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Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research (2012)

Chapter: Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
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Appendix A

Biographical Sketches of
Committee Members and Staff

Alan M. Lesgold (Chair) is dean of the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to this position, he served as the executive associate director of the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh from 1997 to 2000. Other previous positions at the University of Pittsburgh include professor of psychology and intelligent systems, codirector of the Graduate Program in Intelligent Systems Studies and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Director of the Learning Skills Research Unit at the Research and Development Center. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) Divisions of Experimental Psychology, Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology, and Educational Psychology. He was secretary/treasurer of the Cognitive Science Society from 1988 to 1997 and continues to serve on its board of governors. In 1995, he was awarded the Educom Medal by Educom and the APA for contributions to educational technology. With colleagues, he developed a technology of intelligently coached learning-by-doing over the period from 1986 to 1999. More recently, he and colleagues developed a technology for supporting rich collaborative engagement of students and professionals with complex issues and complex bodies of knowledge, including professional development for teachers. He is a national associate of the National Research Council of the National Academies and was a member of the Board on Testing and Assessment from 1993 through 1998. He has a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University (1971).

Karen S. Cook is the Ray Lyman Wilbur professor of sociology, director of the Institute for Social Science Research (IRiSS), and vice provost for fac-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
×

ulty development and diversity at Stanford University. Her current research focuses on social exchange theory and issues of trust in social relations and networks. She has studied power-dependence relations and physician-patient trust, including how interactions between physicians and patients with different racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds affect health outcomes. She is the coeditor of the Russell Sage Foundation Trust Series and has published on trust in the series (Cooperation Without Trust?, eTrust: Forming Relationships in the Online World, and Whom Do You Trust?). She is the coeditor of the Annual Review of Sociology, and in 2004, she received the American Sociological Association’s Cooley-Mead Award for Career Contributions to Social Psychology. She was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1998-1999) and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2007. She has a Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University.

Aydin Yücesan Durgunoğlu is professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. She conducts research on the literacy development of adults and children in both monolingual and multilingual contexts, including among Spanish- and Hmong-speaking adults. Her work has focused on cross-linguistic transfer and the cognitive underpinnings of spoken and written language development. She has coedited two books on literacy development in multilingual contexts. She was one of the developers of the Mother Child Education Foundation’s adult literacy program in Turkey. This program has been implemented in 18 provinces and has reached over 100,000 people in the last 15 years. She and her colleagues have been continuously evaluating and revising the program and are currently developing its web-based version. The program won a UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize in 2006. She serves as an associate editor of Applied Psycholinguistics. She has a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Purdue University.

Arthur C. Graesser is professor of experimental and cognitive psychology, adjunct professor in computer science, and codirector of the Institute of Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis. His primary research interests are in cognitive science, discourse processing, and the learning sciences. More specific interests include knowledge representation, question asking and answering, tutoring, text comprehension, inference generation, conversation, reading, education, memory, emotions, computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. He served as editor of the journal Discourse Processes (1996-2005) and is the current editor of Journal of Educational Psychology (2009-2014). In addition to publishing many articles in journals, books, and conference proceedings, he has written two books and edited nine books (including Handbook of Dis-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
×

course Processes and Handbook of Metacognition in Education). He and his colleagues have designed, developed, and tested software in learning, language, and discourse technologies, including AutoTutor, Auto-Tutor-Lite, MetaTutor, GuruTutor, HURA Advisor, SEEK Web Tutor, Operation ARIES!, Coh-Metrix, Question Understanding Aid (QUAID), QUEST, and Point & Query. He has a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California, San Diego.

Steve Graham is the Currey-Ingram professor of special education and literacy at Vanderbilt Peabody College. His research interests include learning disabilities, writing instruction and writing development, and the development of self-regulation. He is the past editor of Exceptional Children and Contemporary Educational Psychology. He is the coauthor of the Handbook of Writing Research, Handbook of Learning Disabilities, Writing Better, and Making the Writing Process Work. He is also the lead author of an Institute of Education Sciences’s practice guide (under development) on effective writing for students in the elementary grades. In 2001, he was elected a fellow of the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities. He is the recipient of career research awards from the Council for Exceptional Children and Special Education Research Interest Group in the American Educational Research Association. He has an an Ed.D. in special education from the University of Kansas.

