Ana Floriani has been a faculty member of the Educational Studies Department since fall of 1997. Professor Floriani taught elementary school before earning her master's degree and doctorate in Educational Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her professional interests are in the areas of teacher preparation, professional development, teachers as researchers and learners, and multicultural children’s literature. She teaches two of the elementary curriculum and pedagogy courses, English Language Arts (ED 335) and Social Studies (ED 315), Educational Inquiry (ED 498), special topics courses- Teaching English Language Learners (370) and Multicultural Children’s Literature (ED 270), and Gateway. She also supervises student teachers and facilitates the elementary student teaching seminar which allows her to bring together her experiences as a classroom teacher and researcher.  As a classroom researcher, she worked extensively with a bilingual teacher on an ethnographic research project that explored the social construction of knowledge and negotiation of meaning in fifth and sixth grade classrooms. As part of a collaborative research team she has presented at many national research and professional conferences and has coauthored several articles. Examples are:

Putney, L. G., & Floriani, A. (2002) Examining transformative processes and practices: A cross-case analysis of life in two bilingual classrooms. Annual Editions: Multicultural Education, McGraw Hill/Dushkin.

Yeager, B., Floriani, A., & Green, J. L. (1998). Learning to see learning in the classroom: Developing an ethnographic perspective. In D. Bloome & A. Egan-Robertson (Eds.), Students as inquirers of language and culture in their classrooms (pp. 115-139). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Tuyay, S., Yeager, B., Floriani, A., Dixon, C., & Green, J. (1995). Constructing an integrated, inquiry-oriented approach in classrooms: A cross case analysis of social, literate and academic practice. Journal of Classroom Interaction. 30 (2), 1-15.

Her most recent project is to explore the factors that contribute to successful teaching careers by interviewing practicing teachers about teacher expectations, the profession and how they keep going.