Research
Dr. Iannacci’s work has examined literacy practices and events encountered by CLD (culturally and linguistically diverse) students within early years classrooms and explored the ways in which “lived” literacy curriculum can facilitate and constrain cultural and linguistic assimilation and acculturation and the impact this curriculum has on the negotiation of CLD student’s identities.
He explores how dominant discourses in the field of early childhood education manifest within literacy curricula and impact the ways in which children are constructed and positioned within schools and the impact these discourses have on them their parents and their communities in terms of the power relations they sustain and further. His work develops alternative approaches to literacy education for young children.
His has also examined teacher candidate’s understandings and constructions of learning disabilities and children with special needs with Bente Graham.
Dr. Iannacci, Dr. Rachel Heydon (UWO), and Dr. Lyndsay Moffatt (UPEI) have completed a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded project that examines full day kindergarten in Ontario. The study provides insights into how full-day kindergarten literacy curricula are made and practiced by children and educators.
He is currently examining the experiences of parents who have children with exceptionalities from a critical disability theory perspective. The project specifically explores parents’ experiences with special education systems/community agencies in relation to their child/children and seeks to understand what funds of knowledge they possess about their child/their child's exceptionalities and the funds of knowledge they have acquired about the special education systems/community agencies and discourses they have had to navigate throughout their child's life.
He is also critically examining levelled reading/levelled readers through the experiences of teacher candidates with Bente Graham.
Honors
In 2006 Dr. Iannacci’s dissertation entitled "Othered Among Others: A Critical Narrative of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Children's Literacy and Identity in Early Childhood Education (ECE)", was awarded The Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (CACS) Dissertation Award for the best Doctoral thesis in curriculum studies.
The Florida Reading Association Studies and Research Committee selected, “From dissemination to discernment: The commodification of literacy instruction and the fostering of ‘good teacher consumerism’” (co-authored with Dr. Kathryn Hibbert, UWO) as well as “Strategies to support balanced literacy approaches in pre- and in-service teacher education” (co-authored with Dr. Kathryn Hibbert and Dr. Rachel Heydon, UWO) as two of thirty two articles to be included in the May, 2006 issue of their Teachers on the Cutting Edge: Literacy Leadership publication.
He was nominated and selected to be the University of New Brunswick’s Faculty of Education 2008 Summer Scholar. He taught a graduate course on literacies, identities and schooling, did presentations for faculty and students, and developed a book, Early Childhood Curricula: Reconceptualist Perspectives with Pam Whitty, UNB Faculty of Education Professor in the Early Literacies and Critical Studies Department.
In 2008, Dr. Iannacci received a merit award for exceptional performance in research at Trent University
Dr. Iannacci has been an invited keynote speaker at various international, national and provincial conferences.