About

Ysaaca Axelrod is an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the College of Education. Her research interests are focused on early childhood language and literacy development. She is involved in exploring how young children acquire language skills and literacy, contributing to the understanding of early childhood education and development.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Mathematics education
• Psychology
• Pedagogy
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Visual arts
• Library science
• Art
• Law
• Engineering
• Ecology

Selected publications

• La Gran Historia de Dilly Meets the Science of Reading: A Cuento of Scripts, Skills, and Silenced Selves

  Occasional Paper Series · 2026-04-13

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This article offers a deep dive into two lessons of a structured literacy curriculum to interrogate how current SoR–aligned mandates materialize in a Spanish dual-language first-grade classroom. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and Curriculum as a Discourse as both our conceptual frame and analytical method, we examine (a) La gran historia de Dilly—a retelling of The Ugly Duckling translated into Spanish—and (b) the teacher-facing lesson plan supplied by a major commercial publisher. Four patterns emerged: (1) reading is reduced to quantifiable skills (Lexile badges, sight-word drills) while the tale naturalizes biologically ‘correct’ identities, erasing hybrid selves; (2) scripted directives recast teachers as technicians and students as data points, extending SoR’s surveillance logic; (3) English-centric texts, monolingual assessments, and token cognate tasks constrain culturally sustaining and translanguaging practices, though remix opportunities exist; and (4) English-centric phonics assumptions (e.g., Ll taught without dialectal context) misalign with Spanish orthography. These features re-inscribe English hierarchies under a scientific veneer, complicating the phonics-versus-meaning binary that dominates SoR debates. We propose six counter-discursive moves—centering authentic Spanish texts, Spanish-specific orthographic study, routine translanguaging, explicit contrastive analysis, restored teacher agency, and Spanish-based readability metrics—to align SoR strengths with the sociocultural and linguistic needs of emergent bilinguals. The study adds a critical, context-rich narrative to the literature on SoR implementation in multilingual classrooms.

  PublisherDOI

• When the storm hits: children’s literature, extreme weather, and climate conversations in early childhood

  English Teaching Practice & Critique · 2026-03-05

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Purpose The purpose of this study is to critically examine how a kindergarten literacy curriculum’s weather-themed texts construct knowledge, shape ideologies and frame children’s understandings of weather and climate in ways that foster critical thinking and support climate justice orientations. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a critical discourse analysis of a two-week structured literacy kindergarten unit on weather to examine how weather and its effects on humans, other living beings and the environment are depicted. Findings The analysis identified three recurring themes: weather is natural, manageable through safety and playful. Together, these portrayals frame weather as neutral and benign, minimizing its complexity to preserve children’s emotional safety. In doing so, the texts miss the potential of a multi-genre approach, presenting weather as stripped of scientific, climatic and socio-political dimensions. These portrayals reflect broader cultural beliefs about childhood, resilience and what children can understand. We instead argue for leveraging the potential of multi-genre children’s literature that engages directly with the sociopolitical dimensions of weather and climate, foregrounding scientific complexity, human influence and the uneven impacts experienced across communities. Such texts can help move beyond simplified narratives of preparedness or awe to foster critical awareness of environmental justice, systemic vulnerability and collective responsibility. Originality/value This paper highlights how existing standards, such as early childhood weather standards and the use of diverse genre text sets, can be leveraged to foster critical thinking, cultivate climate justice perspectives and the restorying of socioecological futures.

  PublisherDOI

• Representations of Hope for Climate Action: An Analysis of Environmental Narratives in Children’s Picturebooks

  Language Arts · 2025-03-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Using content analysis and a framework of hope, this study examines how children’s picture books explain the impact of climate change and ways to work toward climate justice.

