National Academies Press: OpenBook

Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (1998)

Chapter: Biographical Sketches

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Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
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Biographical Sketches

CATHERINE SNOW (Chair) is the Henry Lee Shattuck professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research involves the areas of language and literacy acquisition, as well as second-language acquisition and bilingualism. She has held teaching or research positions at Erasmus University and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, at the University of Cambridge in England, at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and at Universidad Autonoma in Madrid. Recent books include Unfulfilled Expectations: Home and School Influences on Literacy (with W. Barnes, J. Chandler, I. Goodman, and L. Hemphill) and Pragmatic Development (with A. Ninio). She has M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in psychology from McGill University; her doctoral thesis focused on language acquisition and mothers' speech to children.

MARILYN JAGER ADAMS is currently a visiting scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Previously she was a research scientist at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman Inc., the University of Illinois's Center for the Study of Reading, and the Reading Research Education Center and adjunct professor at Brown University and Stavanger College in Norway. Her research is in the field of literacy

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
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Page 398

acquisition and the development of instructional materials and software, and her publications include the book, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print. Beyond research, she has been involved in the development of a range of educational technology and materials. She is currently lead literacy advisor for ''Between the Lions," a public television program on literacy for children ages 4 to 8. She received the Sylvia Scribner award for outstanding contribution to research in 1995 for her work on reading and cognition. She has a Ph.D. in cognitive and developmental psychology from Brown University.

BARBARA T. BOWMAN is cofounder and president of the Erikson Institute in Chicago, Illinois, a graduate school and research center for advanced study in child development, affiliated with Loyola University Chicago. She is an authority on early education and a national advocate for improved and expanded training for practitioners who teach and care for young children. She has an extensive teaching background, having served on the faculty of the University of Chicago Laboratory School, Colorado Women's College, Nemazee School of Nursing, and the University of Shiraz (Shiraz, Iran), and, since 1966, as a faculty member of Erikson Institute. She is past president of the National Association for the Education of Young Children and has served on numerous national boards and advisory panels. Her most recent appointments include the Great Books Foundation and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She holds a bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a master's degree from the University of Chicago.

M. SUSAN BURNS is study director of the Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children and of the Committee on Early Childhood Pedagogy at the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. She was formerly on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, involved in direct service research with young children with emotional and developmental disabilities and their families. Her research interests include literacy development in young children, special and early childhood education, child development, and assessment and implementation of in-

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
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Page 399

tervention programs for students at risk of academic failure. She has a Ph.D. in psychology from Peabody College, Vanderbilt University.

BARBARA FOORMAN is a professor of pediatrics and director of the Center for Academic and Reading Skills at the University of Texas-Houston Health Science Center. She is also principal investigator of the Early Interventions Project of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. From 1978 to 1997 she was professor of educational psychology at the University of Houston. She has extensive research experience in the areas of reading and language development, phonological and orthographic awareness, and assessment of reading disabilities. She is the author of Acquisition of Reading Skills: Cultural Constraints and Cognitive Universals and has published widely in academic and professional journals. She is currently a consulting editor for the Journal of Learning Disabilities and a member of the New Standards Project. She has a Ph.D. in reading and language development from the University of California at Berkeley.

DOROTHY FOWLER, a national board-certified teacher, teaches first grade at Bailey's Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences in the public school system of Fairfax County, Virginia. She is an expert in the areas of early childhood education and reading acquisition. In addition to teaching graduate courses in beginning reading strategies, she has taught children from diverse backgrounds in public school systems throughout the United States. She was a member of the Fairfax County Language Arts Development Team and is the author of the language arts resource guide, Primary Purposes. She has a B.A. in education from the University of Toledo and an M.A. in education from the University of New Mexico.

CLAUDE N. GOLDENBERG is an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at California State University, Long Beach, and a research psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has conducted extensive research in the fields of Spanish-speaking children's literacy development, home school connections

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
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to support academic achievement, and processes of school change and improvement. He is author or coauthor of numerous publications, including an article on first-grade Spanish reading improvement in Educational Researcher, for which he and coauthor Ronald Gallimore received the 1993 Albert J. Harris award from the International Reading Association. He is currently on the editorial boards of Elementary School Journal and Literacy, Teaching and Learning. He has previously served on the National Research Council/Institute of Medicine's Roundtable on Head Start Research. He has a Ph.D. in early childhood and developmental studies from the University of California at Los Angeles.

