Jade Wexler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor

Dr. Wexler’s scholarship focuses on improving literacy instruction for adolescents with reading difficulties and disabilities through innovative teacher professional development and coaching.

As principal investigator of Project CALI (Content Area Literacy Instruction), funded by the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences (IES), Dr. Wexler and her colleagues at University of Connecticut and Vanderbilt University developed and evaluated a middle school co-teaching and literacy professional development model designed to improve collaboration between general (content-area) and special education teachers and enhance reading achievement and content-area knowledge of students with disabilities. 

The purpose of PACT Plus, a model demonstration project funded by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) to Dr. Wexler (co-PI) and her colleagues at The University of Texas at Austin, was to build a school-wide literacy model in four middle schools. Researchers worked closely with practitioners in the schools to provide intensive professional development and coaching to teachers. Eventually, the research team scaled back support in an effort to transition ownership of the model to the practitioners. During PACT Plus, it became clear that the field could benefit from a more systematic literacy coaching model designed to support teachers’ varying levels of skill and will. Therefore, the team began to develop such a model (i.e., AIM Coaching). 

Dr. Wexler and her colleagues at The University of Texas at Austin were just awarded two more federally funded grants to further the work on AIM Coaching. First, Dr. Wexler (PI) and her colleagues were awarded a $1.4M (2020-2024) Development and Innovation grant from IES to refine and rigorously evaluate the efficacy of AIM Coaching. Second, Dr. Wexler (PI) and her colleagues were awarded a $1.6M grant from OSEP (2020-2024) to answer questions related to implementation and sustainability of AIM Coaching under routine conditions. The OSEP project will include an administrator component, and researchers will also create a virtual version of AIM Coaching.

Sarah McGrew, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Dr. McGrew researches educational responses to the spread of online misinformation. Her research focuses on young people’s civic online reasoning—how they search for and evaluate online information on contentious social and political topics—and how schools can better support students to learn effective evaluation strategies. As part of this work, Dr. McGrew studies how best to support teachers to learn online reasoning themselves and design lessons for their students.

“Many young people report that social media is their top source for news,” said Dr. McGrew. “We need to help students develop skills to find reliable information so they don’t fall prey to misinformation when they’re online.”

In one of her studies, high schoolers learned strategies for evaluating online information that professional fact checkers used. The study, which showed an improvement in students’ ability to evaluate information after learning fact-checking strategies, was published by Computers and Education. As phones and computers give unparalleled access to information, deciding what to trust is critical for making personal, community and political decisions. It’s the responsibility of schools to teach students strategies for navigating digital information, Dr. McGrew said.

“If we’re turning to the internet for information, we have to be able to evaluate it. I think as part of the civic mission of schools, it’s our responsibility to help students learn how to deal with this and take advantage of the strengths of having access to so much information while avoiding its pitfalls.”

Tamara Clegg, Ph.D.
Associate Professor

With a joint appointment between the College of Education and the iSchool, Dr. Clegg works to develop new technology and learning experiences that engage children and communities with STEM.

With Dr. Jon Froehlich at the University of Washington and their interdisciplinary research team, Dr. Clegg drew from her expertise in education and technology to develop an e-textile shirt that helps school-aged children learn about anatomy and physiology. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the BodyVis shirt contains sensors and displays children’s live body data so they can see how their bodies work during physical activity. As a child sporting BodyVis moves, the shirt lights up in accordance to the their heart and breathing rate.

“The big goal is to see how these types of technologies can transform learning experiences that children are able to have,” Tamara Clegg said to The Baltimore Sun in an article about the innovative project.

  [A UMD graduate student interacts with the BodyVis shirt. Photo: John T. Consoli.]

Center for Early Childhood Education and Intervention

Christy Tirrell-Corbin, Ph.D.
Clinical Professor, CECEI Director

As Director of the Center for Early Childhood Education and Intervention, Dr. Tirrell-Corbin conducts research on issues of race and culture in early childhood classrooms. Through facilitating professional development on issues of race in schools, her work aims to help teachers be more responsive to the culturally-specific needs of children and families. For example, Dr. Tirrell-Corbin and Pennsylvania State University colleagues are implementing a research study on trauma-sensitive curriculum in early childhood classrooms. Funded by the Bainum Family Foundation, her curricular work is at the forefront of helping educators to support young children who have experienced trauma, such as that caused by school shootings and the pandemic.


Dr. Tirrell-Corbin also leads the Children Study Their World project, an all-digital preschool curriculum for four-year-olds, funded by the Maryland State Department of Education and in partnership with the Smithsonian Museum. This in-depth, project-based learning curriculum includes strategies for teaching English Language Learners and students with disabilities. Already being piloted in hundreds of Maryland classrooms, the curriculum will ultimately be free-of-charge to prekindergarten classrooms in Maryland.

 

Ebony Terrell Shockley, Ph.D.
Associate Clinical Professor and Executive Director of Teacher Education

Funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, The Efficacy of Toggle Talk is a multi-site cluster randomized control trial underway in Baltimore City schools. A collaboration with the UMD’s Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, researchers are also examining teacher attitudes. The project is an efficacy study of a curriculum designed to improve reading and help early learners become bi-dialectually fluent by using contrastive analysis to teach appropriate language choices. Toggle Talk has been shown to improve standardized reading scores in pilot studies. The Toggle Talk team also focuses on developing a framework for an asset-based approach for teachers working with African American language-speaking students.

“An asset-based approach means that if the student speaks English differently and makes what the teacher says is a mistake, that the teacher doesn’t stereotype the student. Instead, the teacher supports the student in choosing language that is situationally-appropriate,” said Dr. Ebony Terrell Shockley, Co-Principal Investigator.

The research team  helps teachers provide students skills to switch between informal home language and more formal school language. For instance, teachers may draw a comparison in language and clothing choices in different settings.

“In schools where uniforms are required, we might make the point to a student that they speak or dress differently at home vs. school and share that neither example is better than the other,” Dr. Terrell Shockley said.

Dr. Terrell Shockley studies underrepresented groups and their teachers in STEM, literacy, and exceptional education contexts. Her research aims to center the voices of marginalized learners, primarily those who identify as Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC). In addition to Toggle Talk, she is a Co-PI of an NSF-funded project and USDE-funded project, both are designed to increase the number of underrepresented groups in science disciplines. 

Ayanna Baccus, Ph.D.
Associate Clinical Professor

A summer reading clinic at a local elementary school in Prince George’s County, Maryland, provides teaching opportunities for master’s students in our reading specialist certification program. The summer reading clinic, which helps prepare graduate students for reading specialist roles, provides supplemental instruction for elementary and middle school students who struggle to read well.

“The reading clinic gives our candidates hands-on experience teaching reading,” Dr. Baccus, reading clinic director, said. “They try out different literacy interventions and respond to different needs presented in the classroom. Candidates work in pairs—a hallmark of our program—as they teach and assess together. They collaborate for instruction and they coach one another as well.” 

The program is a partnership between the university and the City of College Park Youth, Family, and Senior Services. Partially funded by a community grant, the program is provided at no-cost to most students from the local area.

 “Literacy is an area that cuts across other content areas,” Dr. Baccus explained. “To do well in science and social studies, you need to be able to read and write well; no matter the subject, there is a literacy component.”