a dissertation that makes an original contribution to the field of language, literacy and culture. The student writes a substantive proposal for the dissertation that is approved by the student's five-member dissertation committee before beginning the actual study.

Most of our students' dissertations use methods from traditions including ethnography, discourse analysis, case study, and narrative analysis, among others. Examples of dissertation studies completed by LLC doctoral students in the recent past are:

• Inventing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in Two Fourth/Fifth Grade Combination Classrooms: Diversity and Dysglossia among Black English Speakers (Sulentic, 1999)
• Boy's Talk: Mediating Masculinity in the Literature Classroom (Heinrich, 2001)
• Learning to Think Like a Teacher: The Role of Reflection in Student Teaching (Shoultz, 2002)
• Shoptalk: Teaching and Learning in An African American Hair Salon (Majors, 2001)
• A Commercial Hub in Every Classroom: Investigating Web Internet Content and 'Educommerce' in U.S. Schools (Fabos, 2002)
• Preaching What You Practice: Articulating the Transition from Sixth to Seventh Grade (Coke, 2002)

Dissertations culminate in a final oral defense meeting of the student and the dissertation committee. Degrees are awarded at the university's Graduate College ceremony and are marked by the ritual of the advisor/dissertation director "hooding" the student.

Our students have received many prestigious awards for their dissertation research including dissertation fellowships from the Spencer Foundation, Promising Researcher Awards from the National Council of Teachers of English, and dissertation awards from the International Reading Association, Iowa Chapter of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, and from the University of Iowa Graduate College (the University's Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize).

LLC Policy on Teaching

The Language, Literacy, and Culture program at The University of Iowa seeks to prepare its students fully for a life in the academy. To this end, we provide a range of opportunities for students to develop their skills, not only as scholars, but also as teachers. We believe that teaching at the college level, like teaching at every other level, should be approached planfully and reflectively and that successful university teachers never stop learning about their craft.

Given these commitments, the LLC program attempts (but cannot always guarantee) to give all of our students the chance to work with undergraduates in one or more teaching roles: as student teaching supervisors, as teachers of writing, as academic advisors, and as instructors in one of our methods classes. When students accept one of these positions for the first time, the faculty will do everything they can to provide support and mentoring. Students, for their part, will be expected to invite faculty mentors to observe their teaching and, every semester, to seek evaluative comments from their own students.

To accomplish these goals, the LLC program has developed two procedures. First, doctoral students who will be teaching one of our key methods classes for the first time must complete a college teaching practicum with the faculty member who usually teaches the class OR teach with the faculty member who usually teaches the course. During the practica, students are expected to attend the class regularly, to meet often with the faculty member to share observations and explore the instructional decisions the faculty member is making, and to complete a project that is in some direct way related to the course.

Second, every time doctoral students assume a teaching role, they should ask their own students for confidential end-of-semester evaluations of their teaching, just as LLC faculty do. These evaluations can take one of several forms, but they should not be examined until after all grades have been submitted. At that point, the teacher should read through the evaluations, meet with his or her faculty mentor about them, and then write a relatively brief reflective piece that summarizes the evaluations’ major themes and that details what the teacher has learned from them. The reflective writing and the evaluations themselves will then be filed in the C&I office.

Students graduating from the LLC program at Iowa have had uncommon success in seeking academic positions over the last ten years or more, and part of the reason for that record is the range of scholarly and teaching skills they've had a chance to practice while here. In fact, our students frequently receive university-wide teaching awards in recognition of their exceptional teaching skills. The policies on doctoral student teaching represent our effort to maintain and extend that tradition.

Our Place within the Department of Teaching and Learning

The Language, Literacy, and Culture Program is one of nine doctoral programs offered by the Department of Teaching and Learning. Our program serves students whose primary interest is literacy research. In addition to doctoral programs, Teaching and Learning is home to an undergraduate teacher education program that includes elementary education with specializations in reading and language arts as well as secondary English education. The Department of Teaching and Learning also offers a masters program in Developmental Reading and a masters of teaching program in English Education. Reading and language arts may also be chosen as areas of emphasis for masters students in elementary education and early childhood education. LLC doctoral students frequently serve as teaching assistants for courses in both the undergraduate and masters programs.