Luciana de Oliveira Receives National Recognition for Advancing Second Language Research and Teaching

Luciana de Oliveira, professor of teaching and learning at Virginia Commonwealth University, has received the Leadership Through Research Award from the American Educational Research Association’s Second Language Research Special Interest Group in honor of her contributions to second language research, teaching, and professional service.

With over 30 years of experience in education, Dr. de Oliveira currently serves as associate dean for academic affairs and graduate studies in VCU’s School of Education. She has taught at several institutions throughout her career, including the University of Miami, Columbia University’s Teachers College, and Purdue University in Indiana.

As a scholar, Dr. de Oliveira focuses on issues related to teaching multilingual learners at the K-12 level, including the role of language in learning, teacher education for multilingual learners, and functional approaches to language development. She has edited and authored several publications, including her most recent book, Supporting Multilingual Learners’ Academic Language Development: A Language-Based Approach to Content Instruction (Routledge, 2023).

Dr. de Oliveira is a magna cum laude graduate of São Paulo State University in Brazil, where she double-majored in English and Portuguese with a minor in German. She holds a master’s degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages from California State University, Easy Bay and a Ph.D. in education from the University of California, Davis.