ALBANY, N.Y. (March 26, 2007) -- Dr. Lynn Gelzheiser, associate professor in the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology, received a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences. Gelzheiser's study, "Extending the Interactive Strategies Approach to Older Struggling Readers," focuses on the needs of older students who experience significant and severe reading difficulties despite remedial and classroom instruction.
Gelzheiser and her fellow researchers at the University's Child Research and Study Center will also adapt the Interactive Strategies Approach (ISA), a remedial intervention program that helps distinguish between impaired readers whose reading difficulties are caused primarily by experiential and instructional deficits and impaired readers whose reading difficulties are caused primarily by basic deficits in reading-related cognitive abilities. The Interactive Strategies Approach will be integrated with Reading Partners, an approach developed by Gelzheiser and her colleagues at the Child Research and Study Center that uses community volunteers to assist fourth grade struggling readers in improving comprehension and social studies knowledge.
The integrated approach is designed to increase students' word reading, fluency and comprehension in reading, as well as students' content vocabulary and knowledge. Its utility will be evaluated with fourth and seventh grade students.
The Child Research and Study Center is one of the organized research centers in the School of Education of the University at Albany. The Center was founded over 30 years ago under the joint auspices of the University and the Albany Medical College to provide diagnostic and consultation services to individuals and agencies in the community on behalf of learning disabled children and to conduct research in the study of learning disabilities and other developmental disorders.
The Center is jointly affiliated with the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology and the Department of Reading, both in the School of Education. It has three major missions: (1) to conduct research in the study of various aspects of normal and abnormal development, especially as related to school learning; (2) to provide training and field experience in research for graduate students in the School of Education; and (3) to provide diagnostic assessment and consultation services on behalf of impaired learners, in support of student training and research.