Noel Gregg is distinguished research professor at the University of Georgia. She is a faculty member in the Department of Psychology and the Department of Communication Sciences and Special Education, as well as the director of the Regents’ Center for Learning Disorders. Her areas of specialization include adolescents and adults with learning disabilities and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), accommodations, alternative media, assessment, written language disorders, and test validity. She has been a national expert witness for several key legal cases pertaining to accommodating adults with learning disabilities and AD/HD on high-stakes tests. She has published four books, including Assessing and Accommodating the Adolescent and Adult Populations with Learning Disabilities and AD/HD, as well as numerous scientific articles and book chapters. She has a Ph.D. in communication disorders from Northwestern University.

Joyce L. Harris is associate professor in the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the Language and Cognitive Aging Laboratory. Her current research involves the study of text comprehension in aging, particularly the comprehension of text-based health information. Harris teaches courses in acquired neurogenic language disorders in adults and the sociocultural

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
×

bases of communication. She is coeditor of, and chapter contributor to, Literacy in African American Communities. Other print scholarship focuses on normal and disordered communicative process across the human life span. Harris has served as an associate editor for language for the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, chair of the National Black Association for Speech-Language and Hearing’s board of directors, and as a member of the publication board of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, of which she is a fellow and life member. Harris holds a Certificate of Clinical Competence in Speech-Language Pathology (CC-SLP) from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Glynda A. Hull is professor of education in language, literacy, and culture at the University of California, Berkeley. She has also been professor of English education in the Department of Teaching and Learning of the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. Her expertise is in adult cognition, learning, education, and adult identity formation. Her work focuses on workplace literacy, adult writing in and out of schools, use of multimedia technologies with at-risk students, and understanding the roles that literacy and new information technologies play in the workplace, particularly for low-income and at-risk populations. She has expertise in the use of qualitative and ethnographic methods. Her books include School’s Out! Bridging Out-of-School Literacies with Classroom Practice and Changing Work, Changing Workers: Critical Perspectives on Language, Literacy, and Skills. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh.

Maureen W. Lovett is professor of paediatrics and medical sciences at the University of Toronto, and a senior scientist in the Neurosciences and Mental Health Program at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. She is founder and director of the hospital’s Learning Disabilities Research Program, a clinical research unit dedicated to developing and evaluating different forms of remediation for children and youth with developmental reading disabilities. Her research program is devoted to the study of reading disorders in children and adolescents and methods of intervention for their effective remediation. She is recognized internationally for contributions to reading disabilities research and for the development of interventions that address basic learning problems that interfere with the ability to read. She studies individual differences in response to intervention among children with language-based learning disabilities and developmental neurocognitive disorders, as well as methodological and training issues in the rehabilitation of neurocognitive disorders. She completed postdoctoral training in neuropsychology at the Hospital for Sick Children. She has a Ph.D. in psychology from McGill University.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
×

Daryl F. Mellard is associate research professor in the School of Education and director of the Division of Adult Studies, Center for Research on Learning, at the University of Kansas. His research focuses on education and employment issues for adults and interventions to improve adult literacy in adult education and other programs, such as Job Corps. As coprincipal investigator of the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities, he directed its review of Responsiveness to Intervention and conducted studies of education, social, and employment issues for adults with disabilities. He just completed a 5-year study to develop, implement, and study the effectiveness of adult literacy interventions for low-literate adults, including the role of decoding, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension instruction and explicitness of instruction. A current development study focuses on developing literacy skills of Job Corps participants in vocational trades. He has served as a cochair to the Kansas Coalition on Adult Literacy and Learning Disabilities and on the board of directors for a local independent living center. He has a Ph.D. in education from the University of Kansas.

Elizabeth B. Moje is associate dean for research and the Arthur F. Thurnau professor of literacy, language, and culture in educational studies at the University of Michigan. She also serves as a faculty associate in the university’s Institute for Social Research and a faculty affiliate in Latino/a studies. Her work focuses on adolescents and their development of literacy skills in such areas as social studies and science. She is an expert on adolescent identities related to literacy and how these develop through participating in literacy practices of homes and communities and in ethnic, popular, and school cultures. She was a member of the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Adolescent Literacy Council and research chair of the National Conference on Research on Language and Literacy. She also served as a reading expert on the Steering Committee for the Program for International Student Assessment and is a member of the William T. Grant Foundation’s Scholar Award Selection Committee. Her books include Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power; Constructions of Literacy: Studies of Literacy Teaching and Learning In and Out of Secondary Schools; and All The Stories We Have: Adolescents’ Insights on Literacy and Learning in Secondary School. She is coeditor of the Handbook of Reading Research, Volume IV. She has a Ph.D. in literacy and language from Purdue University.

