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University of Florida College of Education faculty Patricia Snyder and Nicholas Gage were named 2021 Council for Exceptional Children Division for Research awardees.
Snyder, UF Distinguished professor and director of the Anita Zucker Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies, was recognized with the Kauffman-Hallahan-Pullen Distinguished Research Award. Gage, associate professor of Special Education, was recognized with the Martin J. Kaufman Distinguished Early Career Research Award.
“Dr. Snyder is a pillar of early childhood research, a veritable icon in the field,” said College of Education Dean Glenn Good. “The University of Florida is privileged to have her among its ranks, leading the way for faculty who, like Dr. Gage, are early in their careers. These awards are representative of the full spectrum of high-caliber researchers at UF and demonstrate the college’s preeminent domain expertise.”
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The Kauffman-Hallahan-Pullen award recognizes those who have made significant contributions to the field of special education that have improved or enhanced services and education for exceptional individuals. A champion for early intervention and early learning for more than 40 years, Snyder embodies what it means to be a distinguished scholar.
Through professional and personal experiences, she recognized early on a calling to foster inclusive practices and improve outcomes for young children, birth to age five with or at risk for disabilities or learning delays, and to identify effective strategies for supporting them and their families.
She began her career as a speech and language therapist working with children under five and their families as part of a transdisciplinary team. She quickly realized the power and opportunity in early prevention and intervention efforts, particularly embedded instruction practices.
“I didn’t want to take children down the hall to the therapy room or work with them while their caregiver watched me,” Snyder said. “I wanted to support children’s development and learning, working alongside other team members in classrooms or with caregivers in their homes — places where all children interact and learn in their everyday activities and routines.”
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Patricia Snyder
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This, however, was a novel idea at the time. Many practitioners did not understand the principles and practices of embedded instruction nor the value to young children’s development and learning. In fact, in the 1970s, families whose children had more significant disabilities might have been advised to consider institutional care for their children.
“I’ll never forget a mom I met when her daughter was 12 months old,” Snyder said. “Her child had cerebral palsy and the doctor had advised her that ‘she might never walk, she might never talk — you might want to think about where you’re going to have her live when you can no longer care for her.’”
A short time after meeting this mom and interacting with her and her child, Snyder and the early intervention team knew this prediction was wrong.
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[av_heading heading=’“The mom was a nurturing and responsive caregiver and she had our early intervention team supporting her and her child in their everyday activities and routines,” Snyder said. “We celebrated when her child took her first step, when she said her first words, and so much more!”‘ tag=’h2′ style=” size=” subheading_active=” subheading_size=’15’ padding=’30’ color=’custom-color-heading’ custom_font=’#ffffff’][/av_heading]
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“And, in the years that followed early intervention, I received holiday cards with updates about taking dance lessons alongside her peers, going through school with them, and, as many years went by, attending college,” Snyder continued.
This is just one of many thousands of stories she could share about why early intervention matters and why practices in the field should be evidence-based.
These experiences, and many more, solidified Snyder’s passion and commitment to this work, becoming a pioneer for embedded instruction and a lifelong advocate for early intervention, for inclusion and for effective practices.
Today, Snyder’s research agenda is as robust as it is enduring. Through an implementation science lens, she is dedicated to improving practices and supports for young children with or at risk of disabilities, their families, and the practitioners from many different disciplines who work with them.
She has been instrumental in developing and gathering evidence for a range of practices in the field, including assessment practices; embedded instruction practices; social-emotional and behavioral practices; evidence-informed professional development practices; and the 3Rs of Early Learning: Relationships, Repetitions, Routines. The field recognizes Embedded Instruction for Early Learning and the Pyramid Model as two frameworks of effective practices for use with all young children. Practice-based coaching, developed by Snyder and her colleagues, is an evidence-based approach designed to support practitioners’ and caregivers’ implementation of effective practices.
Erica McCray, director & associate professor in the School of Special Education, School Psychology, and Early Childhood Studies nominated Snyder for the Kauffman-Hallahan-Pullen Distinguished Research Award, and she was unanimously selected by the committee.
