Biography
A former elementary school teacher, Dr. Xenia Hadjioannou holds a Bachelor in the Sciences of Education from the University of Cyprus; a Master of Education from the University of Florida; and a Ph.D. in Instruction and Curriculum (specialization: Language Arts/Literacy) also from the University of Florida. She is currently an associate professor of language and literacy education at Penn State Berks.
In her teaching, Dr. Hadjioannou works with preservice teachers in a variety of courses on language and literacy methodology. Dr. Hadjioannou’s research is theoretically informed by social constructivist theories and by translanguaging pedagogy. Her work focuses on literacy methodology through the study of classroom discourse and the analysis of exemplary practices in the language arts classroom; the preparation of teachers to effectively work with diverse students, including emergent bilinguals; and children’s literature as both a product and a driver of our literacies.
Dr. Hadjioannou’s work has appeared in various scholarly journals such as the American Educational Research Journal, the Early Education and Development Journal, Current Issues in Language Planning, the Dragon Lode, and Classroom Discourse. She is co-author of Translanguaging for Emergent Bilinguals with D. Fu and X. Zhou (published by Teachers College Press), and co-chaired the writing committee for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Position Statement on the Role of Nonfiction Literature (K-12). Dr. Hadjioannou has been involved in several grant-funded projects, including two professional development programs funded by the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA – U.S. Department of Education), a teacher residency grant funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and a Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program funded by the National Science Foundation.
Dr. Hadjioannou is current president of the Children's Literature Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English and serves as co-editor of the CLA Blog. She is a founding member of the Biography Clearinghouse and an NCTE Representative to the board of the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY).
Research Interests
Dr. Hadjioannou's research focuses on observing, describing, understanding, and supporting practices that nurture literacy development. Much of her work involves the study of language-in-use: examinations of individuals and groups as they are interacting within and outside classroom settings, as well as studies of context-sensitive implementations of exemplary instructional practice. Another significant aspect of her research concerns the preparation of teachers to knowledgeably and effectively serve the needs of diverse learners in the 21st century. Within this strand falls her work on the education of emergent bilinguals and of nonstandard dialect speakers. In addition, Dr. Hadjioannou is highly interested in the texts that nurture our literacies and children's literature in particular.
Publications
Books
Fu, D., Hadjioannou, X. & Zhou, X. (2019). Translanguaging for Emergent Bilinguals: Inclusive teaching in the linguistically diverse classroom. Teachers College Press.
Fu, D., Hadjioannou, X. & Zhou, X. (forthcoming, 2025). Translanguaging for Emergent Bilinguals: Inclusive teaching in the linguistically diverse classroom (second edition). Teachers College Press
Journal Articles
Cappiello, M. A., & Hadjioannou, X. (2022). Exploring the Purposes of Backmatter in Nonfiction Picturebooks for Children: A Typology. The Reading Teacher, 76(3), 309–316. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2154
Zhang, X. & Hadjioannou, X. (2022). Chinese graduate students’ translanguaging practice in the context of academic writing in English. Applied Linguistics Review, 13(3), 373-388. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2021-0020
Hadjioannou, X. (2021). Access to high-quality, diverse book collections across a variety of challenging times and contexts. The Dragon Lode, 40 (1), 8-16.
Contributions to Books
Hadjioannou, X. (2023). Foreword: Readers, literature, and purpose matter. In E. Thulin Dawes, K. Cunningham, G. Enriquez, & M. A. Cappiello (Eds.), Reading with Purpose: Selecting and Using Children’s Literature for Inquiry and Engagement (pp. ix-x). Teachers College Press.
Hadjioannou, X. (2023). Starting with the teachers: Pursuing paradigmatic shift through the development of teachers’ translanguaging repertoires. In Z. Tian and N. King (Eds.) Developing Translanguaging Repertoires in Critical Teacher Education (pp. 103-122). De Gruyter.
Position Statement
National Council of Teachers of English. (2023). Position Statement on the Role of Nonfiction Literature (K–12). NCTE. https://ncte.org/statement/role-of-nonfiction-literature-k-12
Also cited as: Hadjioannou, X., Cappiello, M. A., Bandré, P., Burgess, M., Crawford, P., Dávila, D., Gardner, R. P., Johnston, K., Lowery, R., & Stewart, M. (2023). Position Statement on the Role of Nonfiction Literature (K-12). In National Council of Teachers of English: Position Statements. National Council of Teachers of English.