My research (over 60 peer-reviewed articles and 30 technical reports) explores the effectiveness of varied recommended practice in early childhood education. More recently, I have worked at the preservice level (future teachers) and the inservice level (professionals already working in the field) to:

• Develop The Alabama Reflective Coach as a professional development model in Pre-K programs at the local and state level, expanding the professional development model from just over 200 teachers and classrooms in 2012 to over 1,487 in 2024.

• Develop databases and then evaluate the efficacy of First Class (2015-), the Alabama state-funded high quality Pre-K program, providing findings from studies of teacher and child outcomes that help support and advocate for the expansion of the program. Our research team have helped inform legislators about the quality and outcomes (absenteeism, retention, behavior, readiness skills, later academic outcomes) of First Class that served about 3,600 children in 2012 and now serves over 24,000 4-year-olds in 2023-2024. 

• Evaluate Alabama's P-3 initiative supported through a $1.5 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation: This is a Pre-K-3rd Grade Integrated Approach to Early Learning pilot program (“P-3”), starting with 35 classrooms in 2017-2018. The program grew to 181 classrooms in the 2020-2021 school year. This is part of Governor Kay Ivey's Strong Start, Strong Finish initiative.

• Evaluate Birmingham Talks (2020): a Birmingham project partnering with Bloomberg Philanthropies to support 2,500 parents and teachers develop new talking behaviors and increase conversations with infants and toddlers. 

• Evaluate LETRS (2019-20): an initiative to support over 2,000 teachers to teach language and literacy skills across the state. 

Professional Work: Highlights and Examples of Grant Funded Projects (About $13 million in funded projects)

• • Project support/evaluation (Co-PI) for Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education Birth to 5 Grant and First Teacher Exceptional Grants (2022-Present).

  • Project evaluator with colleagues at UAB for LETRS (2019-2021).

  • Project evaluator with colleagues at UAB and UA Tuscaloosa for the P-3 initiative (2018-2023).

  • Project evaluator with colleagues at UAB for Accreditation for Trainers Program (ATP) for Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education (2019-2021).

  • Project evaluator with colleagues at UAB for Birmingham Talks (2019-2020).

  • Awarded a $2.9 million grant as Co-Principal Investigator (Dr. Josephine Prado at PI) from the federal Office of English Language Acquisition. The grant (2022-2027) aims to strengthen teachers in targeted K-12 Birmingham, Alabama, school districts by providing resources, education and community-building opportunities for the growing multilingual population in the area. 

  • Awarded a $2.5 million grant as Co-Principal Investigator (Dr. Kelly Hill as the PI) from the federal government to train preservice teachers and provide professional development to increase inservice teacher's ability to work with English/Dual Language Learners in Alabama (2016-2021) using the Alabama Reflective Coach (ARC) model.

  • Provide consultation to develop the Alabama Reflective Coach (ARC) model for the state funded Pre-K First Class Program (2012-2020). This is an Alabama state-wide system's change project working collaboratively with the Office of School Readiness, part of the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education. The ARC is a coaching and program monitoring system for Alabama's Pre-K First Class programs. The ARC was developed for 206 classrooms in 2012/2013 and is now used in more than 1,200 (2018-2019) classrooms throughout the state.

  • As part of a $8.3 million grant, consulted with the Alabama Department of Human Resources (Child Care Services) to develop an ARC model for coaches of Early Head Start child care programs throughout the state (2016-2017).

  • Developing a statewide data system as part of an $17.5 million/year federal grant to expand pre-K in Alabama (2015-2019). Activities include providing research and evaluation support to the Secretary for Al Dept. of ECE; working with colleagues in the UAB Dept. of Health Care Organization and Policy, and Samford University's PARCA institute on analysis and interpretation of pre-K data; and creation of data-driven reports for varied pre-K stakeholders.

  • As the PI, developed a training program for staff to evaluate a local county's Family Head Start programs using the Family Child Care Environmental Rating System (2014).

  • Consultant for a $1.2 million grant over four years (2010-2014) to help train teacher education candidates through a fully online masters degree program to work with children with low incidence disabilities at Valdosta State University in Georgia.

  • Selected to work on a Georgia Board of Regents task force to co-develop the course description, outcomes, and learning activities for a socio-cultural undergraduate course required by all teacher education candidates in the University System of Georgia system (35 universities / colleges) - EDUC 2120: Exploring Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Diversity in Educational Contexts. Then asked to serve as one of six faculty to represent the system and develop course activities for a repository of resources for EDUC 2120. 

  • Worked with Babies Can't Wait - Georgia's early intervention program (PI or Co-PI for more than $1 million in grants / contracts from 2005-2012); provided technical assistance throughout the state of Georgia with more than 1,200 professionals.

  • Worked to help develop primary education programs in Ethiopia - a USAID grant with Dr. Jim Hoot (SUNY Buffalo) as the Primary Investigator (2000-2002).

  • Consultant as part of a $600,000 grant to work with Buffalo Success by Six to develop quality preschool programs endorsed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (2001-2002).

Additional scholarly interests have included working with teachers to engage them in 'practice in research', examining socio-cultural perspectives in early childhood (through the use of Q Methodology), promoting coaching as an evidence-based practice in early childhood, exploring the role of technology in training teacher candidates, and examining the level of physical activity/human performance of school age children. I have been actively involved with the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) and had the opportunity to serve as the Chair of the Research Committee and have been on the Publications Committee for several years.