Esther Prins
Esther Prins
Ph.D., Cornell University, 2003
Associate Professor of Education
Co-Director, Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy
Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy
Affiliate faculty member, Comparative and International Education Program and Center on Rural Education and Communities
After receiving her B.A. in Sociology from Wheaton College (Illinois), Esther coordinated an adult education program and taught ESL classes to Latino/a immigrants in Chicago. Her academic work has taken place in educational and community settings in Pennsylvania, New York, California, Washington, and Latin America (El Salvador and Belize). These venues have included adult and family literacy programs, a union- and university-sponsored adult education program for Cornell employees, after-school programs, school-based community development projects, community-university partnerships, computer classes for children and adults at a migrant housing center, ecumenical community development and organizing coalitions, and Cooperative Extension (Cornell, UC-Davis, and Washington State University).
Esther's research interests include critical and sociocultural perspectives of adult and family literacy; gender; civic engagement; and participatory approaches to education, community development, and research. In particular, her scholarship examines the social and cultural dimensions of education, especially concerning how adult education reproduces or mitigates gender, racial, class, and cultural inequalities.
Her courses include Family Literacy; Language, Literacy, Identity, and Culture in Global Contexts; and Politics, Language and Pedagogy: Applying Paulo Freire Today.
Esther’s scholarship has been (or will soon be) published in numerous journals, including Adult Education Quarterly, American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, International Journal of Lifelong Education, Studies in the Education of Adults, Convergence, Adult Basic Education and Literacy, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Journal of Latinos and Education, Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, Action Research, Journal of the Community Development Society, Journal of Extension, and Journal of Planning Education and Research. She is on the editorial board of Adult Education Quarterly and Journal of Research in Rural Education.
Honors include the Outstanding Paper by an Early Career Scholar Award (with Kai Schafft, Adult Literacy and Adult Education SIG, American Educational Research Association, 2007), Professors for the Future Fellowship (UC-Davis, 2003-04), Women’s Studies Dissertation Fellowship (Cornell University, 2001), and the Julian and Veta S. Butterworth Doctoral Research Prize (Cornell University, 2000).
