RESEARCH
MY OWN RESEARCH
If you look at my Curriculum Vita on this web page
you will see that I have published many research projects on projects on
perceptual learning and cognitive development. For the last 25 years
I have focused on helping children who lag in cognitive development to
catch up to their peers. This sometimes involved blind or mentally challenged
youngsters, or those with ESL or minority status, but more often it is
children who are behind their peers cognitively for no identifiable reason.
Instead of the common general enrichment approach, I use "learning set"
methods to teach children the key cognitive constructs appropriate for
their age. For the constructs I have relied heavily on Piaget and partly on comparative psychology.
Unidimensional classification, unidimensional seriation, and number conservation
have proven important for kindergartners. Class inclusion and forming
sequences - a step up from seriation but below transitivity - is better
for 1st graders. The learning set methodology is borrowed from Harlow
and Gagne. The synthesis of content and method leads
to meaningful gains [about 15 percentile points] on IQ tests and in academic
achievement that endure for at least a few years, and some gains in self
esteem for the children!
I am now involved in research in socioemotional development with Dr. Susanne Denahm, and am very open to new lines of research. If you have some pet ideas in the general area of socioemotional development, childhood obesity, romantic relationships, or the characteristics of immigrant college students, we should chat.
GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH
I started supervising dissertations
and master's theses in 1969, and feel that I offer graduate students the
best preparation they can get for research careers. For one
thing, it is important to realize that spending more than four years in
graduate school counts against you. A good rule of thumb across the
country is that graduating in four years means you kept your eye on the
ball, worked hard, and were smart about it, five years is normal, and more
than five years indicates that you were not as efficient as you should
have been. Count on me to get you out in four years! Secondly,
the four years should produce four or more publications; if you can do
that, you will be competitive. People look for such things on your
resume when they consider hiring you. Also, it is a positive feature
to get some small grant while you are a graduate student - it indicates
that you will try to get grants as a Ph.D.
All of my graduate students complete
their own research project in their first year, and it becomes their first
conference presentation and journal article. Their second project,
hopefully built on the first and profiting from lessons learned, serves
as a pilot for the dissertation, and produces the second article and presentation.
I'll help you manufacture a third by participating in a less demanding
role in some third project, probably helping another graduate student with
their project or analyzing data in return for co-authorship. Your
dissertation will be the fourth journal article and presentation.
You may have more!
If this sounds like a lot, remember that you are
not alone at GMU. I will help you, and other students, undergraduate,
MA, and PhD, will also help you, in return for the learning experience
and coauthorships. You always have the option of making a solo effort,
but our department encourages cooperative work, even on dissertations.
We are very generous with coauthorships. You should be first author
on the three projects in which you play the lead role, other students who
played significant parts will come next, and I will usually be last, in
return for helping you develop your ideas, design and set up the project,
obtain access to children, hosting biweekly research meetings, and [usually]
doing some of the data analysis and a lot of the writing. Together
with the very strong computer and statistical competency our program will
give you, this publication record, what I will teach you about single subject
and group research designs, and experience in supervising a research team
of your own will make you quite competitive in the job market.
I work very hard at finding professional employment for my students after
they graduate!
To learn a bit about those students working with me now,
check out the section on students and scholarship on this web page.