Written by Kara Sutton
Dr. Rafael Lara-Alecio, professor and director of Bilingual Education Programs in the Department of Educational Psychology at Texas A&M University, was one of the major presenters on June 14, 2012, at the National Science Foundation’s Annual Discovery Research K-12 Principal Investigator Meeting in Washington D.C. He, along with colleagues Dr. Beverly J. Irby of Sam Houston State University, Dr. Jeff Barrett of Illinois State University, and Dr. Doug Clements of New York University, was asked to provide information regarding challenges and benefits related to longitudinal randomized control trial studies.
Lara-Alecio and Dr. Fuhui Tong are principal investigators for a longitudinal study funded by the National Science Foundation: Project Middle School Science for English Language Learners. He has several forthcoming papers that report the findings of the research; one such paper will appear soon in the Journal for Research in Science Teaching. Additionally, he presented a poster on Project MSSELL. Dr. Pat Larke, professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M, is the principal investigator of another NSF grant, Project CHARMS, and she presented research from that project during a poster session as well at the same professional meeting.