Nicola A. McClung

Nicola McClung was a teacher in San Francisco public schools for eight years prior to receiving her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on critical literacy and multiliteracies during early childhood, and she examines children’s literature and identity development for students who are often marginalized in print.  She is also interested in critical quantitative research and the use of statistics to promote equity and social change. She is cofounder of Xóchitl Justice Press.

• Literacy in international contexts
• Critical literacy
• Multiliteracies
• Critical statistics
• Multilevel modeling
• Learning disabilities
• Disability justice
• Children's books

• PhD, Human Development and Education, University of California, Berkeley
• MA, Human Development and Education, University of California, Berkeley
• Teaching Credential, Educational Specialist, San Francisco State University
• BA, Art, Grinnell College

• Wright, T. S., Cervetti, G. N., Wise, C., & McClung, N. A. (2021). The Impact of Knowledge-Building through Conceptually-Coherent Read Alouds on Vocabulary and Comprehension. Reading Psychology, 1-15.
• McClung, N. A., & Pearson, P. D. (2019). Reading comprehension trade-offs between shallow and deep orthographies: Seven alphabetic languages and two international literacy assessments. Written Language and Literacy. 22(1), 33-66.
• McClung, N. A., Neebe, D., Barry, E., Mere-Cook, Y., & Wang, Q. (2019). Choice matters: Equity and literacy achievement. Berkeley Review of Education. 8(2), 147-178.
• McClung, N.A. (2018). Learning to queer text: Epiphanies from a family critical literacy practice. Reading Teacher. 71(4), 401-410.
• McClung, N.A. & Arya, D.J. (2018). Individual differences in fourth-grade math achievement in Chinese and English. Front. Educ. 3:29. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2018.00029.
• Cervetti, G., Hiebert, F., Pearson, P. D., McClung, N. A. (2015). Factors that influence the difficulty of science words. Journal of Literacy Research, 47(2), 153-185.
• Arya, D., McClung, N. A., Katznelson, N., & Scott, L. (2015). Language ideologies and literacy achievement: Six multilingual countries and two international assessments. International Journal of Multilingualism, 13(1), 40-60.
• Shin, J., Sailors, M., McClung, N. A., Hoffman, J., & Pearson, P. D. (2015). The impact of first language reading and writing on learning English as a second language in an African context: the case of Malawi, Chichewa and English. Bilingual Research Journal, 38(3), 255-274.
• Sailors, M., Hoffman, J., Pearson, P. D., McClung, N. A., Shin, J. (2014). Supporting change in literacy instruction in Malawi. Reading Research Quarterly, 49(2), 209-231.
• Arya, D., McClung, N. A., Maul, A. & Cunningham, A. E. (2014). Exploring the association between early childhood home environment and literacy development internationally. International Journal of Quantitative Research in Education, 2(1), 1-16.
• McClung, N. A., O'Donnell, C. R. & Cunningham, A. E. (2012). Orthographic learning and the development of visual word recognition. In J. Adelman (Ed.) Visual Word Recognition. Psychology Press.