Current PIRT Fellows
Nik Allan
Nik is a 4th year PIRT fellow in Clinical Psychology. His research interests concern more accurately defining the construct of effortful control and its relation to emergent literacy in preschool children. He is also interested in the complex relation between ADHD-associated behavior problems and academic outcomes in young children including the effects of potential mediators and moderators on that relation.
Presentations:
Allan, N. P. & Lonigan, C. J. (2009). Relations between Behavior Problems and Emergent Literacy Skills. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Institute of Education Sciences, Washington, D.C.
Allan, N. P., Wilson, S. B., & Lonigan, C. J. (2009). Gender Differences: Sex Moderates the Relation between Externalizing Behavior and Emergent Literacy. Poster presented at the Sixteenth Annual Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Boston, MA.
Eric Christesen
Eric is a 2nd year PIRT fellow in Learning and Cognition. His research interests include teacher quality, how teachers handle student mistakes in the classroom, as well as how teachers affect students' motivations.
Publications:
Roehrig, A.D., & Christesen, E. (in press). Development and use of a tool for evaluating teacher effectiveness in grades K-12. In V. Shute & B. Becker (Eds.), Innovative assessment for the 21st century: Supporting educational needs. New York, NY: Springer.
Roehrig, A.D., & Turner, J.T., Arrastia, M., Christesen, E., McElhaney, S., & Jakiel, L. (under review). Effective Teachers and Teaching: Characteristics and Practices Related to Student Outcomes. In T. Urdan, S. Graham, M. Royer, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), APA Educational Psychology Handbook Volume 2: Individual differences, cultural considerations, and contextual factors in educational psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
John Marc Goodrich
John is interested in the development of reading skills and the development of reading curricula for English language learning children, particularly native Spanish speakers.
Shawn Kent
Shawn is a 2nd year PIRT Fellow in the Special Education program. Current research interests include exploring variables impacting the fidelity of delivery of core reading instruction and reading interventions, as well as implications of a tiered-model of reading support (Response to Intevention) with students in later elementary and secondary grades. Shawn is also interested in written expression, namely, what factors may uniquely contribute to the developmental course of writing difficulties. He has just begun working with Dr. Jeanne Wanzek on a Reading for Understanding grant aimed at developing and testing interventions for students with comprehension difficulties in grades 7 through 12.
Presentations:
Kent, S.C. & Wanzek, J. (2011). Amount and type of engagement with print for kindergarten students at-risk for developing reading difficulties. Poster presented at the Pacific Coast Research Conference, Coronado, CA.
Publications:
Wanzek, J. & Kent, S.C. (in press). Reading interventions for students with learning disabilities in the upper elementary grades. Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal.
Rebecca Mazzullo
Rebecca is a first year PIRT fellow in Clinical Psychology. Rebecca's broad research interests include internalizing and externalizing behavior problems and emergent literacy skills, temperament, childhood aggression, peer relationships, and academic achievement and school dropout.
Publications:
Ashare, R.L., Hawk Jr., L. W., Mazzullo, R. J. (2007). Motivated attention: Incentive effects on attentional modification of prepulse inhibition. Psychophysiology, 44, 839-845.
Shiels, K.,Hawk Jr., L.W., Reynolds, B., Mazzullo, R. J., Rhodes, J., Pelham Jr., W. E., Waxmonsky, J. G., and Gangloff, B. P. (2009). Effects of Methylphenidate on Discounting of Delayed Rewards in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 17 (5), 291-301.
Jamie Quinn
Jamie is a 2nd year PIRT fellow in Developmental Psychology. Her research interests include response-to-intervention techniques for children with reading problems and reading comprehension in children. She has recently become interested in Child X Instruction interactions and the role of phonological skills related to reading normality and abnormality.
Anabelle Reta Sánchez
A native of Mexico, Anabelle is in her 2nd year as a PIRT Fellow and is working on her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies with an emphasis in International Development Education. Anabelle is interested in the relation between teacher training, bilingual education and the quality of education provided to disadvantaged populations such as rural, poor, immigrant and indigenous populations both in the United States as well as in Latin America.
She has worked on the Principal PROMiSE Professional Development Study as well as the Mathematics (K-3) Formative Assessment Project under the tutelage of Dr. Laura B. Lang. She is currently working on her dissertation which focuses on immigrant student achievement.
