Linda Kucan

Linda Kucan, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Instruction and Learning in the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh, where she works with reading specialist candidates and doctoral students in language, literacy, and culture. Her research focuses on vocabulary and comprehension instruction, classroom discourse, disciplinary literacy, and the design of meaningful tasks to support students’ understanding of text. She has published more than 20 book chapters and peer‑reviewed articles in journals such as Teachers College Record, The Elementary School Journal, and Teaching and Teacher Education.

Kucan is coauthor, with Isabel L. Beck and Margaret G. McKeown, of the influential books Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction and Creating Robust Vocabulary: Frequently Asked Questions and Extended Examples, both in the Solving Problems in the Teaching of Literacy series. Her work on robust vocabulary instruction has been widely cited in literacy education and is used by teachers and teacher educators to improve students’ word knowledge and reading comprehension.