PEG GRIFFIN was senior research associate for the Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children and study director of the Committee on the Strategic Education Research Program Feasibility Study at the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. Her early research at the Center for Applied Linguistics focused on literacy education and teacher talk. With developmental cognitive scientists at the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, she focused on measurement methodology, teaching and learning of math and science, and the use of new technologies. She has a Ph.D. in linguistics from Georgetown University.

EDWARD J. KAME'ENUI is professor of special education and director of the Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement (IDEA) in the College of Education at the University of Oregon, where he currently directs or codirects six federal research and training grants. He is associate director of the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators (NCITE), a five-year project engaged in the design of high-quality educational tools. He has published extensively on the topics of the remediation of learning disabilities and the instruction of diverse learners, and he has authored or coauthored numerous college textbooks. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Reading Research Quarterly, Learning Disabilities Forum, and Scientific Study of Reading. He is a member of the research advisory team for the American Initiative on Reading

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
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and Writing sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. He has a Ph.D. in special education from the University of Oregon.

WILLIAM LABOV is a professor of linguistics and psychology as well as the director of the linguistics laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research interests within sociolinguistics include the development of African American Vernacular English, the effects of dialect differences on reading success, and the causes of increasing diversity among American dialects; his recent publications in these areas include Can Reading Failure Be Reversed? A Linguistic Approach to the Question and Principles of Linguistic Change. He is currently engaged in research for the Phonological Atlas of North America, funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, which maps geographic differences in the sound-to-spelling relationships among mainstream and minority communities. He has a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

RICHARD K. OLSON is a professor in the Psychology Department of the University of Colorado at Boulder and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics. He is also the associate director of the Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities funded by the National Institutes of Health. His research focuses on genetic and environmental influences on reading and language skills and on the computer-based remediation of deficits in these skills. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology and is vice-president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. He has a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Oregon.

ANNEMARIE SULLIVAN PALINCSAR holds Jean and Charles Walgreen Chair in Literacy at the University of Michigan's School of Education, where she prepares teachers, teacher educators, and researchers to work in heterogeneous classrooms. She has conducted extensive research on peer collaboration in problem-solving activity, instruction to promote self-regulation, the development of literacy

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
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among learners with special needs, and the use of literacy across the school day. She is an editor of the books, Strategic Teaching and Learning and Teaching Reading as Thinking. She received an early contribution award from the American Psychological Association in 1988 and one from the American Educational Research Association in 1991. In 1992 she was elected a fellow by the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities. Her cognition and instruction article on reciprocal teaching (coauthored with Ann Brown in 1984) is a citation classic. She has M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in special education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CHARLES A. PERFETTI is a professor of psychology and linguistics, chairman of the Department of Psychology, and a senior scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh. He has published some 100 articles and chapters in the field of psycholinguistics, focusing on the process of reading and basic language processes, including both core psycholinguistics issues and reading ability. He authored the books Reading Ability and Text-Based Learning and Reasoning and edited the book Learning to Read: Basic Research and Its Implications. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

HOLLIS S. SCARBOROUGH is currently a visiting associate professor of psychology at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and a research scientist at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven. She is a developmental psychologist with expertise in reading disabilities, language acquisition, and the cognitive and linguistic underpinnings of literacy development and dyslexia. Her published work includes many articles on the preschool antecedents of reading disabilities, on the prediction of reading achievement, on the assessment of children's language abilities, and on the literacy habits and skills of adolescents and adults. She is associate editor of the Annals of Dyslexia and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Learning Disabilities, Developmental Psychology, and Applied Psycholinguistics. She has a Ph.D. in psychology from New York University.

