Marie Crawford

Marie Crawford is an educator and co-author of Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings (Stenhouse, 2011), written with Jeff Zwiers. In this work, they identify five core communication skills that help students engage in productive classroom dialogue across content areas: elaborating and clarifying, supporting ideas with evidence, building on and challenging ideas, paraphrasing, and synthesizing.

Crawford has worked as a mentor teacher with the New Teacher Center in Santa Cruz, California, supporting classroom teachers in culturally and linguistically diverse settings and in developing students’ academic talk. In addition to the book, Crawford has co-authored professional articles on academic conversations and strategies for engaging English learners in structured, content-focused discussions.