Name: Esther S. Prins
Title: Professor of Education (Lifelong Learning and Adult Education); Co-Director, Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy and Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy
Department: Learning and Performance Systems
Phone: 814-865-0597
Email: esp150@psu.edu
Office address: 305B Keller Building
Directory entry: https://ed.psu.edu/directory/dr-esther-s-prins
Prins holds a doctorate in adult education from Cornell University. Her research employs critical and sociocultural theories to examine literacies (adult, family, digital, health), adult basic education, rural adult education, and participatory approaches to education, community development, and research, both in the United States and internationally. In particular, her scholarship explores the “wider benefits” of adult education and how adult education reproduces and/or mitigates inequities rooted in race/ethnicity, class, gender and immigration status.
Her research has been published in numerous journals across several disciplines, including American Educational Research Journal, Comparative Education Review, Adult Education Quarterly, Action Research and Rural Sociology. Prins has co-authored one book — “Teaching and Learning about Family Literacy and Family Literacy Programs” (with Jacqueline Lynch, Routledge, 2022) — and will co-edit a new volume, “Family and Intergenerational Literacy and Learning: International Perspectives” with Rakhat Zholdoshalieva, to be published by the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning.
Prins has led or participated in research and evaluation projects funded by the National Science Foundation, Institute of Education Sciences, Spencer Foundation, Center for Rural Pennsylvania, Smithsonian Institution and William Penn Foundation, among others.