Writing for English Language Learners: Exploring the Relationship Between Writing Instruction and Student Outcomes.\u00a0<\/strong>With colleagues she met while earning her doctorate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Neag Associate Professor of Bilingual Education Elizabeth Howard will explore both the quality of writing instruction and the quality of writing outcomes among Latino, Spanish-speaking students. \u201cThe ability to write well is so important for all of our students, but our emergent bilingual students are particularly in need of high-quality instruction, as such a high percentage are currently performing below basic threshold levels on standardized assessments,\u201d said Howard, who will serve as co-principal investigator along with Linda Caswell, a literacy and education expert at the nonprofit, Massachusetts-based Abt Associates; Mary Avalos, an assistant research professor at the University of Miami; and Maria Brisk, a professor of teacher education in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. Principal investigator is Mileidis Gort, a former assistant professor at the Neag School, who\u2019s now an associate professor of bilingualism and biliteracy in early childhood at Ohio State University.<\/p>\nThey\u2019ll perform their field work in fourth-grade classrooms in Florida\u2019s Miami-Dade County, the fourth-largest school district in the U.S., where almost 20 percent of students are ELLs. \u201cThe location allows for a large-scale exploratory study that we hope will lead to the development of new writing instructional interventions designed specifically for emergent bilingual students,\u201d Howard added.<\/p>\n
All three projects address areas where information is needed to inform national policies and practices, Chafouleas said. They also serve as excellent examples of how the Neag School is using its strengths and expertise to put its strategic plan into action.<\/p>\n
Being a state, national and global leader in how educational policies and teaching methods are developed and implemented is part of that plan. Faculty have also been charged to use their expertise to conceptualize groundbreaking research opportunities, collaborate with other leading scholars, and pursue external funding sources like IES.<\/p>\n
The creation of the new position of Associate Dean for Research, which Chafouleas assumed in July, is also key to the advancement of the Neag School. \u201cWe have a driven, enthusiastic team at the Neag School, and our investigators represent so many wonderful areas of expertise,\u201d Chafouleas said. \u201cThese awards represent examples as to how Neag scholars put our collective expertise together and make important differences in the lives of child.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This year, the U.S. Department of Education\u2019s prominent Institute of Education Sciences (IES) awarded just 48 research grants to United States scholars. Neag School of Education faculty members received three of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2455],"class_list":["post-204495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-09 02:09:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204495"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204497,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204495\/revisions\/204497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204495"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=204495"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=204495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Sandy](\"http:\/\/education.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Sandy-C-web.jpg\")
<\/a>Exploring the Status and Impact of School-Based Behavior Screening Practices in a National Sample: Implications for Systems, Policy, and Research.\u00a0<\/strong>The project will examine the relationship between students\u2019 mental, emotional and behavioral health and their education outcomes. Chafouleas, also a professor in Neag\u2019s school psychology program, is principal investigator. Co-principal investigators are two fellow UConn faculty members and a former Neag doctoral student: Betsy McCoach, professor and coordinator of the Neag School\u2019s Measurement, Evaluation and Assessment Program; Jennifer Dineen, director of the Graduate Program in Survey Research for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences\u2019 Department of Public Policy; and Amy Briesch, an assistant professor of counseling and applied psychology at Northeastern University, who in 2009 earned a PhD in Educational Psychology from the Neag School. Over the course of the project, data will be collected from 2,000 U.S. public school districts.<\/p>\n