Alison L. Bailey

Alison L. Bailey is a developmental psycholinguist and Professor of Human Development and Psychology in the Department of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her research focuses on children’s linguistic, social, and educational development, including first and second language acquisition, early literacy, and academic language pedagogy and assessment for multilingual and English learner students. She holds an Ed.D. and is a graduate of Harvard University; her earlier studies include a B.A. (Hons) in Linguistics with a minor in American Literature from the University of Hull in England.

Bailey has published widely in journals such as Language and Education, Language Testing, Theory into Practice, Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Teachers College Record, and Educational Researcher. She is coauthor of the National Academies of Sciences report on STEM and English learners and serves on national and state assessment committees, including the NAEP Reading Standing Committee and the NCME Classroom Assessment Task Force. Her books include Progressing Students’ Language Day by Day (Sage/Corwin, with Margaret Heritage), which introduces a Dynamic Language Learning Progression framework for supporting students’ academic language development, and Children’s Multilingual Development and Education: Fostering Linguistic Resources in Home and School Contexts (with Anna V. Osipova