Main profile

Ana

Taboada Barber

Associate Professor; Special Education Program

Interests: 

Education, Literacy

Projects: 

LLRC

Units: 

Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education

Degree(s): 

Ph.D., 2003, Educational Psychology, University of Maryland

Contact: 

ataboada@umd.edu

301-405-6482

1311-E Benjamin Building

Role(s): 

Faculty, Management

Website: 

CoE Profile

Google Scholar Profile

About: 

I developed my interest in motivation and literacy a long time ago when I was an elementary and middle-school teacher in bilingual schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As an English as a Second Language teacher my curiosity was piqued by the reading challenges encountered by students in my classrooms. Through my teaching I learned that many students with reading challenges shared these across their first and second languages. Interestingly, I also discovered that many of these challenges were not only cognitive but were also rooted in the children’s motivation to read and learn. Pursuing Master’s and Doctoral studies in the United States, I specialized in the developmental and instructional processes of reading, helping evolve the reading engagement model which combines cognitive and motivation dimensions. Initially we explored reading engagement as it applied to all learners in the late elementary grades. Later on, I conducted research investigating reading engagement in English language. This work led me to examine classroom contexts, teacher and instructional variables that support reading engagement for monolingual and second language learners.

Today, my main focus still is on the psychology of literacy from a cognitive and motivational perspective. My work centers on studying the influence of specific motivational variables, such as autonomy support, and cognitive variables, such as student text-based questioning, on the literacy and language development upper elementary and middle school students. I am the Co-Director of the Maryland Language and Literacy Research Center, an exciting initiative led by Dr. Rebecca Silverman, that brings together experts and students interested in literacy and language throughout the College of Education. Together with the Language Science Center, these initiatives make UMD and the CoE intellectually dynamic environments for doctoral candidates to develop their research interests in literacy and language.