M'Balia Thomas

M'Balia Thomas teaches courses for English undergraduate, MATESL graduate, and SLAT PhD graduate students. Dr. Thomas investigates the linguistic injustices committed against “non-native” and “non-standard” speakers of American English and the everyday creative practices these speakers adopt to resist and address linguistic injustices. Her research draws upon a variety of qualitative research methods, including thematic, discourse, conversation, narrative, rhetorical-stylistics, text world theory, and corpus-based analyses. Through the study of written/spoken language—including the language of fictional learners and teachers—her work demonstrates that it is possible to gain insight into learning, teaching, and assessment and the ideologies that shape and impede each. Dr. Thomas's publications have appeared in Qualitative Inquiry, Teaching & Teacher Education, Studying Teacher Education, Teaching & Learning Inquiry, Narrative Inquiry and Journal of Contemplative Inquiry.