The Conference on Early Learning at the UW
June 5-6, 2009
Friday and Saturday
UW Tower
Seattle, Washington
Innovative intervention ideas and important research advances on early learning are generated at UW through the work of individuals and centers dedicated to understanding development and learning processes and the factors that affect them. Participants in the conference will have the opportunity to get updated on latest advances from notable experts.
2009 Conference Co-Chairs
2009 Conference Chair
Patricia Wasley, Ed.D.
Dean and Professor College of Education
University of Washington
Under the leadership of Dean Pat Wasley the College of Education has supported important research on early learning, transfer into practice and major outreach efforts.
Dean of the College of Education at the University of Washington since 2000, Dr. Wasley has been an ardent and tireless advocate for the College and public education in general. Working with college faculty as well as colleagues across campus and with the P-12 community, Dr. Wasley has demonstrated vigorous, creative leadership to ensure that the College continues to expand its capacity to improve public education in Washington State, through its research, teaching, and its partnership activities.
A nationally recognized leader in education, Dr. Wasley has accumulated a substantial record of action-based research on the improvement of public education through teacher and administrator change and whole-school reform.
Dr. Wasley is the author of numerous articles and several books on school reform. Among her publications are Kids and School Reform (Jossey-Bass, 1997), which investigates the relationship between school change and students' academic achievement. Voices in Urban Education; and "Responsible Accountability and Teacher Learning," a chapter in Accountability Run Amok: Toward More Responsible Appraisal of Our Children and Their Schools (edited by K. Sirotnik).
Gail E. Joseph, Ph.D., Presenter and 2009 Conference Co-Chair
Assistant Professor, Early Childhood, and Family Studies
Educational Psychology
College of Education
University of Washington
Dr. Joseph's research interests include a) teacher perceptions and practices related to young children with challenging behavior, b) social-emotional curricula and instruction, and c) leadership development in the field of early care and education. She has had extensive experience as a Head Start teacher, teacher trainer, mental health specialist, and national consultant in promoting evidence-based, social emotional practices with young children.
2009 Conference Presenters
Virginia Berninger, Ph.D.
Professor of Educational Psychology (Learning Sciences)
Director of Literacy Trek and Multidisciplinary Learning Disabilities Center
Research Affiliate, Center on Human Development and Disability
(Coordinator, Research Emphasis Area on Learning Disabilities)
College of Education, University of Washington
Dr. Berninger's research focuses on normal variation in development of reading and writing; the relationships of reading and writing (written language) to listening and speaking (oral language); effective early intervention for reading and writing problems; prevention, problem solving consultation, and treatment of reading and writing disorders; brain differences between good writers and readers and individuals with writing or reading disabilities; and nature-nurture interactions in learning to read and write–how children with genetic or brain differences respond to specialized reading or writing instruction.
In a recent longitudinal study she has compared how children's writing develops differently for writing by pen versus writing by computer keyboard; how individual differences in different aspects of writing and reading are interrelated and change in their interrelationships at target developmental times; how training different components of the working memory architecture affects the orchestration of component processes in time in the reading or writing brain; and how good and poor writers differ during idea generation. Based on intriguing findings from these different studies, she is now investigating the writing route to reading in early and middle childhood.
Rebecca C. Cortes, Ph.D
Research Scientist
UW Psychology
Rebecca C. Cortes received her Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University. She was trained in Human Development and Family Studies with a focus on prevention science under the mentorship of Dr. Mark Greenberg at the Penn State Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development. During this time Dr. Cortes co-authored the PATHS Preschool® curriculum, a social and emotional school-based curriculum originally developed for children attending Head Start. The curriculum has been tested in two randomized-controlled trials, the most recent of which included an early literacy component.
Dr. Cortes's research focuses on the role of parents in the developmental integration of emotion and cognition in young children and its implications for early learning. Currently, she holds a position as research scientist in the psychology department at the University of Washington where she collaborates and is the project director on Dr. Liliana Lengua's Project 1, 2, 3 Go!, a longitudinal study that examines the development of effortful control in young children.
Her research interests include the emotional development of infants and young children, and the longitudinal relationship between maternal and child depression. Dr. Cortes lives in Seattle, Washington where she has a daughter and two grandchildren.
