The Freire Project

An Associate Professor of Education at Furman University since 2002, Dr. P. L. Thomas taught high school English for 18 years at Woodruff High along with teaching as an adjunct at a number of Upstate colleges. He holds an undergraduate degree in Secondary Education (1983) along with an M. Ed. in Secondary Education (1985) and Ed. D. in Curriculum and Instruction (1998), all from the University of South Carolina. Dr. Thomas has focused throughout his career on writing and the teaching of writing. He has published fiction, poetry, and numerous scholarly works since the early 1980s. Currently, he works closely with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the SC Council of Teachers of English (SCCTE). His major publications include a critique of American education, Numbers Games (2004, Peter Lang); a text on the teaching of writing, Teaching Writing Primer (2005, Peter Lang); and books in a series edited by Thomas, Confronting the Text, Confronting the World—his most recent volume being Reading, Learning, Teaching Ralph Ellison (2008, Peter Lang). He has also recently published a work with Joe Kincheloe (McGill University), Reading, Writing, and Thinking: The Postformal Basics (2006, Sense Publishers), and with Furman colleague Nita Schmidt, 21st Century Literacy (Springer, 2009). He is currently a column editor for English Journal, Challenging Texts. His scholarship and teaching deal primarily with writing, literacy and poverty, focusing on empowering people for social justice through education.