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
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Page 403

SALLY SHAYWITZ is a professor of pediatrics and codirector of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention.  Her research has examined learning and particularly reading from a broad perspective, including epidemiologic, definitional, cognitive, and neurobiological domains. She is principal investigator of the Connecticut Longitudinal Study, a sample survey of schoolchildren being followed from kindergarten (1983) to the present (1998), in addition to coleading the Yale Neurodevelopmental Cognitive Group. She uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the functional organization of the brain for higher cognitive functions, including reading. She has reported on sex differences in brain organization for language in Nature and on differences in the functional organization of the brain between dyslexic and nonimpaired readers in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition, she has authored reviews of dyslexia for Scientific American and the New England Journal of Medicine. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Learning Disabilities, Learning Disability Quarterly, and the Journal of Women's Health. She has an M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and was the recipient of the 1995 distinguished alumnus award of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

KEITH STANOVICH is a professor of applied psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. His research interests involve the areas of cognitive processes involved in reading and reading disabilities. He is the author of How to Think Straight About Psychology (Fifth Edition), and he edited Children's Reading and the Development of Phonological Awareness. He has served as the associate editor of Merrill-Palmer Quarterly for a decade and is a member of eight other editorial boards, including Reading Research Quarterly. He has twice received the Albert J. Harris award from the International Reading Association and in 1995 was elected to the Reading Hall of Fame. In 1996 he received the Oscar Causey Award from the National Reading Conference for contributions to research. In 1997 he was given the Sylvia Scribner Award from the American Association of Educa-

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
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Page 404

tional Research. He is a fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society. He has a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan.

DOROTHY STRICKLAND is the state of New Jersey professor of reading at Rutgers University. She was formerly the Arthur I. Gates professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University. A former classroom teacher, reading consultant, and learning disabilities specialist, she is a past president of the International Reading Association. Her areas of expertise include early literacy and literature-based reading and writing. Included among her publications are Families: Poems Celebrating the African American Experience, The Administration and Supervision of Reading Programs, Language Literacy and the Child, and Emerging Literacy. She was the 1994 recipient of the NCTE Rewey Belle Inglis Award for outstanding woman in the teaching of English. Her latest book, Teaching Phonics Today, is published by the International Reading Association. She has a Ph.D. from New York University.

SAM STRINGFIELD is principal research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Center for the Social Organization of Schools. He also codirects there the Systemic and Policy Studies section of the Center for Research on Education of Students Placed at Risk. His work involves the areas of national and international issues in school effects, educational program improvement processes, compensatory education, and systemic and policy effects on students placed at risk. He is a founding coeditor of the Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk and is also an executive committee member at large of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement. He has a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Temple University.

ELIZABETH SULZBY is a professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan and recently was a visiting professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands. At Michigan she is affiliated with the Combined Program in Education and Psychology and the Center for Human Growth and Development. In addition to articles

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
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Page 405

in research journals and research summaries in handbooks (Reading Research; English Language Arts; Early Childhood), her numerous publications include the influential book, Emergent Literacy: Writing and Reading (with William H. Teale). Her research covers issues of in-home mother-child interaction with books (with A.G. Bus and Marinus H. van IJzendoorn), emergent reading, emergent writing, early language impairment (with Joan Kaderavek), and the transitions into conventional reading and writing. She is currently involved in research with Sally Lubeck looking at parent-teacher-researcher collaboration in Head Start. She is a past president of Literacy Development and Young Children, a special-interest group of the International Reading Association; she is currently on the Primary Literacy Panel of New Standards and is conducting research as part of the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement. She has a Ph.D. in reading education from the University of Virginia.

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
×
Page 397
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
×
Page 398
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
×
Page 399
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
×
Page 400
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
×
Page 401
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
×
Page 402
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
×
Page 403
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
×
Page 404
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches." National Research Council. 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6023.
×
Page 405
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While most children learn to read fairly well, there remain many young Americans whose futures are imperiled because they do not read well enough to meet the demands of our competitive, technology-driven society. This book explores the problem within the context of social, historical, cultural, and biological factors.

Recommendations address the identification of groups of children at risk, effective instruction for the preschool and early grades, effective approaches to dialects and bilingualism, the importance of these findings for the professional development of teachers, and gaps that remain in our understanding of how children learn to read. Implications for parents, teachers, schools, communities, the media, and government at all levels are discussed.

The book examines the epidemiology of reading problems and introduces the concepts used by experts in the field. In a clear and readable narrative, word identification, comprehension, and other processes in normal reading development are discussed.

Against the background of normal progress, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children examines factors that put children at risk of poor reading. It explores in detail how literacy can be fostered from birth through kindergarten and the primary grades, including evaluation of philosophies, systems, and materials commonly used to teach reading.

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