Mary Louise Hemmeter, Ph.D.
Professor of Special Education
VKC Member
Overview of Interests
Hemmeter’s research focuses on two areas related to young children with disabilities: effective instruction for young children with and without disabilities and supporting teachers and programs in addressing young children’s challenging behavior. In terms of instructional research, she investigates the effectiveness of different instructional strategies implemented in a variety of contexts (e.g., home, school) and activities (e.g., activity based versus didactic). She is currently looking at the effectiveness of different instructional arrangements (e.g., small group, classroom wide, individual) on young children’s emerging literacy skills. She also is interested in how to support teachers in implementing effective instructional procedures. In her research on emerging literacy, she has developed and examined the effectiveness of a collaborative training model for supporting teachers in using effective emergent literacy practices. Her research on instruction led to her interest in addressing challenging behavior. She is developing a model of program-wide behavior supports that is applicable to settings with young children with challenging behavior. This work is focused on designing and validating measures that can be used in a larger study examining the impact of this model on teacher behavior as well as child outcomes.
Vanderbilt University Faculty Profile: Mary Louise Hemmeter
Website
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/csefel/
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