Adrian Cunard
College of Education
University of Washington
Adrian Cunard is a doctoral student in mathematics education. She is a former first grade teacher and most recently worked as a mathematics coach at Ardmore Elementary School. Her areas of interest include describing ambitious elementary mathematics instruction and the qualities of pre-service teacher preparation that would lead to such instruction.
Ellen Dissanayake, Ph.D
Affiliate Professor
School of Music
University of Washington
Ellen Dissanayake is a scholar, lecturer, and author of three books, What Is Art For?, Homo Aestheticus (with translations into Chinese and Korean), and Art and Intimacy. Combining her interests in the arts and evolutionary biology, and using insights drawn from fifteen years of living and working in nonwestern countries (Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, India, and Nigeria), she has developed a unique perspective that considers art to be a normal, natural, and necessary component of our evolved nature as humans. She has held Distinguished Visiting Professorships at Ball State University in Indiana, the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and most recently at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Western Australia. Additionally, she has taught at the National Arts School in Papua New Guinea, the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, Sarah Lawrence College, and the New School for Social Research in New York City. She lives in Seattle where she is Affiliate Professor in the School of Music at the University of Washington.
Julia Gest, M.Ed
Ms. Gest received her undergraduate degree in education and psychology from Boston University , a masters degree in early childhood and elementary education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a reading specialist certificate from Arizona State University. Julia has taught kindergarten and first grade, as well as preschool and pre-K. She has also worked as a reading specialist in a variety of settings.
Her experiences in the classroom helped her develop a growing interest in how children's social emotional development and academic learning are intertwined. She has worked on several research projects developing curriculum, training and supervising reading tutors, and working with struggling readers. Over the past six years she has worked at Pennsylvania State University as a program developer, language and literacy coach and PATHS trainer on a number of projects that focus on children's early literacy learning and social emotional development.
John Haskin, PhD.
Director of Education
IslandWood
Dr. Haskin has a particular interest in early childhood learning in the outdoors with an emphasis on teacher development. Over the last 29 years, Dr. Haskin has directed in-residence environmental education programs in North Carolina, Ohio, Wyoming and New York. His areas of program expertise include school programming, adult education, cultural history education and inquiry science. He has coordinated national and international conferences on environmental education and the role of education in environment and development issues. Dr. Haskin has a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education and Master of Science in Curriculum and Instruction, both from Minnesota State University. He completed his PhD in Environmental Studies at the Antioch New England. His research areas include novice teacher development and qualitative inquiry.
Elham Kazemi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
College of Education
University of Washington
Dr. Kazemi's work centers on mathematics education. Her interests include mathematics literacy, socio-cultural analyses of learning and change, teacher development, and school reform initiatives. Current research includes LTP: Learning in, from and for Teaching Practice, which aims to redesign mathematics teacher preparation; RMLL: Researching Mathematics Leader Learning, which focuses on what happens during professional development when teachers do mathematics together; as well as Stories Count: Students' Experiences Across Mathematics & Literacy, where she and Elizabeth Dutro at UC Boulder and a public school teacher, Ruth Balf, followed children in one fifth grade classroom across two years in order to examine how children are intellectually and socially positioned in the classroom across the subject areas of mathematics and literacy.
Jean F. Kelly, Ph.D.
Co-Director, Center on Infant Mental Health and Development
Professor
Family and Child Nursing
School of Nursing
University of Washington
Dr. Kelly's research focuses on how early care-giving affects children's development. She is Co-Director, Center on Infant Mental Health and Development at the University of Washington. Dr. Kelly has directed research and training programs focused on young children's social and emotional health for over two decades, and has published numerous articles and chapters on promoting children's social and emotional development. She developed and published a research-and practice-based preventive intervention program called Promoting First Relationships, to enhance caregiver-child relationships. She directs NCAST-AVENUW Programs which is also dedicated to promoting young children's social-emotional development through responsive, nurturing caregiver-child relationships.
Liliana J. Lengua, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
UW Department of Psychology
Dr. Lengua's work focuses on community psychology and prevention interventions for children. Her research has examined children who experience major stressors, such as parental divorce or socioeconomic risk, with emphases in developmental psychopathology and quantitative methods.