Kenneth Pugh is president and director of research at Haskins Laboratories, a Yale University–affiliated interdisciplinary institute dedicated to the investigation of the biological basis of language and human communication. He also holds the appointment of professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Connecticut, and is associate professor in the Department of Linguistics at Yale University and the director of the Yale

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
×

Reading Center. His primary research interests are in the areas of cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics. He was among the first scientists to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to reveal brain activity associated with reading and reading disabilities. His current research employs combined behavioral and neurobiological measures in the study of typical and atypical reading and language development, with a particular focus on learning and plasticity in people with reading disabilities. He has a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the Ohio State University.

Chris Schatschneider is professor in the Department of Psychology at Florida State University. His expertise is in early reading development in children and learning disabilities. His research focuses on individual differences in the development of reading and the discovery and measurement of skills needed to acquire reading, which can be used to identify children who are at risk for reading problems. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in statistics and research methodology at the University of Houston and is an expert in quantitative methods, statistics, and research design. His interests include multilevel modeling, growth-curve analyses, theory building and testing, intervention design in field settings, and item-response theory. He serves as an associate director at the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University; and he was a member of the National Early Literacy Panel, which synthesized scientific research on the development of literacy in children. He has a Ph.D. in psychology from Case Western Reserve University.

Mark S. Seidenberg is the Hilldale professor and the Donald O. Hebb professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin. He is a cognitive neuroscientist who studies language and reading. His work on language acquisition focuses on the role of statistical learning and the bases of age-related changes in the capacity to learn language (the critical period phenomenon). His reading research addresses the nature of skilled reading, how children learn to read, dyslexia, and the brain bases of reading, using the tools of modern cognitive neuroscience: behavioral experiments, computational models, and neuroimaging. His current work focuses on how language background affects early school achievement, reading achievement of low-income and minority children, and the role of home-school dialect differences in the “achievement gap.” He has published research articles in psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and education and was recently honored as one of the 250 most-cited researchers in the areas of psychology and psychiatry. Seidenberg is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Cognitive Science Society, and the Association for Psychological Science. He has a Ph.D. in psychology

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
×

from Columbia University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Reading.

Elizabeth A.L. Stine-Morrow is professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is a researcher in cognitive aging—examining how language comprehension and memory change through adulthood and how strategic and contextual factors contribute to the capacity for lifelong learning. She has served as associate editor for Memory and Cognition (2007-2009) and the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences (2009-2010) and is currently associate editor for Psychology and Aging. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the Gerontological Society of America. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development at the Duke Medical Center, a research scientist at Brandeis University, and on the faculty for many years at the University of New Hampshire. She has a Ph.D. in general-experimental psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Melissa Welch-Ross (Study Director) is senior program officer in the National Research Council’s Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Previously, she served as a special expert in research and policy analysis in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Division of Children and Youth Policy, of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She earlier launched and directed the Early Learning and School Readiness Research Program for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health. She has held faculty appointments at George Mason University and Georgia State University, where she conducted longitudinal research on early memory development and published other experiments on social cognition and memory. She has served terms as consulting editor for the journals Child Development (2002-2007) and Developmental Psychology (1999-2004) and was lead editor of the 2007 Handbook on Communicating and Disseminating Behavioral Science. She has a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Florida.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
×
Page 385
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
×
Page 386
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
×
Page 387
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
×
Page 388
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
×
Page 389
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
×
Page 390
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2012. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Options for Practice and Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13242.
×
Page 391
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A high level of literacy in both print and digital media is required for negotiating most aspects of 21st-century life, including supporting a family, education, health, civic participation, and competitiveness in the global economy. Yet, more than 90 million U.S. adults lack adequate literacy. Furthermore, only 38 percent of U.S. 12th graders are at or above proficient in reading.

Improving Adult Literacy Instruction synthesizes the research on literacy and learning to improve literacy instruction in the United States and to recommend a more systemic approach to research, practice, and policy. The book focuses on individuals ages 16 and older who are not in K-12 education. It identifies factors that affect literacy development in adolescence and adulthood in general, and examines their implications for strengthening literacy instruction for this population. It also discusses technologies for learning that can assist with multiple aspects of teaching, assessment,and accommodations for learning.

There is inadequate knowledge about effective instructional practices and a need for better assessment and ongoing monitoring of adult students' proficiencies, weaknesses, instructional environments, and progress, which might guide instructional planning. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction recommends a program of research and innovation to validate, identify the boundaries of, and extend current knowledge to improve instruction for adults and adolescents outside school. The book is a valuable resource for curriculum developers, federal agencies such as the Department of Education, administrators, educators, and funding agencies.

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