Projects

For the Literacy knowledge and practice project, we are interested in learning teachers' existing knowledge about literacy practices in early childhood classrooms. We focus on settings where children are multilingual or speak languages other than English, as these environments pose unique instructional demands. Understanding current knowledge gaps and strengths in existing practices is crucial for creating and refining evidence-based instructional models that maximize every child’s literacy development. If you are teachers or preservice teachers, please help fill out the survey here. 

The Math and Reading Instructional Activities project aims to (1) empirically grouping classroom math and reading activities (2) ranking the resulting instructional factors by their contribution to children’s math and reading achievement, and (3) testing whether these relative contributions differ by children’s baseline skill level and language status. Theoretically and methodologically, the study advances the field by providing actionable evidence to guide policy decisions about instructional priorities in resource-constrained settings.

The Early Math Network for Multilinguals is a digital, scalable professional learning network for early math teachers to make high-quality math instruction feasible, affordable, and culturally responsive in preschool classrooms. Developed through co-design with preschool teachers, coaches, and families from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, the network integrates technology and human-centered design to strengthen teacher capacity by scaffolding their math teaching through an interactive coaching model. If you have expertise on creating videos and maps and designing websites with feedback loops, please contact us here

This Patterns of Classroom Compositions project will advance the field’s knowledge on ECE classroom compositions by (1) identifying patterns of ECE classroom compositions based on children’s age, language proficiency, home language, socioeconomic status, and disability status, (2) providing causal estimates of classroom composition patterns on reading and math skills for children with different backgrounds, (3) investigating whether instructional practices relate to different patterns of classroom compositions by teachers’ education and experiences, and (4) exploring whether the patterns of these classroom compositions on learning vary by teachers’ instructional practices. By uncovering the patterns, mechanisms, and impacts of classroom composition patterns, this project will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how early learning environments shape teaching and learning processes. The findings will offer evidence-based insights on how classroom structure and instructional practices can be leveraged to equitably support all children’s learning in increasingly diverse ECE settings. 

For the States' Adoption of Response to Interventions (RTI) Policy project, we are interested in compiling all the different policy components of RTI adoption by states and linking them to students' outcomes over time. As U.S schools widely adopted RTI, we know little about how the policy was implemented differently and how these distinct policy components influence students' disability identifications. The goal of this project is to generate rigorous, evidence-based insights into how RTI shapes disability identifications and educational equity.