Mary Brownell

The purpose of this study is to develop Project Coordinate, a professional development program and set of tools designed to improve general and special education teachers' ability to plan for and enact coordinated, evidence-based tiered reading instruction (i.e., in multisyllabic word decoding, morphological awareness, contextual analysis, and summarization). Project Coordinate uses online content modules and a lesson study process to improve teacher knowledge and practice. In addition to su...

The purpose of this project was to examine the validity of Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching (FFT) for use with special education teachers. The FFT is commonly used to evaluate general and special education teacher instruction, yet most of the research on this tool has only been with general education teachers. Moreover, the extent to which the FFT captures evidence-based instructional approaches for students with disabilities has not been investigated. As such, the goal of the cu...

The Principal Investigator (PI) will further develop his skills in the use of multi-level modeling statistics and item response theory, the development of reliable and valid measures of teacher implementation and practices, and working with practitioners to design and implement professional development (PD) activities while conducting related research activities. Using a multimedia approach, the research project aims to develop and pilot test professional development processes to improve voc...

The literacy struggles of students with learning disabilities are well documented as persistent and significant. For example, the 2007 NAEP found that only 13% of 4th grade students with disabilities were proficient in reading, while in 8th grade this proficiency rate was down to 7%. In large part, the literacy problems of students with LD are due to a lack of high quality, research-based reading instruction and generally poor teaching practices. Research has found that special education ...

In this project, the researchers' goal was to identify professional development activities and coaching practices associated with Reading First efforts that predicted teacher and student outcomes. The teacher outcomes of interest were knowledge of reading instruction and use of instructional practices congruent with research on reading. The student outcomes of interest were oral reading fluency, reading comprehension, and phonological awareness skills.