DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY

FACULTY RESEARCH AREAS

Quick Index (Surname): A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z



Mary Louise Arnold, EdD (Harvard)
marylou_arnold@tednet.oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 8512

My research interests focus on adolescent development, with particular emphasis on sociomoral reasoning, values acquisition, and identity formation. As a former high school teacher, I am especially concerned with schooling as a context for character development. My other interests include sociomoral development across the lifespan and methodological approaches to social cognition. I am currently engaged in studies of adolescent moral identity, the ethical dimensions of teacher-student relations, and adolescent moral socialization within the family.



Janet W. Astington, PhD (Toronto)
jwastington@oise.utoronto.ca
934-4502

Cognitive and linguistic development, particularly in the area of children's theory of mind; metacognitive development and the metalanguage associated with it. I am interested in individual differences in theory of mind development and its relation to social development and school success. More generally, I am concerned with theoretical issues in development and in the relations between developmental psychology and education.



Andrew J. Biemiller, PhD (Cornell)
abiemiller@oise.utoronto.ca
934-4503

My main interests in the past ten years have been understanding how schooling and self direction affect each other, and continuing my research on the development of children's language skills.

Self Direction and Schooling. Children who "thrive" in school (and usually elsewhere as well) are characterized by high levels of "self direction". As one teacher put it, "They know what to do and do it." To what extent can such self-directive capacity be fostered by schools? Conversely, if successful academic achievement depends in part on self-directive processes, to what extent should school programs call upon and develop this aspect of normally developing children. In our research, my collaborator, Donald Meichenbaum, and I have found that most school children can demonstrate self-direction on academic tasks, but that in typical school programs, only the academically advanced do so. Our continuing research focus concerns finding ways of teaching that encourages a much larger proportion of the student body to take charge of what they learn. Specific studies under way or planned include the use of cross-age tutoring as a means of fostering increased self-direction and competence in elementary education; methods of organizing ninth grade mathematics instruction to increase self-direction and math achievement; and how the early development of verbal self-direction in school may influence slower developing peers.

Development of Children's Language Competencies. I have been involved in work on how children learn to read, and individual differences affecting reading progress since my doctoral thesis at Cornell. I have been particularly interested in the interaction between the difficulty of tasks, student ability, and observed student reading strategies. These issues have practical implications for the current debate between advocates of "Whole Language" reading methods and those who favor more of an emphasis on skills. Recently, I have been working on the adaptation of successful special education methods to classroom instruction, (e.g., "assisted reading" and the Bridge Reading Program), thereby providing more success for learners, and most recently on the development of methods for assessing and promoting oral language competence in the primary grades. In conjunction with this work, I prepared two papers for the Royal Commission on Learning which summarize my (and David Booth's) views on the current state of the field of early literacy.

I am currently developing a new line of related research, focussing on the development of vocabulary and oral language in elementary schools, with particular reference to lower SES and ESL children.



Carl Corter, PhD (North Carolina)
ccorter@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 4501

-kindergarten/early childhood education and family relationships, including attachment, siblings and parenting

-psychobiology of parenting newborn infants in a hospital setting with mothers and fathers

-how parents are socialized into elementary schools and how this process may be affected by the development of school councils in the Ontario school system



Joe Ducharme, PhD (Toronto), CPsych
jducharme@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 2265

-prevention and treatment of child psychopathologies

-enhancing compliance to treatment regimens

-behaviour therapy



Michel Ferrari, PhD (UQAM)
mferrari@oise.utoronto.ca

Developing self-awareness, that is, self-knowledge and self-concern. This general issue has implications for professional expertise, professional ethics, metacognition, and conceptual change. My current research project involves a study of ethical expertise in medical doctors, with a special focus on end-of-life care.



Esther Geva, PhD (Toronto), CPsych
egeva@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 2480

Current research interests:

The development of literacy skills in children and adults learning to read in a second language (e.g., ESL, French as a second language). This includes questions such as the role of various indices or oral language in reading development, and the role played by orthographic structures.

Minimizing reading failure through early identification of at-risk ESL children.

Parental attributions of educational and psychoeducational issues in multicultural-multiethnic contexts.



Jennifer Hardacre, EdD (Nova)
jennifer_hardacre@tednet.oise.utoronto.ca
934-4506

-play as a learning medium; teacher education; constructivist teaching



Thomas W. Humphries, PhD (Northwestern), CPsych
thumphr@sickkids.on.ca
(416) 923-6641 ext. 2741

-learning disabilities; treatment intervention; learning and behavioural correlates of medical conditions



Jenny Jenkins, PhD (London), CPsych
jenny.jenkins@utoronto.ca
934-4504

My main area of work is the examination of children's emotional development in the context of social relationships. My background is in child development and developmental psychopathology and I also do clinical work with children and families. My main research goal is to elucidate emotion processes in children and in family life that help us to understand psychopathology in children. In my empirical work I have examined the effects of marital conflict on children, ways in which parents socialize emotional expressions in children, parental appraisals around emotionally significant events for children, and children's relational schemas. I am also involved in research on children's understanding of other minds and how this relates to children's emotions and social behavior.



