Research Interests:
Risk in reading acquisition for young English learners; Cognitive factors/individual differences in teaching/learning; Policy analysis research in special education; Media-assisted, problem-based learning; Learning disabilities/behavior disorders
Biography:
I am currently Professor of Education, Emphasis Leader for the Special Education, Disabilities, and Risk Emphasis and contributing faculty in the Educational Leadership and Organizations Emphasis both in the Education Department of the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education. Since 1995, I have also been the UCSB director of the Joint Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership, a collaboration between UCSB and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I have been the director of a Center for Advanced Studies of Individual Differences in the Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research (ISBER). I am also a founding member of UCSB's Interdisciplinary Graduate Emphasis in Cognitive Science. Since 2004, I have served as chair of the publications committee for the Division for Learning Disabilities in the Council for Exceptional Children.
Before my Ph.D., I was an elementary school teacher in Oakland, California, where I taught 6th grade, coordinated a compensatory education program, and eventually taught students with learning and behavior problems. In 1972-73, I went to Africa to teach clinical laboratory skills to nurses and orderlies at St. Luke's Hospital in Malawi. I was awarded my Ph.D. in special education from the University of Virginia in 1981.
I have continuing interest in information processing barriers to acquisition and performance of basic skills by individuals with cognitive disabilities. My research has included studies of spelling and phonemic awareness, automaticity of basic arithmetic, and written composition. I also have contributed a theory of "tolerance" to explain how schools accommodate extreme individual differences associated with disabilities and risk for school failure. Tolerance Theory posits complex economic and cognitive processes to explain how teachers make instructionally relevant decisions about students and how schools, as organizations, respond to and constrain this decision-making. My students and I have applied this perspective to research on referral processes, microcomputer-based instructional technology, high stakes testing, charter schools, inclusion, class size reduction, and interventions for teachers.
Most recently, we have been involved in the following research and development efforts.
In Fall 2000, with a three year grant from OELA (USDOE), we began an implementation study (La Patera) of phonological skills and interventions for Spanish-speaking children attempting to crossover to English literacy. La Patera continues in 2004-2005 with a core sample of fourth-graders. Thus far, our data show that Spanish-speaking kindergarteners who perform poorly on phonological tasks in their home language (Spanish) are at highest risk for problems learning to fluently decode English words. Intensive, small group, direct instruction interventions as part of a multi-tiered system of intervention may significantly reduce that risk. We have begun to pilot materials and strategies for progress monitoring of reading comprehension of social studies’ text along with small group interventions similar to those we investigated when the students were in the primary grades.
Also, in collaboration with Dr. Lee Swanson at UC Riverside, and with support from the Linguistic Minority Research Institute, we are conducting a parallel, more intensive reading risk assessment study with another sample of approximately 150 students from this same population. In 2002-03, we followed these students as they entered second grade, and collected a partial sample in third grade in 2003-2004.
We are continuing to consolidate a number of web-delivered projects using problem-based learning and interactive multimedia modules to support of professional preparation and development. Collectively, these projects are called The CASELINKs. The original project, CASELINKs, was developed with support from OSEP (USDOE) to support professional preparation in special education. In Fall 2000, with initial support from the Verizon Foundation, we began SchoolLink, an extension of CASELINKs, to support school site professional development teams of teachers and principals to be more effective with English learners. In October 2001, we were funded by OELA (USDOE) for a five year professional development project, CASETrainer, that builds on our work and experience with CASELINKs and SchoolLink. CASETrainer provides scalable, web-based materials and strategies for promoting professional development of teacher in targeted school districts who need California’s Cultural, Linguistic, and Development (CLAD) certification.
In 2003, my colleague, Sarah Hough, and I joined with Jill Leafstedt and Maria Denney of California State University, Channel Islands, Tisa Jimenez of Loyola Marymount University, and Cara Richards of California State University, Long Beach, to form the California Consortium for Professional Education and Development, to cooperate in building, maintaining, applying and evaluating web-sited interactive multimedia resources and problem-based learning pedagogy for teacher education and professional development. Consortium members will work with local school partners to develop and evaluate multimedia modules that will be made available for use of faculty members in member institutions.
In June 2005, faculty from across the University of California system convened in Santa Barbara to form a steering committee to plan for a new UC-wide Center for Research on Special Education, Disabilities, & Developmental Risk. The new Center aims to stimulate and conduct research of state, national, and international significance and to support doctoral research training across the 10-campus system. In January 2006, the Steering Committee held its second meeting. Also at this time, doctoral and postdoctoral students from the various campuses held a parallel meeting to organize a doctoral student advisory council to the new Center and to hold the first UC-wide doctoral student research conference.
These exciting projects lay a foundation for research on interesting theoretical and applied issues in education for all children with learning and achievement difficulties, cognitive science, as well as for use of Internet technology in professional training.
