Objectives

1. To develop an interdisciplinary team composed of scientists from diverse perspectives to partner with a large, suburban school district in developing interdisciplinary approaches to large-scale educational interventions.

2. To implement a large-scale intervention involving first graders at-risk for reading problems that includes: a) early identification; b) a controlled study of the efficacy of the intervention; and c) an evaluation of research-based professional development that utilizes ICT.

3. To use magnetoencephaolography to obtain brain activation profiles on a subset of children in the intervention study to evaluate: a) functional neural changes that occur in the brain as children in Grade 1 learn to read; and b) functional neural responses to the intervention.

4. To evaluate the influence of text decodeability on student outcomes and subsequent learning in relation to lexical and text characteristics as they interact with instructional variables.

5. To provide an administrative/data management/staff development component that manages the 3 primary projects and facilitates the development of the interdisciplinary team and its partnership with the school district.

6. To use ICT to disseminate research-based information on educational practice.

Responsiveness to IERI

• We address the long-term goal of the IERI by implementing and evaluating a large-scale educational intervention with an explicit goal of informing education policy and practice

• In the area of reading, we address all three areas stipulated in the IERI, including school readiness for learning to read, K-3 learning in reading, and the education of teachers in content knowledge and science underlying reading skills and their development

• We explicitly explore the use of ICT as part of the educational intervention and as part of teacher education

• We provide for collaboration across disciplines interested in reading skills development, including mechanisms for communication and cross-fertilization

• We explicitly attempt to link evaluation of educational practice to scientific principles in educational research, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and the neural sciences

• We provide methodologies for data management, research design, and statistical analysis that maximize the use of information and computer technologies for large-scale educational interventions and which enhance the evaluation of nested student, teacher, school, and community factors that influence growth in reading skills

• The studies reflect the reciprocal relationship of practice and research

• strategies for learning reading skills

• enhanced understanding of the fundamental processes (cognitive, neural, and linguistic) underlying the learning of reading skills

• the design and implementation of experimental studies that address the effectiveness, sustainability, and scalability of specific educational interventions, including use of technology

• incorporation of content, pedagogy, technology, and cognitive science applied to teacher education

• identification of factors and conditions underlying effective use of technology by teachers of reading

• observational studies that permit identification of factors underlying successful teaching

• evaluation of factors that impinge on systemic issues at national, state, district, school, and classroom levels in the area of reading

• initial exploration of ICT for teacher education, disseminating information, and facilitating learning in the classroom