Daniel Keating, PhD (Johns Hopkins)
dkeating@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 2482

-developmental origins and pathways of diversity in competence and coping, which includes two longitudinal studies (of emotion, attention and social regulation from infancy to early childhood; and social and personal factors affecting adolescents' life choices and academic achievement) and a large sample cross-sectional study of adolescent and young adult stress and coping

-impact of information technology on learning, thinking and interacting, and the design of effective systems for collaborative knowledge-building in diverse contexts in conjunction with the Telelearning Research Network NCE project

-building a conceptual framework for understanding human development in the current context of social change, in conjunction with the Human Development Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research



Marc Lewis, PhD (Toronto), CPsych
mlewis@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 2443

I study cognitive and emotional development with an eye to individual differences. In particular, I am interested in the emergence and consolidation of individual differences in social behaviour and personality which can be explained by unique patterns of cognition-emotion interaction. The ongoing, recursive nature of this interaction permits the assembly of increasingly specialized cognitive models over development, and these models resonate with particular emotional states, characterizing the individual's personality or social style. In order to study these processes, I use a theoretical framework known as self-organizing systems theory or complex systems theory. My empirical work looks at the emotional behaviour of infants, preschoolers, and older children. I am particularly interested in change and stabilization over development in children's responses to emotional challenging situations.



Peter Lindsay, PhD (Toronto)
plindsay@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 2445
-information-processing models of memory and language acquisition; computer applications to the education of exceptional children and adults



Nancy Link, PhD (Toronto), CPsych
nlink@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641, ext. 2227

Interests: As Clinical Director of the School and Child Clinical Psychology program, my role within the SCCP program is one of helping students bridge the gap beween the academic world of the classroom and the applied world of clincial practice. In part because of this, I am interested in exploring the differences between scientific and clinical (specifically psychodynamic) approaches to understanding the mind.

I am also developing a theory of emotion. My focus is on the use of evolution to understand the origins of emotion. I also explore the ways that emotion changes within the different stages of child development.



Carol Musselman, PhD (Michigan), CPsych
cmusselman@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 2448

-educational issues related to deafness; communication assessment and intervention; language and communication development; psychodynamic psychotherapy



Keith Oatley, PhD (London)
koatley@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 2525

-psychology of emotions, emotional disorders and narrative understanding



David R. Olson, PhD (Alberta)
dolson@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 2572

Children's understanding of language and mind: the cognitive implications of literacy. The psychology of teaching. See Olson and Torrance, Handbook of Education and Human Development.



Joan Peskin, PhD (Toronto)
jpeskin@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 8969

-Higher order meaning making when reading texts: Critical interpretation of demanding texts, especially literary texts, but also historical and scientific texts; Readers' developing concerns with "rhetorical form" ("Why does the author think this?" "What is the author's intention?" "What was going on at the time of writing?" ) versus considerations limited to "semantic content" (the text merely as a conveyer of objective information).

-Cognition and instruction in the language arts, in particular the building of models of competence, based on questions such as, "How exactly does one do X or Y?"

-Cognitive development, especially the application of cognitive development to educational issues.



Michele Peterson-Badali, PhD (Toronto), CPsych
mpetersonbadali@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 2586

I am interested in the development of social-cognition in children and adolescents -- children's and adolescents' knowledge, reasoning, perceptions, and experiences of social institutions and phenomena. My primary research domain is the legal system (including juvenile justice, young offenders, and family law). Overlapping this, I am interested in the broad area of children's and adolescents' rights; specifically, their understanding of and reasoning about nurturance and self-determination rights in contexts such as the family, school, and legal system. A secondary area of interest is the medical/mental health system (physical and mental illness, medical procedures, etc.).

Aside from developmental issues related to knowledge and reasoning, I am also interested in issues of coping, competence and consent in the above areas, as well as in the social and institutional policy implications of these issues.



Uri Shafrir, PhD (York)
ushafrir@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 2813

-affective processes; children and adults with generic learning deficits; computer-based assessment and programming for exceptional children and adults



Keith E. Stanovich, PhD (Michigan)
kstanovich@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 2436

-problems in reading disability

-the cognitive consequences of print exposure

-the psychology of critical thinking



Richard Volpe, PhD (Alberta)
richard_volpe@tednet.oise.utoronto.ca
934-4511

-human development; self-concept; social cognition; family relations; child abuse; theory; policy and practice connections; prevention and human services delivery; school community interface; history and systems; evaluation research; qualitative methods



Judith Wiener, PhD (Michigan), CPsych
jwiener@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 2492

-friendship patterns of children with learning disabilities

-peer relations and social adjustment of children and adults with a variety of disabilities

-the social and affective impacts of integration, and related interventions.

-school-based consultation and psychoeducational assessment including investigation of parents', teachers' and clients' involvement in the assessment process, and children's teachers' and parents' attitudes toward special education service delivery models



Dale M. Willows, PhD (Waterloo), CPsych
dwillows@oise.utoronto.ca
923-6641 ext. 2611

-basic processes in reading and writing

-reading and writing acquisition

-learning difficulties and disabilities

-classroom and clinical intervention approaches to learning disabilities

-change processes in the schools (in relation to literacy)

-assessment of learning difficulties and disabilities

-some topics in early childhood education and developmental psychology


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