Biography

Jeanne Gilliam Fain is a Professor and Lead Faculty for Multilingual Learners at Lipscomb University, where she teaches ELL endorsement courses, classroom-based research, and literacy courses. She has worked as a teacher educator/researcher for the last fifteen years in Arizona and Tennessee. Fain is a member of the Notables in Language Arts Committee. She was awarded three Read to be Ready Grants in MNPS at J.E. Moss Elementary. Fain has published in Journal of Children’s Literature, Language Arts, Reading Teacher, Multicultural Perspectives, Perspectives on Urban Education, School Talk, and World of Words Journal. She has presented nationally and locally on book discussion with pre-kindergarteners and early elementary students, comprehension, close reading, global and informational texts and critical literacy, family backpacks in multilingual communities, and middle school and questioning within comprehension across the content areas.

Fain holds a Bachelor’s degree from Grand Canyon University, a M.Ed. in Elementary Education, and a Ph.D. in Language, Reading, and Culture from the University of Arizona. She taught bilingual kindergarten and first grade for seven and a half years. Fain worked at Vanderbilt University for one year as a Research Associate and Director of an Early Reading First Grant, and held a position as an assistant professor in the College of Education and Doctoral department of Literacy Studies for four years at Middle Tennessee State University prior to coming to Lipscomb University. Her research includes a focus upon the following: Early Literacy & Literacy in K-8 Classrooms, Critical Conversations around Global, Culturally responsive, and social justice texts, Children’s and Adolescents’ Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Literature, Children’s and Family-led literature discussions, Linguistic Diversity and Schooling.