I have been a Senior Research Scientist at Oregon Research Institute since 2011, and at Washington Research Institute from 1989-2011. I have an extensive background in early reading instruction and instructional design that supports learning for at-risk students. I have been especially interested in highly specified instructional design that allows educational assistants to effectively supplement classroom early reading instruction.
My research interests and work have a focus on school-based interventions conducted in high-needs public school settings.
I served as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator for 14 U.S. Department of Education research grants, including four efficacy studies. In one series of studies with a team of collaborators I developed and examined the benefits of a supplemental explicit phonics intervention (Sound Partners) for K-1 students at risk for reading difficulties. A related line of research examined the effectiveness of alphabet and phonics instruction for young English Learners (ELs) entering school with limited literacy and language skills. These studies emphasized the benefits of explicit phonics instruction for this growing population of students, and the influence of EL children’s oral language skills on reading outcomes.
I most recently completed a series of randomized control trials of two vocabulary interventions for young students. In an efficacy study funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), my colleagues (Dr. Becky Logan-Herrera and Dr. Elizabeth Sanders) and I examined the benefits of the most widely used and recommended “rich vocabulary” approach (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002, 2008) to teaching advanced vocabulary that characterizes written school texts. In a second series of IES studies my collaborators (Dr. Ron Nelson, Dr. Elizabeth Sanders) and I developed and tested the efficacy of an explicit supplemental vocabulary intervention (Early Vocabulary Connections), implemented by instructional assistants, for kindergarten English learners.
I currently co-direct (with Dr. Theresa Roberts) a study funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (R305A150005) on alphabet learning in preschool children. The goal of this study is to manipulate the content of alphabet instruction, activation of underlying cognitive learning processes, and the contextualized nature of instruction, and to examine the relationships of these manipulations to preschool literacy skills. The target population is Head Start preschool children. The interventions will be implemented by non-teacher tutors. I am co-investigator of another IES study (R305A150325) (with Drs. Barbara Gunn, Erin Chaparro, and Keith Smolkowski) on the Direct Instruction in Spoken English (DISE) program. The study will provide evidence of the efficacy of the DISE program in improving the oral language skills of middle-school English learners, and factors that mediate and moderate DISE impacts.
