Patricia L Scharer is Professor Emeritus of the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University. She has been actively involved in two literacy projects—Literacy Collaborative, a K-8 school reform model training on-site coaches to support teacher professional development, and Reading Recovery, a research-based intervention for first grade students experiencing difficulty learning to read and write. In 2004, Dr. Scharer collaborated with colleagues at both OSU and the University of Chicago to receive a $3,914,000 Federal Teacher Quality grant to study the impact of Literacy Collaborative professional development on both teachers and student’s literacy achievement. In October, 2010, Dr. Scharer and colleagues Dr. Jerry D’Agostino and Dr. Emily Rodgers, were awarded a $54 million federal i3 grant to scale-up Reading Recovery across the U.S. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Reading Recovery.

Dr. Scharer’s research interests include early literacy development, phonics and word study, and the role of children's literature to foster both literary development and literacy achievement. Her research has been published in Reading Research Quarterly, Research in the Teaching of English, Educational Leadership, Language Arts, The Reading Teacher, Reading Research and Instruction, Journal of Reading Recovery, Literacy Teaching & Learning, and the yearbooks of the National Reading Conference and the College Reading Association. She recently edited a book titled, Responsive Literacy: A Comprehensive Framework (Scholastic, 2018).