“She is an internationally recognized scholar at the top of her discipline, whose influential scholarship and federally-funded research have transformed the field of early intervention and childhood special education,” McCray said. “I feel fortunate that she and I joined the faculty here at the same time and remain in awe of her relentless pursuit of excellence on behalf of children and families.”
Snyder shared that this award is a career capstone and reiterated the importance of her colleagues with whom she has conducted research and those who have supported her research agenda. Along with her research, Snyder hopes her teaching and service has created a legacy for the students, postdoctoral fellows and younger faculty she has the opportunity to mentor.
“I hope my work inspires the next generation and they will see further — just like I saw further because I stood on the strong shoulders of my mentors,” Snyder said. “They taught me why it was important to do the research we do and to do it well.”
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The Martin J. Kaufman Distinguished Early Career Research Award honors those who have made significant scientific contributions to the field of special education within the first 10 years of gaining a doctoral degree.
Gage discovered his passion for the field serendipitously. In his 20s, he began working with children with significant disabilities in a residential center for just $5 an hour. This experience awakened his calling and he has never looked back.
Since then, he has worked in a multitude of roles across the country, including as a one-on-one aid, in various afterschool programs settings, as a research specialist for the University of Missouri and now as faculty at the UF College of Education.
“I learned a lot about what the needs and ideally the supports that each of those unique populations needs to be successful,” he said. “And so now I’ve been spending the last 15 years coming up with ways, or understanding ways, to best support those kids both locally and nationally.”
Today, his research agenda has three areas of focus: Identifying malleable factors that can address the needs of students with or at risk of emotional and behavioral disorders; evaluating evidence-based practices based on those factors; and working with schools, educators and state systems to develop and implement prevention and intervention multi-tiered system frameworks that better support students.
“All of them are completely intertwined with this idea of identifying what works and improving outcomes for those kids with behavior challenges,” he said.
This work fulfills a personal mission for Gage, as he sees himself within the student population he serves. Growing up, he experienced many, if not all, of the potential risk factors for behavioral challenges in school.
“What is the reason that I’m not — or that I didn’t — end up on that path,” he asked. “… If I have all of those risk factors, what is it that was different? And if, if we can figure that out, are those things that we can then change for kids and have them become successful short and long term?”
Gage believes wholeheartedly in positive based interventions and supports (PBIS) as a framework for realizing students’ academic and behavioral needs. In 2014, he was recognized for his nuanced research to enhance and advance these practices by the Association for Positive Behavior Support.
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Nicholas Gage
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[av_heading heading=’“If we can make schools more positive, focusing more on catching kids being good and less on punishing and consequence-based interventions, I really think that: A. Schools will be better places and B. We’ll see better outcomes for kids,” he said. ‘ tag=’h2′ style=” size=” subheading_active=” subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=’custom-color-heading’ custom_font=’#ffffff’][/av_heading]
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This commitment to promoting PBIS has translated recently into a review and series of papers alongside his doctoral students. Their review uncovered a lack of evidence to promote PBIS in schools, and their series of papers addressed this through robust quasi-experimental design studies at the state-level.
“I feel like the work of myself with my doctoral students — we’ve really filled that gap,” he said. “… We can go to schools now and say, `Look, I got state level evidence that suggests that this stuff works.’”
Looking to the future, Gage plans to continue developing the evidence base needed to advance positive behavior management strategies and expand their adoption in schools. Additionally, he intends to develop more efficient and effective tools for measuring behavior and improving outcomes for educators and students — and is currently working on this effort.
Gage shared that receiving the namesake award of Martin Kaufman, who was a catalyst for the field, has been immensely humbling.
Also nominated by McCray, she shared she is thrilled he was selected and recognized for his scholarship.
“Dr. Nick Gage is an extremely productive early career scholar who will continue to make a considerable impact through his own work – not to mention the work of the doctoral students he mentors as collaborators,” she said. “His research related to proactive behavior management strategies, positive behavior interventions and supports, and research design and methodology are incredible.”
Gage shared he feels privileged to be put “in a group of people that I’ve admired my whole career and continue to admire.”
“I hope that I can live up to the work and the standard that those before me have really established,” Gage said.
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These awards will be presented during the CEC-DR’s General Business Meeting and Awards Reception, held virtually on March 12, 2021.
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