Elizabeth A Stevens

Elizabeth Stevens, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Kansas. Stevens completed her doctoral degree at The University of Texas at Austin, where she coordinated large-scale research projects at the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk. She has a master’s degree in special education from the College of William and Mary and a reading specialist degree from the University of Virginia. Prior to pursuing her doctorate, she taught special education for nine years. She recently served as Co-Principal Investigator of an IES-funded Development and Innovation Project, Middle School Matters, which focused on developing a professional development (PD) model to support middle school teachers with implementing research-based practices during content-area reading instruction. Elizabeth’s research focuses on designing and testing reading interventions to improve the reading outcomes of students with learning disabilities and learning difficulties. She is interested in the effects of aligning Tier 1 (core) instruction with Tier 2 intervention for upper elementary students with reading comprehension difficulties. She is also interested in the intersection of reading and mathematics, particularly related to mathematics vocabulary knowledge. As part of this, she conducted a randomized control trial, virtual intervention study in Spring 2021 to examine the effects of combining vocabulary instruction with schema intervention on the word-problem performance of third graders with mathematics difficulty. Elizabeth has extensive experience in designing literacy interventions for diverse and at-risk populations and examining the effects of those interventions through high-quality studies. She provides PD to states and districts across the country to support teachers with implementing effective practices for reading instruction. Stevens has published in numerous journals including Scientific Studies of Reading, Exceptional Children, Remedial and Special Education, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Reading and Writing, and Teaching Exceptional Children.