Today’s guests are Drs. Laura Steacy and Don Compton, researchers who explore and write about the skill Set for Variability. You’ll hear them talk about this new area of research which offers an explanation for how students self-correct pronunciations of words when reading, and may have interesting implications for how we learn to remember spellings of irregular words. After my interview, I’m joined by my colleagues Macie Kerbs and Lainie Powell for a discussion about takeaways for the classroom.

Learn more about Jennifer Serravallo and read a transcript of this episode.
Twitter @LMSteacy
Twitter @Don_Compton
The Self Teaching Hypothesis
Set for Variability

More about this episode's guests:

Dr. Laura Steacy is an assistant professor of SpEd and research faculty at the Florida Center for Reading Research. Her research interests include early reading development, early predictors of reading achievement, and interventions for students who have or are at-risk for reading disabilities. Prior to her doctoral studies, she was a classroom teacher with experience teaching grades K-6. Up to this point, her research interests have focused on three broad strands relating to identification and intervention for struggling readers: (1) modeling the stability of early reading subtypes of children at-risk for reading difficulties, (2) child- and item- factors that predict individual differences in word reading skills, and (3) future directions for interventions for children with and at-risk for reading difficulties. These strands serve her overarching goal of identifying and serving students with the highest needs in the area of reading.

Dr. Compton is Professor of Psychology at Florida State University/Florida Center for Reading Research. He was formerly Professor and Chair of Special Education and a John F. Kennedy Center Investigator at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. He earned a Ph.D. from Northwestern University's School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, with a specialization in learning disabilities. While working on his Ph.D., and for several years after its completion, he was employed as a learning disabilities resource teacher in Skokie, Illinois. Compton then worked for four years as an assistant professor in the department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He then accepted a NICHD post-doctoral research fellowship at the Institute for Behavior Genetics, University of Colorado. From there he accepted a position at Vanderbilt University that he held until the spring of 2015 when he transitioned to FCRR. He has over 75 peer-review publications and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Scientific Studies of Reading, and Exceptional Children. Compton is the past President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading and currently serves as associate-editor of Scientific Study of Reading.

Special thanks to Alex Van Rose for audio editing this episode.
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