Dr. Tamara Tate joins IES Grant as Postdoctoral Scholar

Dr. Tamara Tate, postdoctoral scholar, has joined the US Department of Education Award R305A150429, Project 84.305A: Digital Scaffolding for English Language Arts (IES Goal 3 Intervention), administered by Professor Mark Warschauer, Penelope Collins, and George Farkas. The team of researchers, assisted by Dr. Tate during her PhD studies, has been researching the impact of a digital literacy intervention using visual-syntactic text formatting among middle school students in seventh- and eighth-grade English Language Arts classes.

Their within-teacher randomized control trial in a large, urban district with high number of English learners has been designed to measure students’ improvement in reading and writing performance.  A previous intervention was implemented over one school year using modified text formatting, digital devices in classrooms, and integrated professional development designed to foster pedagogically sound use of the devices and formatted text. Results from that intervention revealed improved ELA and writing scores for students in the treatment group.
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