Professor Emerita, English/ Teaching & Learning
zenij@umsl.edu
EdD, University of Missouri - St. Louis
MEd, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (U. of Toronto)
MA, English, University of Pennsylvania
BA, English, Harvard University
Jane Zeni retired in 2007 after almost 30 years directing the English Education program at UMSL. Now, she continues to write and to mentor teachers on and off campus. Her interests include composition, technology, action research, and culturally sensitive teaching.
Dr. Zeni was the founding director of the Gateway Writing Project, and much of her research has been conducted with GWP teachers. Her first book, WritingLands: Composing with Old and New Writing Tools (1990), grew from her doctoral dissertation at UMSL; she observed and assisted GWP teachers who were using computers in their classrooms. Another multi-year project was led by teacher-researchers concerned about the "achievement gaps" of race, class, and gender; the team published Mirror Images: Teaching Writing in Black and White (Krater, Zeni, & Cason, 1994). Her recent work has focused on research ethics - how teachers can learn "with" as well as "about" their students and themselves; she edited Ethical Issues in Practitioner Research (2001), and wrote a chapter for the Sage Handbook of Educational Action Research (2009). In 2007, the keynote address at the Qualitative Research Conference was named the "Jane Zeni Lecture."
