Click here for a text version of this page.

< Academic Departments

Department of Educational Psychology

Faculty

Programs

Courses

Admissions

Faculty

Educational Psychology Faculty

Faculty in the Department of Educational Psychology are a diverse group of scholars, engaged in a wide array of research projects. Please see individual faculty descriptions for additional information about faculty research and teaching interests.

Research Grants (2000-2005)
Over the past 5 years, Educational Psychology faculty have secured external funding from a wide range of public and private funding agencies, including Genentech, the Florida Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Science Foundation, Finnish Cultural Council, Research Council for Culture and Society, Academy of Finland, Diabetes Foundation.

Faculty Honors and Awards
Educational Psychology faculty have received a number of awards and honors for their service and research, at the university, state, and national levels. Recent national award recipients include Dr. Pat Ashton, the American Psychological Associate, Division 15 Annual Dissertation Award for her work with Michele Gregoire), and Dr. Jamie Algina for the 2003 Division I Best Paper by an Established Investigator Award from AERA.

Several faculty have been named Fellows in the American Psychology Association we count among our faculty 3 University of Florida Research Foundations Professors. A number of faculty serve as editors or on the editorial boards of some of the premier journals in their fields. For a more complete list of service, research, and teaching awards, please see individual faculty descriptions.

James Algina

Professor of Research and Evaluation Methodology and Director of the Research and Evaluation Methodology Program, served as Chair of Foundations of Education from 1983 to 1995. He received the Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts in 1976 and has taught at the University of Illinois at the Medical Center and at the University of Pittsburgh. He teaches courses in applied statistics and psychometrics, and directs master’s theses and dissertations in these fields. He is editorial board member for the Contemporary Educational Psychology, Educational and Psychological Measurement, Journal of Educational Measurement, Journal of Experimental Education, and Psychological Methods. He is a former editor of the Journal of Educational Measurement, a former co-editor of the American Educational Research Journal, and has served on the editorial boards of Journal of Educational Psychology, and Psychological Bulletin. His publications have been in the fields of applied statistics, educational measurement, and psychometrics and include the widely used text Introduction to Classical and Modern Test Theory, which he co-authored with Linda Crocker.

Dr. Algina has received the following honors and awards:

 He currently serves on the following Editorial Boards:

 

Patricia Ashton

Professor of Educational Psychology and Director of the Educational Psychology Program, received the M.A. from Washington University and Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. Current research interests include the role of emotion in changing preservice teachers' beliefs, the history of educational psychology, and instructional approaches to enhancing elementary school students' understanding of mathematics. Other research interests include cognitive and socio-emotional development, teaching, and motivation. Her book, Making a Difference: Teacher’s Sense of Efficacy and Student Achievement (co-authored with Rod Webb) is a report of their research in middle and high school classrooms supported by the National Institute of Education. She has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Educational Psychology. She was Editor of the Journal of Teacher Education from 1990-92, and co-editor of the American Educational Research Journal, Section on Teaching, Learning, and Human Development from 1996-98. She is an active member of the American Educational Research Association, Division K, and was the Program Chair in 1992.

 

John K. Bengston

Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, received his Ph. D. from The University of Toledo. Dr. Bengston has taught and/or developed courses in learning, cognitive processes, personality, and education for diverse populations. During the summers, he teaches swimming and aquatic survival to infants, toddlers, and special needs children under the auspices of Infant Swimming Research. He has published research on basic processes of perception and conceptual thought and quantitative studies of poetry, creativity, and teacher decision-making.

 

Bridget A. Franks

Associate Professor of Educational Psychology and Graduate Coordinator for the Department, joined the faculty in 1991. She was formerly a member of the Psychology faculty at Appalachian State University. She received her Ph. D. in Educational Psychology, with an emphasis in developmental psychology, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1988. She also practiced as a certified school psychologist in Nebraska before commencing her academic career. Dr. Franks teaches undergraduate courses in child development, and graduate courses in human development and cognitive development. She is engaged in a program of research exploring the relationships between logical reasoning and reading skill and the deductive reasoning demands of children’s reading materials. She has published research in logical reasoning and gender issues in development, and is currently studying knowledge and attitudes of preservice teachers about HIV/AIDS in children.

