Jackie Eunjung Relyea
Assistant Professor, Literacy Education
Poe Hall 310D
Bio
Jackie Eunjung Relyea, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education in the College of Education at North Carolina State University. Prior to joining the faculty, she held post-doctoral research fellow appointments at Harvard Graduate School of Education and University of Houston.
She is currently a co-principal investigator of the project, “Supporting Reading Comprehension for English Learners Through Inquiry-Based, Language-Focused Instruction (PI: Dennis Davis),” a $1.4 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences. In this project, her team develops a small-group intervention program to help Grade 3-5 English learners strengthen their language and literacy skills while building content knowledge of interesting topics in science and social studies disciplines.
She is also a principal investigator of the project, “iWolfpack Readers: Partnership for Online Afterschool Literacy Intervention for Elementary-Grade Students with Reading Difficulties,” supported by NC State Outreach and Engagement. This project is to develop an online afterschool literacy intervention program to improve young struggling readers’ comprehension of informational text and reading engagement. It also aims to build research-practice partnerships and agendas that unite the needs in local contexts and interests of researchers, practitioners, and parents.
She also serves as an NC State primary investigator of the project, "Improve Early Literacy at Scale through Personalized Diagnosis and Intervention" as part of Reach Every Reader, funded by Harvard University and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The project is to develop and evaluate an elementary grade content literacy intervention that aims to support students’ domain knowledge, reading motivation, and literacy outcomes. Using a cluster randomized controlled trial, the intervention has been implemented through collaboration with teachers and school administrators in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, NC.
Research Description
Dr. Relyea’s research interests center on literacy development and instruction of K-6 students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Her research focus lies in a literacy intervention model that emphasizes the integration of literacy instruction in content areas to develop students’ academic vocabulary, reading comprehension, domain-specific content knowledge, and higher-order thinking skills, particularly for English learners and emergent bilinguals. Dr. Relyea strives to innovate in ways that identify English learners’ strengths and challenges and build effective targeted instruction and intervention programs collaboratively working with practitioners, researchers, families, and school administrators. Her publications include longitudinal studies of the reading development of English learners with varying levels of early academic language and reading ability; and randomized controlled trials (RCT) and quasi-experimental studies testing the efficacy of content literacy intervention for diverse elementary student populations. Her research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including, Journal of Educational Psychology, Child Development, Reading Research Quarterly, The Reading Teacher, Reading Psychology, and Reading & Writing Quarterly.
Education
Ph.D. in Literacy Education from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Curriculum Vitae
Programs
- Doctoral: Program Area of Study: Literacy and English Language Arts Education (LELA)
- K-12 Reading: New Literacies and Global Learning
Selected Scholarly Publications
- Dr. Relyea's selected full-text on ResearchGate
- Lee, C.C., Dufresne, K., & Relyea, J. E. (in press). They are Doers: Writing to advocate with immigrant youth in community-based organizations. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy.
- Fitzgerald, J., Elmore, J., & Relyea, J. E. (in press). Academic vocabulary networks matter for students’ disciplinary learning. The Reading Teacher.
- Fitzgerald, J., Relyea, J. E., Elmore, J., & Hiebert, E. H. (in press). Has the presence of first-grade core reading program academic vocabulary changed across six decades? Reading Research Quarterly.
- Kim, J. S., Burkhauser, M. A., Mesite, L. M., Asher, C. A., Relyea, J. E., Fitzgerald, J., & Elmore, J. (2020). Improving reading comprehension, science domain knowledge, and reading engagement through a first-grade content literacy intervention. Journal of Educational Psychology.
- Fitzgerald, J., Elmore, J., Relyea, J. E., & Stenner, A. J. (2020). Domain-specific academic vocabulary network development in elementary grades core disciplinary textbooks. Journal of Educational Psychology, 12(5), 855-879.
- Relyea, J. E., & Amendum, S. (2020). English reading growth in Spanish-speaking bilingual students: Moderating effect of English proficiency on cross-linguistic influence. Child Development, 91, 1150-1165.
- Relyea, J. E., Zhang, J., Liu, Y., & Wui, G. (2019). Contribution of home language and literacy environment to English reading comprehension for emergent bilinguals: Sequential mediation model analyses. Reading Research Quarterly. Advance online publication.
- Relyea, J. E. & Fitzgerald, J. (2018). Relationship between early word reading and long-term comprehension growth for language-minority learners compared to native-English-speaking students. Reading Psychology, (39)6, 499-536,
- Zhang, J. Wong, S., Relyea, J. E., & Wui, G. (2017). Designing a socio-scientific issue curriculum on space exploration: Dialogic inquiry approach for English learners. English in Texas, 47(2), 7-12.
- Fitzgerald, J., Elmore, J., Relyea, J. E., Hiebert, E. H., & Stenner, A. S. (2016). Has first-grade core-reading-program text complexity changed across six decades? Reading Research Quarterly, 51(1), 1-22.
- Fitzgerald, J., Amendum, S. J., Relyea, J. E., & Garcia, S. (2015). Is overall oral-English ability related to young Latinos’ English-reading trajectory? Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 31(1), 68–95
- Fitzgerald, J., Hiebert, E. H., Bowen, K. E., Relyea, J. E., Kung, M., & Elmore, J. (2014). Text complexity: Primary teachers’ views. Literacy Research and Instruction, 53(5), 1–26.
Courses Taught
- ECI 540 Reading in the Elementary School
- ECI 541 Reading In the Content Areas
- ECI 645 Supervised Practicum in Literacy