Among her previous appointments she was a longtime professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a recipient of the campus Distinguished Teaching Award. A fellow of the American Educational Research Association, she has spent over 30 years studying the childhood cultures and literacy learning of young schoolchildren. Among her book publications are Social Worlds of Children Learning to Write in an Urban Primary School (1993; honored with the David Russell award for Distinguished Research from NCTE), Writing Superheroes (1997), The Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write (2003), and, with Celia Genishi, Children, Language, and Literacy: Diverse Learners in Diverse Times (2009). Her newest book, to be published in 2013, is Writing “Basics”?: Views from the Children’s Worlds.