Dr. Lengua's work has focused on individual differences in children's responses to risk and has investigated the roles of children's reactivity and self-regulation as mediators and moderators of the effects of risk on children's adjustment, with the goal of identifying children who are vulnerable to developing problems, as well as children who are resilient in the face of risk. Her most current research probes the effects of low income on the development of executive functioning in preschool children, investigation family, parenting, and physiological factors that account for the effects of socioeconomic disadvantage.
She is an investigator on several federally funded projects examining the development of executive functioning (NICHD), the effects of low income on preschool children's cognitive and social development (NICHD), neighborhood, family and peer effects on adolescent substance use (NIDA), parenting in the context of domestic violence (NIMH), and childhood risk factors for the emergence of adult mental health problems (NIDA).
Felice Orlich, Ph.D.
Clinical Associate
Psychiatry
Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Seattle
Dr. Orlich has previously served as Associate Director of the Autism Center at the University of Washington. She as extensive clinical experience working with individuals with disabilities and their families including individuals with autism. She is especially experienced in the use of Group Social Skills Therapy – which is used to teach children and adolescents with Asperger Syndrome pivotal social skills, increase their sense of affiliation with others, and improve self-esteem. Dr. Orlich is skilled in neuropsychological assessment, treatment of co-morbid challenges and social skills.
Andrew Shouse, Ph.D.
Associate Director
UW Institute for Science and Mathematics Education
Andrew Shouse is an education researcher whose interests include teacher learning, science education in formal and informal settings, and communication of educational research to policy and practice audiences. A former elementary and middle grades teacher and science center administrator, Dr. Shouse joined the University of Washington as Associate Director of the Institute for Science and Mathematics Education in September 2008. Previously Shouse was Senior Program Officer with the National Research Council in Washington, DC where he served as director and co-director, respectively, of the consensus studies that resulted in Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits and Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. He is author (with Sarah Michaels and Heidi Schweingruber) of Ready, Set, Science! Putting Research to Work in K-8 Science Classrooms, a 2008 Association of Educational Publishers Distinguished Achievement Award winner. Shouse serves on a number of advisory committees and boards of scientific and educational organizations including: the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, the Pacific Science Center (Seattle), Center for Inquiry Science of the Institute for Systems Biology, and The NSF Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology at the University of California-Davis. Shouse completed his Ph.D. in Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy at Michigan State University in 2005.
Carolyn H. Webster-Stratton, Ph.D., FAAN, FAPA
Professor, Family and Child Nursing
Director, Parents and Children Research Clinic
Adjunct Professor, Psychology
Affiliate, Center on Human Development and Disability
University of Washington
Dr. Webster–Stratton has developed research-based and validated parent, teacher and child training programs known as "The Incredible Years Series" that are designed to prevent and treat behavior problems in young children (ages 3-10 years) and to promote social and emotional competence. Aspects of these programs include child management strategies, social, emotional and academic coaching, effective communication, problem-solving and anger management. Her books such as "How to Promote Social and Emotional Competence in Young Children" benefit parents, teachers and therapists. Currently she is conducting a study in collaboration with Dr. Beauchaine and Dr. Reid that is evaluating a partnership which combines parent and teacher training and child social skills and problem solving treatment for young children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and oppositional behaviors.
Samuel Zinner, MD
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Center on Human Development and Disability
Director of Residency and Medical Student
Training in Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics
University of Washington and
Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Seattle
Dr. Zinner supervises medical trainees in the evaluation of children and their families with concerns regarding a broad range of neurodevelopmental, behavioral and psychosocial issues. His areas of studies and interest include medical issues and Autism, Tourette Syndrome and enhancing the "Medical Home" capabilities for community providers. "In a medical home the child or youth, his or her family, primary care physician, and other health professionals develop a trusting partnership based on mutual responsibility and respect for each other's expertise. Partners share complete information with each other. Together, families, health care professionals and community service providers identify and access all medical and non-medical services needed to help the child and family. Medical homes are especially important for children with special health care needs and their families." http://www.medicalhome.org/