Souto-Manning, who is Coordinator of TC’s Early Childhood Education Program in the Department of Curriculum & Teaching, is an authority on early literacy, multicultural education, and critical pedagogy. A former preschool and primary grades teacher, she directs the College’s QUIERE (Quality Universally-Inclusive Early Responsive Education) Project, a project funded by the U.S. Department of Education that prepares teachers to work with young children with dis/abilities from low-income, immigrant, bilingual backgrounds in rich ways. 

Souto-Manning is co-author with Jessica Martell, an instructor in Curriculum & Teaching, of Reading, Writing and Talk: Inclusive teaching strategies for diverse learners, K-2 (Teachers College Press, 2016), which this past fall received the 2016 American Educational Studies Association (AESA) Critics Choice Book Award. Her other books include the awarding-winning Multicultural Teaching in the Early Childhood Classroom: Tools, Strategies and Approaches (Teachers College Press, 2013) and Freire, Teaching, and Learning: Culture Circles Across Contexts (Peter Lang, Inc., 2009), about the work of the great Brazilian education theorist Paulo Freire. Souto-Manning herself was educated at the Instituto Capibaribe, a progressive school in Brazil co-founded by Freire, and has credited the school as influencing her education and the way she came to “read words and worlds.”

In 2011 Souto-Manning received AERA Division K’s award for Innovations in Research on Diversity in Teacher Education. In 2009, she received the Early Career Researcher Achievement Award from the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy. And in 2015, the Early Childhood Education Assembly of the Natnoal Council of Teachers of English established the Mariana Souto-Manning Teacher Scholarship for early childhood teachers who honor diversities and engage in equitable practices.

Published Tuesday, Apr 25, 2017