Presentations:
Reta Sánchez, A., Rew, W.J., Luschei, T., Lang, L.B., Ramos-Matoussi, F. (2011, January). Teacher and School Correlates of Moonlighting: A Multilevel Study of Teachers in Brazil. Paper to be presented at the Ninth Annual Hawaii International Conference on Education, Honolulu, HI
Reta Sánchez, A., Sakon, F. (2010, November). Differential Item Functioning for Minority Principals on a Math Content Knowledge Test. Poster to be presented at the 55th Annual Florida Educational Research Association, Orlando, FL
Reta Sánchez, A., Lang, L.B. (2010, June). Elementary School Principals Mathematics Content Knowledge and Demographic Data: Insight into Professional Development Efforts. Poster presented at the Fifth Annual Research Conference of the Institute of Education Sciences, National Harbor, MD
Reta, A. (2010, March). Quality of education for indigenous children in Mexico and Ecuador: Comparative analysis of teacher training. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, Chicago, IL
Reta, A., Luschei, T. (2009, March). New York City’s conditional cash transfer program and its basis on Mexico’s Oportunidades. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, Charleston, SC
Reta, A. (2009, April). Quality of teachers in rural Mexico: Recruitment, training and retention of teachers. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Latin American Scholars, New York, NY
Reta, A. (2009, March). Quality of teachers in rural Mexico: Recruitment, training and retention of teachers. Poster presented at the Marvalene Hughes Research in Education Conference, Tallahassee, FL
Publications:
Lang, L .B., Hawthorne, H., Sakon, F., Reta, A., & Schoen, R. (2011). Examining the Effects of a K-3 Mathematics Formative Assessment System. The eleventh bi-annual conference on Elementary Mathematics Teaching, SEMT ’11 Conference Proceedings.
Fred Sakon
Fred’s current interests include refining the components of developmental mathematics to address questions toward more effective teaching and learning of mathematics in K-12 schools; examining the effects of professional development interventions on teacher content knowledge and student achievement in mathematics; and developing early childhood assessments in mathematics to enable tracking of students' progression in learning.
Currently, Fred is working on a meta-analysis of primarily experimental professional development interventions in mathematics, and he is assisting with the Principal PROMiSE professional development study.
Presentations:
Lang, L., Hawthorne, H., Sakon, F., Reta, A., & Schoen, R. (2011, August). Examining the effects of a K-3 mathematics formative assessment system. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Symposium on Elementary Mathematics Teaching, Prague, Czech Republic.
Moss, C. & Sakon, F. (2011, January). Cognitively Guided Instruction.Presentation on behalf of FCR-STEM at the Next Generation Teaching for Next Generation Standards statewide conference, Panama City, FL.
Lang, L. H. & Sakon, F. (2009, October).Depth of knowledge. Presentation on behalf of FCR-STEM at the Leadership of Mathematics and Science: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment statewide conference, Jacksonville, FL.
Kolbe, T., Felix, J., Gao, N., Harris, R., Hughes, M., Oakley, C., Park, J., Sakon, F., Stewart, G, & Vineyard, B. (2009, February). Unpacking the costs: A cost-effectiveness study of early reading interventions. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southeast Evaluation Association, Tallahassee, FL.
Publications:
Sakon, F. (2009). Digging up roots and paving the way toward calculus. Dimensions in Mathematics, 29(1), 35 – 39.
Mercedes Spencer
Mercedes is a 2nd year PIRT fellow in the Developmental Psychology program. She will be working with both Dr. Rick Wagner and Dr. Carol Connor. Her primary research interests are in children's learning, specifically reading comprehension and linguistic acquisition.
Haley Stephens
Haley is a 3rd year PIRT fellow in Clinical Psychology. Haley's research interests include examining how children's self-perceived social and scholastic competence affects their overall academic achievement.
Elizabeth Tighe
Elizibeth is a 2nd year PIRT fellow in Cognitive Psychology. Her research interests include the development of phonological, morphological, and orthographic skills and their relationship to reading comprehension in elementary school children and children with reading disabilities.
Leigh McLean
Leigh is a doctoral student and PIRT fellow studying Developmental Psychology at FSU. She is originally from Oregon and earned her Bachelor's degree in Human Development and Family Sciences from Oregon State University, where she worked with preschool children studying ethnicity and self-regulation. Here at FSU, her research interests include teacher characteristics and their affects on student outcomes, with a specific focus on depression in early elementary teachers and it's affects on young students' self regulation and reading development. She also examines instruction techniques in early education classrooms and their relative effectiveness for specific groups of students, such as those with significant problem behaviors. Leigh works with Dr. Carol Connor and is currently in the second year of her doctoral program.
Sarah Ingebrand
I'm a first year PIRT fellow working with Dr. Connor. I am interested in researching typical and atypical development, specifically looking at learning disabled populations and early intervention.
Brandy Gatlin
Brandy is a first year PIRT fellow pursuing her Ph.D. in Special Education. Brandy’s research interests include early literacy intervention and cultural and linguistic diversity in special education. She is also interested in the areas of Response to Intervention, specifically culturally responsive intervention, individualized instruction, and the prevention of learning disabilities.
Pam Burris
Pam is a first year PIRT Fellow in Learning and Cognition. Her research interests include early literacy and language development among children from low socioeconomic status environments and interventional strategies to aid the development of these skills. She will be working with Dr. Beth Phillips.
Adrienne Barnes
Adrienne Barnes is a first-year PIRT fellow in the Reading and Language Arts Education Ph.D. program. She will be working Dr. Young-Suk Kim to examine reading/listening comprehension skill development in early elementary-aged children. Her research interests include early oral language development and correlations between language phenomena and reading comprehension.
