KATHY WILSON, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education
118 Henzlik Hall
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0355
(402) 472-5970

Biography

Dr. Wilson earned her PhD with an emphasis in Educational Psychology and Reading at the University of California, Riverside in 2001. Her research work there was school-based and examined effective and efficient ways of teaching decoding and spelling. Dr. Wilson also studied changes in student motivation related to academic literacy tasks.

This is Dr. Wilson's third year in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education at UNL where she is an Assistant Professor associated with the Elementary Education Program and the Literacy Group. Current research interests focus on changes in teacher beliefs and expertise related to literacy instruction, as well as the effects of those changes on student achievement. Dr. Wilson is also interested in finding effective and efficient ways of providing long-term professional development in literacy for teachers in rural schools.

Dr. Wilson is currently involved in two collaborative studies in different phases of development. Both projects are funded by Layman Grants. As principle investigator on one of the studies, Dr. Wilson is comparing the benefits of two phonemic awareness/phonics programs when implemented by tutors instructing low performing third grader readers. The children will also be receiving instruction in vocabulary development and fluency. Along with measuring the reading achievement of the children, they will be measuring changes in the tutors' self-efficacy for teaching basic reading skills to low performing students. Tutors are pre-service undergraduates in the Elementary and Secondary Teacher Education Programs, and graduate students in the College of Education of Human Sciences. The research group's second Layman grant will follow a similar design. In that project, Dr. Wilson and colleagues will be working with low performing middle and high school students who are receiving special education services to improve their phonemic awareness/phonics skills as well as their fluency.

Recent Publications

Journal Articles

Wilson, K. M., & Swanson, H. L. (2001). Are mathematics disabilities due to a domain-general or domain-specific working memory deficit? Journal of Learning Disabilities, 34, 237-248.

Book Chapters

Calfee, R. C., Miller, R., Norman, K. A., Wilson, K. M., & Trainin, G. Learning to do educational research. In R. J. Sternberg & M. Constas (Eds.), Translating educational theory and research into practice. Manuscript in preparation..

Calfee, R. C., & Wilson, K. M. (2004). Assessment frameworks. In B. B Shulman, K. Apel, B. Ehren, E. R. Silliman, & C. A. Stone, (Eds.), Handbook of language and literacy development and disorders. New York: Guilford Press.

Calfee, R. C., & Wilson, K. M. (2004). Classroom assessment. In M. F. Graves, C. Juel, & B. B. Graves (Eds.), Teaching reading in the 21st century, 3rd edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Calfee, R. C., Norman, K. A., Trainin, G., & Wilson, K. M. (2001). Conducting a design experiment for improving early literacy or what we learned in school last year. In C. Roller (Ed.), Learning to teach reading: Setting the research agenda. Newark, DE: IRA.

 

Research Projects

UNL Reading Clinic
Woods Charitable Fund
Role: Co-PI	2004

UNL Reading Clinic
Woods Charitable Fund
Role: Co-PI	2003-2004

WordWork Tutoring Project: Third Grade
UNL Layman Grant
Role: PI	2003-2004

A Phonics/ Decoding Intervention for Struggling Adolescent Readers
UNL Layman Award
Role: Co-PI	2003-2004

Books for the Great Plains Institute of Reading and Writing Reading Center
Cooper Foundation Grant
Role: Co-PI	2003-2004

Technology Enhanced Reading Instruction: A Research Cluster
UNL Vice-Chancellor of Research
Role: Co-PI	2003-2004

Great Plains Institute of Reading and Writing
UNL Teachers College Institute Grant
Role: Co-PI	2003-2004