The READ Lab is led by Dr. Ana Taboada Barber, faculty in the College of Education, at UMD.

In our lab, we focus on literacy development in linguistically diverse students* from a cognitive and a motivational perspective. Cognitively, we study how linguistically diverse students’ literacy development is affected by language and domain-general cognitive variables such as Executive Function (EF) skills.  From a motivation angle, we study how variables that affect reading engagement in the general population (such as autonomy support or self-efficacy) exert their influence in the reading development of students who speak more than one language-with and without reading difficulties-.

*By linguistically diverse students, we mean students who are Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) or Multilingual Learners (MLLs) in the United States as well as students who learn a second language in other parts of the world (particularly where Spanish or French are the societal languages). We focus on literacy development as much as on reading instruction from kindergarten through early adolescence (middle school).

In a nutshell, at the READ Lab we want to learn through research how bilingual and multilingual children engage their growing minds in reading tasks!