Language and Literacy Research Center (LLRC)

Project LEARN is a partnership between the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) and Anne Arundel County Public Schools (AACPS).  This longitudinal study seeks to explore the skills that contribute to students’ reading comprehension achievement and how these skills may differ for English Learners (ELs) and English Monolingual students (EMs). The goal of Project LEARN is to study whether ELs’ reading comprehension is rooted in standard language-related skills like vocabulary and inference-making, or other factors such as motivation and executive function (EF) skills to determine effective targets for intervention for students in Grades 1 to 4. In order to study the relationships among language, EF skills, reading motivation and reading comprehension a series of assessments are administered to approximately 1,200 students in the fall and spring each academic year.

Time Frame: Three years 

Principal Investigator: Dr. Ana Taboada Barber, Professor of Special Education and Co-Director of the Language and Literacy Research Center

Co-Principal Investigator: Dr. Kelly Cartwright, Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Teacher Preparation at Christopher Newport University 

Co-Principal Investigator: Dr. Laura Stapleton, Professor of Measurement, Statistics, and Evaluation

Project Manager: Peet Smith, Fourth-year doctoral student in the Special Education program in the department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education (CHSE) at UMD. 

Project Manager: Casey Archer, Third-year doctoral student in Education Policy program in the department of Teaching, Learning, Policy and Leadership (TLPL) at UMD.