child development

Dr. Elizabeth Hadley, associate professor of literacy studies at the University of South Florida

Learning experiences in the early grades play a crucial role in preparing children to be strong readers, writers and thinkers across content areas. What happens when these early learning experiences are disrupted? In a longitudinal study, Dr. Elizabeth Hadley followed children, whose pre-kindergarten year was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, through the end of first grade, investigating the impacts of COVID on their language and literacy development. In this presentation, Dr. Hadley will explore implications of findings from this research, including the extent to which state-funded pre-K supports children’s language and literacy skills and which kinds of language and literacy skills are impacted most when children lose access to in-person instruction.

Dr. Hadley’s work centers on intentionally and equitably fostering language and early literacy development in pre-K classrooms, especially for children from marginalized communities and from families experiencing poverty. Dr. Hadley has been published in top journals and won awards including the Early Career Award from the Early Education/Child Development SIG from the American Educational Research Association.

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Dr. Becky Huang, Crane faculty associate and professor of multilingual language education at The Ohio State University

Due to globalization and immigration trends, the number of children growing up learning more than one language has been growing rapidly around the world. The increase in this population comes with the parallel need for fair and effective assessment of their multilingual development. In this talk, Dr. Becky Huang will focus on students ages 4 to 13, corresponding to kindergarten to eighth grade in the U.S. education system. Assessments of students’ language development also have strong relevance and implications for education. Dr. Huang will first discuss the myths related to assessing this population, and then address the challenges of assessing young multilinguals. The talk will end with a discussion of the future of multilingual assessment, considering the roles of technology such as artificial intelligence, and the application of translanguaging in assessing young multilinguals.

Dr. Huang’s goal in her work is to promote language and education outcomes for multilingual students. Her research areas of applied linguistics, psychology and education combine to focus on two key areas: language/literacy development and assessment of multilingual students. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Health, the Institute of Education Sciences and the U.S. Department of Education, and she serves on the editorial board for several journals.

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