Katharine Donnelly Adams

Katharine Donnelly Adams is a researcher in the Bilingualism and Language Development Lab at Penn State University.  She received her M.A.T and Ph.D. from the Eliot-Pearson Department of Human Development and Child Study at Tufts University.  She was a Research Teacher at Benchmark School, where she helped to develop the Word Detectives program, and at the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts, where she was a co-author and lead teacher for the RAVE-O program.  Her doctoral research focused on how to best deliver research-based interventions to students and teachers through summer programming and training.  These experiences highlighted the relevance of dual language learning for many students, and she began a new line of inquiry into bilingual language development.  Her post-doctoral studies use neurocognitive and behavioral methods to investigate how children and adults learn second languages in the classroom.   A primary goal of this research is to share results with teachers, schools, and families to better inform educational practices.