Ideas In Action

A new approach to teaching pre-kindergarten could take a bite out of the achievement gap and level the playing field for America’s growing population of English language learners, according to a published study by researchers at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development. Read More

Positive interactions in a pre-kindergarten classroom may be equally or more important to the future academic development of 4-year-olds than learning letters and numbers, according to Dale Farran, senior associate director of the Peabody Research Institute at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College. Read More

Peabody professors Paul Yoder and Ann Kaiser are recipients of new grants from the National Institutes of Health Autism Centers of Excellence (ACE). Yoder and Kaiser of Vanderbilt have received ACE grants to study language interventions for young children. “Early intervention with autism is one of the big success stories,”… Read More

  Homeschooling in America: Capturing and Assessing the Movement; Joseph Murphy; Corwin, 2012 More than 2 million children in the United States are now homeschooled, up from only 15,000 40 years ago, but little research has been done on the academic and social outcomes of this student population. In… Read More

Kindergarten teachers report spending much of their math instructional time teaching students basic counting skills and how to recognize geometric shapes—skills the students have already mastered before setting foot in the kindergarten classroom, new research finds. Read More

A common reading disorder goes undiagnosed until it becomes problematic, according to the results of five years of study by researchers at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College in collaboration with the Kennedy Krieger Institute/Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Results of the study were recently published online by the National Institutes of Health. Read More

Exceptional spatial ability at age 13 predicts creative and scholarly achievements more than 30 years later, according to results from a Vanderbilt University longitudinal study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Read More

Matthew Springer In recent years, policymakers concerned with how to compensate teachers have increasingly sought to tie teacher pay to student outcomes. Market-minded education reformers have also begun to experiment by offering incentives to teachers who demonstrably add value to students’ education. But how effective are such programs? Does altering… Read More

Sun-Joo Cho Leonard Bickman was named professor of psychology, emeritus. Vera A. Stevens Chatman was named professor of human and organizational development, emerita. Chatman will also be inducted into the Academy for Women of Achievement by the YWCA of Nashville and Middle Tennessee and First Tennessee. Sun-Joo Cho, assistant professor… Read More

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) presented its 2013 Outstanding Book Award to Vanderbilt University professor Christopher Loss for Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century (Princeton University Press, 2012) in April. Loss’s book tracks the dramatic results of the federal government’s… Read More

Donna Ford Donna Ford, professor of special education, is one of 14 university professors recognized by the Southeastern Conference for achievement in research and scholarship. The SEC announced April 10 the winners of its 2013 Faculty Achievement Awards. These annual awards honor professors from the SEC’s 14 member universities who… Read More

Marcy Singer-Gabella K-12 teachers across the country will have the opportunity to take a professional development course from Vanderbilt University faculty in 2014 via the university’s partnership with leading massive online open course provider Coursera. “Teacher professional development is one of the thorniest challenges in PreK-12 education. Teaching suffers because… Read More

Vanderbilt’s Peabody College begins the 2013–14 academic year with nearly a dozen new faculty members, 400 new master’s degree or Ed.D. students, and 35 new Ph.D. students—not to mention our usual complement of highly qualified undergraduates. We are excited! Our enthusiasm is also prompted by the establishment of a new… Read More

The present housing crisis has disrupted the residential stability of families, which is adversely affecting many children’s educational development, according to researchers at Peabody College. Read More

Department of Human and Organizational Development Sarah VanHooser Suiter (Ph.D., Vanderbilt, 2009), associate professor of the practice of human and organizational development, previously with Centerstone Research Institute Allison Patten McGuire (Ph.D., Vanderbilt, 2005), lecturer in human and organizational development Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations Angela Boatman (Ed.D., Harvard, 2012)… Read More

In March, Peabody College was named the top graduate school of education in the country for the fifth consecutive year by U.S. & News World Report. Peabody bested programs at Johns Hopkins University (No. 2) and Harvard (No. 3) for the top spot, in addition to having its programs in… Read More

Vanderbilt University Professor William Doyle proposes a means of curbing college costs by replacing the existing federal aid system with a more-efficient model that emphasizes need-based aid and changing the way student loans are repaid to lower the default rate. With the largest declines in real average family incomes among those in the lowest 20 percent of the population, he argues that such reforms are crucial if college is to be more accessible and affordable. Read More

Vanderbilt University is leading the way in research that merges the fields of education and neuroscience by launching the country’s first Ph.D. program in educational neuroscience. Read More

Public school students who successfully complete English as a Second Language or bilingual education programs within three years appear to fare better in meeting basic math and reading proficiency standards than their peers who remain enrolled in language acquisition courses for five years or more. Read More

Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century; Christopher P. Loss; Princeton University Press, 2011 Where would American higher education be without government support for research and student aid? Not where it is today, says Peabody College researcher Christopher Loss, who examines… Read More