 

Mirka Koro-Ljungberg

Assistant Professor of Qualitative Methodology, received her M.S. in 1995 from the University of Tampere and her Ph.D. in 2001 from the University of Helsinki, Finland. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Florida, she spent three years as a visiting scholar at the University of Georgia. Currently, her research interests focus on qualitative methods and on the conceptual and theoretical foundations of qualitative inquiry.

  1. Currently, Dr. Koro-Ljungberg is Co-PI on a project with Dr. Regina Bussing entitled: "ADHD: Detection and service use" This project is designed to extend studies on the observation that African-American youth, and females have historically been treated for ADHD at lower rates than Caucasian youth and males. The purpose of current study is to follow an existing cohort of youth, identified while they were in elementary school, through the transition to adolescence and high school. The cohort will be followed with both traditional quantitative observational means, and with qualitative methods that will try to understand how knowledge of ADHD, social networks, values, and treatment preferences influence receipt of services. A final step will include surveying participants to receive feedback about possible interventions suggested by the study data. More information about ADHD project: http://www.biostat.ufl.edu/~vijay/ADHD/index.htm

  2. In addition to the introductory course to qualitative research Dr. Koro-Ljungberg, offers advance level courses in qualitative research methods including: EDF 7479 Qualitative data analysis: Approaches and techniques. This course will introduce various data analysis methods and examine ways in which different theories guide data analysis and interpretation. EDF 7483 Qualitative data collection: Approaches and techniques. This course on qualitative data collection addresses both theoretical and practical dimensions of conducting research and collecting data in qualitative projects.

 

Walter Leite

Assistant professor of Research and Evaluation Methodology, Dr. Leite received his masters in Program Evaluation and his Ph.D. in Quantitative Methods from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005. His research focuses primarily on structural equation modeling, with special emphasis on measurement models for longitudinal data and measurement invariance. He is also interested in missing data methods, especially multiple imputation, and survey research.

 

Tracy Linderholm

Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, received her M.A. in Experimental Psychology from California State University, Sacramento, and her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology, with a minor in Cognitive Science from the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Linderholm teaches courses in educational psychology, applications of cognitive psychology, and cognitive-psychological approaches to reading comprehension. The focus of her research is to investigate the factors that affect cognitive and metacognitive processes that are crucial for advanced reading comprehension. The eventual outcome of this research is to design empirically based instruction to increase the efficiency with which these processes are executed. Some of the factors she investigates that influence cognitive and metacognitive processing during reading are the purpose or context for reading, text structure, and individual differences in reading comprehension skills. As it relates to individual differences specifically, her goal is to understand how individual differences in a memory system that is crucial for learning from text, that is, the working-memory capacity of the reader, affects the process of reading. For example, she has investigated how individual differences in working-memory capacity interacts with the causal structure of a text and specific reading instructions to affect how readily readers make inferences during reading. Currently, she is investigating the role of working-memory capacity in how accurately readers assess their own level of comprehension. Given that working memory is a foundational cognitive system for many complex tasks, such as reading, more must be known about this system in order to effectively design instruction.

 

M. David Miller

Professor of Research and Evaluation Methodology and Chair of the Department, received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1981. He has worked on an international study of mathematics achievement at the University of Illinois and directed the Kansas Competency Testing Program. He teaches courses in research methods and psychometrics, and directs master’s theses and dissertations in measurement. His research interests are in accountability systems, large-scale assessment, validity, and generalizability.

 

David J. Therriault

Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology, joined the faculty in 2004. He received his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of New Hampshire and his M. A. and Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was formerly a Postdoctoral Fellow at Florida State University’s Psychology Department working with Dr. Rolf Zwaan from 2002-2004. Dr. Therriault’s primary research interests include the representation of text in memory, comprehending time and space in language, the link between attention and intelligence, and educational issues related to these topics.

 

Rodman B. Webb

Professor of Research and Evaluation Methodology and Associate Dean for the College of Education, came to the University of Florida in 1971. He is a sociologist and he teaches courses in the Social Foundations of Education, Qualitative Research Methods, and the Sociology of Education. He has worked as an elementary and high school teacher and has public and private school experience. He has taught and lectured at universities in Great Britain, Canada, and Sweden, has been the principal investigator on several grants, was co-executive Editor (and co-founder) of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. He has authored several books and articles. His research interests include the philosophy of social science, pragmatism, qualitative research, teacher efficacy attitudes, teacher careers, school improvement, and the education of at-risk students.

Last modified: 29 Jul, 2009