Two UGA College of Education doctoral students are among only 14 scholars nationwide to receive American Educational Research Association/Spencer Foundation predissertation fellowships.

Michael S. Matthews and Kirsten C. Crowder, both seeking doctorates in educational psychology, received the prestigious awards that include a stipend of up to $16,000 plus additional support for travel to professional meetings and development courses.

Matthews is interested in the assessment of Spanish/English bilingual students. He is studying the development and evaluation of assessment methods that are less affected by linguistic and cultural differences than are the measures commonly used.

"I hope that my work will provide one step toward the recognition of high ability and provision of appropriate educational services for Spanish-speaking Mexican-American students," he said.

Matthews is currently investigating the potential of a variety of assessment methods collectively described as Dynamic Assessment (DA). The goal of DA is to assess learning potential rather than assessing what has already been learned. DA methods have been found to be especially useful with both learning disabled and gifted student populations, as well as with culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Crowder, a student in the applied cognition and development program, is interested in the education of students with emotional disturbance and qualitative research methods.

She is developing a program of research investigating the intersections of emotions and education. In her dissertation, Crowder is considering how the idea of "emotional disturbance" has been historically constructed in U.S. schools and how that construction impacts the sense of self of contemporary, disturbed adolescents. She is using a post-structural, qualitative methodology called genealogy in this study and her methods will include interviewing disturbed students and analyzing historical documents.

"It is my hope that this study will offer different ways to think about the students in our schools who are thought to be both troubled and troubling," she said.

A third UGA doctoral student, Felice S. Wyndham, also received an AERA/Spencer Fellowship. She is studying socio-cultural and ecological anthropology.

Judith Preissle, professor and department head of social foundations of education, was named one of several Fall 2000 AERA/Spencer Institute cohorts to work with the fellows.
 

Monday, Dec. 4, 2000

Writer: Michael Childs, 706/542-5889, mchilds@coe.uga.edu

Contact: Judith Preissle, 706/542-6489, preissle@coe.uga.edu