Research on the literacy and language development of Spanish-speaking English language learners
VIAS Core A
Administrative Core
The Administrative Core serves to provide liaison between NICHD and the projects’ researchers, to facilitate coordination across the subprojects as needed to support the goals of the program project, and to ensure all appropriate record-keeping and reporting. This includes activities such as supporting meetings of the subproject researchers, facilitating coordination of the Research Core activities with the subprojects, coordinating the Scientific Advisory Committee activities, monitoring budgets and resources, and ensuring compliance with all regulations and requirements.
Specific Aims
The Administrative Core of the Vocabulary Instruction and Assessment for Spanish Speakers (VIAS) project serves to provide liaison between NICHD and the projects researchers, to facilitate coordination across the subprojects as needed to support the goals of the program project, and to ensure all appropriate record-keeping and reporting. This includes activities such as supporting meetings of the subproject researchers, facilitating coordination of the Research Core activities with the subprojects, coordinating the Scientific Advisory Committee activities as directed by the Principal Investigator, monitoring budgets and resources, and ensuring compliance with all regulations and requirements.
Activities and Results
The Administrative Core is coordinated by Dr. Annette Zehler. Dr. August serves as the Principal Investigator and Drs. Snow, Christian, and Zehler as Co-Investigators.
Administrative Core work in Year 8 included the following:
- Coordination of Research Core activities with overall grant project activities;
- Maintaining accounting and reporting systems for the grant;
- Coordination of regular monthly conference calls with senior/key project staff, including sending out the agenda and distributing notes after the completion of calls;
- Ongoing communication and coordination with NICHD contracts and grants and program offices;
- Communication and coordination with subproject contract offices;
- Ensuring human subjects training for all senior/key research staff;
- Ensuring institutional review board approvals for subprojects;
- Posting project information on the CAL website;
- Coordinating Administrative and Research Core monthly meetings;
- Coordination of annual Advisory Committee meeting and follow-up;
- Development of revised VIAS website;
- Development of VIAS flyer for dissemination at conferences; and
- Coordination of conference session proposal and preparation.
The Administrative Core has maintained the SharePoint online workspace for use of the program researchers and staff. This shared workspace continues to serve as a resource for the research team. All documents and conference call notes are posted to this site so that researchers have access to project-related materials and the site serves as an archive for the program of research.
In November 2009, the Administrative Core coordinated the second annual Advisory Committee meeting with participation from the five technical experts: Joanne F. Carlisle (University of Michigan); Michael Graves (Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota); William Nagy (Seattle Pacific University); P. David Pearson (University of California, Berkeley); and Flora Rodriguez-Brown (University of Illinois, Chicago). NICHD and IES program officers for the VIAS grants also participated. The meeting provided an important opportunity to outline the progress to date on the four related subprojects and on the work of the Research Core and also provided discussion and meeting time for the researchers and Advisory Committee members that resulted in productive feedback and guidance to the researchers.
Increased effort was devoted to dissemination in this year. A session proposal submitted to the American Educational Research Association 2010 Conference was accepted; the session, scheduled for May 3, 2010, will provide an overview of the VIAS work and specific examples of preliminary findings from three of the subprojects. In addition, a VIAS flyer has been created for dissemination at conferences, including the AERA session. The flyer provides an overview of the project, brief descriptions of each subproject and the research core, and the URL for the VIAS website.
The Administrative Core ensures that publications and presentations based on the VIAS work are collected and listed on the VIAS website, with links to allow website visitors to access the publication or a PowerPoint presentation.
Significance
The work of the Administrative Core supports the efforts of the subprojects and facilitates Research Core guidance to the subproject researchers to maintain the integrity of the overall program project.
Plans
Work in Year 4 will continue as for prior years, with additional emphasis on the following activities:
- Facilitating and documenting research dissemination efforts (e.g., facilitating conference papers/panels)
- Facilitating coordination with the Advisory Committee members
- Ensuring other dissemination of the grant efforts through the CAL website for the project by responding to requests for information on the research activities and through other publication support and dissemination efforts within the scope of the grant
- Continuing efforts to support the Research Core work in ensuring use of data management guidelines and supporting SQL database use across projects, and additional coordination efforts in preparation for the cross-project analyses.