IES Blog

Institute of Education Sciences

From Fellow to Funded: Former IES Postdoctoral Fellows Funded as Principal Investigators

A group of young adults bumping fists

As part of our Spotlight on IES Training Programs series, IES is proud to showcase five former IES postdoctoral fellows who are now principal investigators for grants funded in FY 2020. The goal of the NCER and NCSER postdoctoral training programs is to prepare scholars to conduct rigorous, relevant education and special education research. As the following examples demonstrate, IES fellows are contributing to evidence-based education in a wide range of academic domains and are addressing the needs of students, teachers, and families through their innovative measurement, exploratory, development, and evaluation work.

 

Dr. Crystal Bishop (IES Fellow at the University of Florida until 2016) will lead Tools for Families. This project will develop and pilot test a new component for an existing intervention that aims to improve outcomes for young children with disabilities in preschool programs. The existing program is called Evaluating Embedded Instruction for Early Learning (EIEL) and already includes tools to help teachers. In this new study, Dr. Bishop will create an additional component that helps teachers engage students’ families in implementing EIEL strategies.

 

Dr. Joseph Nese (IES Fellow at the University of Oregon until 2011) will lead A Comprehensive Measure of Reading Fluency: Uniting and Scaling Accuracy, Rate, and Prosody. This project aims to develop and validate an automated scoring system of oral reading fluency for students in grades 2 to 4 to better identify students in need of reading interventions and better evaluate reading interventions and builds off a previous grant Dr. Nese received as PI, Measuring Oral Reading Fluency: Computerized Oral Reading Evaluation (CORE) (R305A140203).

 

Dr. David Purpura (IES Fellow at the University of Illinois until 2012) will lead Reading and Playing With Math: Promoting Preschoolers' Math Language Through Picture Books and Play Activities. This program will develop, refine, and evaluate a new math language intervention, Reading and Playing with Math (RP-Math). RP-Math will leverage the language instruction using storybooks and mathematics instruction.

 

Dr. Rachel Rosen (IES Fellow at the University of Michigan until 2014) will lead Choice and Information: The Impact of Technology-Based Career Advising Tools on High School Students' CTE Choices and Academic Performance. This project will evaluate  two widely used technology-based career advising tools for secondary school students, Naviance and YouScience, to see whether and how these tools influence student thinking about career options, career and technical education (CTE) coursework and work-based learning options, and decisions about CTE pathways and programs of study.

 

Dr. Candace Walkington (IES Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison until 2013) will lead Exploring Collaborative Embodiment for Learning (EXCEL): Understanding Geometry Through Multiple Modalities. This program will explore how different types multisensory experiences and modes of collaboration affect students' geometric reasoning. The researchers will leverage augmented reality (AR) technology to see if different ways of engaging with content (such as holograms, tablet-based, or paper-based images) lead to different learning outcomes.

 


This blog was written by Shirley Liu, virtual intern and an English/Anthropology & Sociology double major at Lafayette College, and Dr. Meredith Larson, program officer for NCER postdoctoral training.