  PublisherDOI

• Investigating Composing Practices of an Emergent Bilingual During Emergency Remote Schooling

  2023-11-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter follows Ysaaca and Denise as they use discourse analysis to examine texts composed by a young emergent bilingual child, Ysaaca’s son, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Denise and Ysaaca are both teacher educators and literacy scholars with shared interests in children’s language and a social practice view of literacy. During the social isolation, Denise and Ysaaca’s families could not socialize and instead relied on letters, videos, texts, and drawings to communicate. The focal text they analyze is a drawing of eating sunbread for solstice. Although it was initially created in Spanish, the child recreated the text with an English component when told Denise and her family would be the recipients of the image. After many conversations about the text and the events surrounding the creation, Denise introduces Ysaaca to Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and invites her to do a discourse analysis following the model to explore and understand the child’s translanguaging and transmediation practices, the way that audience impacted his choices, and the child’s emerging awareness of his own and other’s literate identities.

  PublisherDOI

• 5 Learning from Emergent Bilinguals: Mobilizing Translanguaging and Multimodality to Reimagine School Literacy Curricular Spaces

  Multilingual Matters eBooks · 2022-05-09 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  5 Learning from Emergent Bilinguals: Mobilizing Translanguaging and Multimodality to Reimagine School Literacy Curricular Spaces was published in Multimodal Literacies in Young Emergent Bilinguals on page 62.

  PublisherDOI

• Learning from Emergent Bilinguals:

  Channel View Publications eBooks · 2022-04-29

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• <i>“Nací Hablando Los dos</i> ”: Young Emergent Bilingual Children’s Talk About Language and Identity

  Journal of Language Identity & Education · 2022-07-21 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article examines young children’s perceptions and ideas about their emergent bilingualism drawing on data from an ethnographic case study of the language development of a Head Start classroom. The purpose of this study was to examine the language practices of 4-year-olds in a bilingual (Spanish/English) classroom. The findings discussed in this paper focus on the children’s understanding of the language(s) they speak and how they come to understand the complex interactions of their languages, identity and the contexts within which they use them. Examples of children’s conversations where they explicitly discuss and articulate their knowledge of language demonstrate that young children are both capable of discussing their bilingualism and are developing an understanding of the intersections between language(s) and identity. These findings build on previous work that emphasizes the importance of examining language ideologies in early childhood classrooms and has implications for how to support young emergent bilinguals.

  PublisherDOI

• We Are All Learning about Climate Change: Teaching with Picture Books to Engage Teachers and Students

  Occasional Paper Series · 2020 · 5 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science
  • Mathematics education

  The topic of climate change and climate justice is politically charged, doesn’t sit neatly within a single subject or content area, and raises concerns of not being ‘age appropriate’ for young children. In this paper we describe how teacher educators in an elementary education program support a student teacher who took up the topic of climate change and climate justice in her 1st grade teaching placement. She designed a unit around a picture book that focuses on the words and work of Greta Thunberg, and used a diverse set of texts to support students’ understanding of the complexity of climate change, it’s impact on our planet and our lives.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Facilitating Conversations on Difficult Topics in the Classroom: Teachers’ Stories of Opening Spaces Using Children’s Literature

  Occasional Paper Series · 2020 · 1 citations

  • Sociology
  • Pedagogy
  • Psychology

  For this edition of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, we invited educators to share stories from their practice: times when they utilized children’s literature and conversations to address real life; the difficult topics that children experience through the mirror of their own experiences or the windows of their peers, communities, or world.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Humanizing disciplinary literacy pedagogy for Dinka refugee children

  Cultural Studies of Science Education · 2019-01-22 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Denise Ives

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  11 shared

• Rachel Weaver

  NHS England

  10 shared

• Carolina Soto Bonds

  Bank Street College of Education

  9 shared

• Cara Furman

  Hunter College

  9 shared

• Shoshana Magnet

  University of Ottawa

  9 shared

• Chiara Di Lello

  Bank Street College of Education

  9 shared

• Kathryn Struthers

  Bank Street College of Education

  9 shared

• Carla España

  9 shared

Awards & honors

• Axelrod, Smith Recognized for Outstanding Service