Eufimia Tafa
Short CV
Dr. Eufimia Tafa is Professor Emerita of the University of Crete. She is the current president of the Hellenic Association for Language and Literacy. She was inducted member of the Reading Hall of Fame (2014). In 2014 she was awarded the “Pechoridis Award for Excellent University Teaching” from the University of Crete.
Her main research areas are early literacy development, dealing with classroom environments and professional development.
With a scholarship from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation, she did her undergraduate studies in Greece and her Master’s and Ph.D. at the University of Wales, College of Swansea in the United Kingdom.
She began her career as a kindergarten teacher and has taught in various higher educational institutions. She was appointed as advisor of the Greek Pedagogical Institute (1996-1997) where she participated in the development of the National Emergent Literacy Curriculum for young children. Since 1995 she has been teaching at the University of Crete.
As a principal or co-investigator she has participated in several research projects in which she investigated various literacy issues. Having won a Fulbright Scholarship, she visited (2004) the Department of Learning and Teaching at the Rutgers the State University of New Jersey where she investigated how literacy instruction can be implemented in kindergarten classrooms having children of diverse backgrounds.
Eufimia Tafa is the author of six books related to emergent literacy. In these books she presents the current emergent literacy perspective, and describes the teaching methodology which helps young children to develop the necessary knowledge and skills for reading and writing. In addition, she has edited and co-edited three books related to literacy in which the contributors were from Greece and from the international academic community. Furthermore, she has authored and co-authored more than fifty articles published in edited volumes and in major scholarly journals including the Reading Research Quarterly, the Journal of Research in Reading, the Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Literacy, Journal of Research in Reading, Journal of Early Childhood Research.
She is the chief editor of the on-line open access scientific journal Preschool and Primary Education (https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/education) and she is a member of the editorial advisory board of the Reading Research Quarterly. Furthermore, she served as secretary general of the Federation of European Literacy Associations (FELA), as well as of the World Organization of Early Childhood Education (Hellenic Department), and she is member of various international professional associations.
See Eufimia Tafa’s long CV here.