People

Laura Tortorelli is an associate professor of Elementary Literacy in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Tortorelli’s scholarship integrates quantitative, mixed methods and research-practice partnership approaches to investigate how texts, technologies and teacher knowledge shape reading and writing instruction, with an emphasis on foundational skills and implications for policy and practice.

She has been named an Emerging Scholar by the Reading Hall of Fame and a Jeanne Chall Visiting Researcher by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She teaches and leads literacy preservice teacher preparation in Michigan State’s Elementary Education program, ranked #1 in the United States by U.S. News and World Report for the past 30 years. She was an associate editor of The Reading Teacher from 2020-2024.

Her current projects include the Improving Digital Equity and Literacy (IDEAL) project, a research-practice partnership to co-design resources for teachers to integrate digital texts into reading instruction, funded by the Spencer Foundation, and the Read STOP Write project to embed decoding and fluency instruction in informational text reading, funded by the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund’s Reading Reimagined Initiative.

She works closely with MAISA to support literacy coaches and teachers in implementing the Michigan Literacy Essentials.

Learn more about Tortorelli’s work by visiting Google Scholar.