Dr. Kevin Wong - AERA 2022 Outstanding Dissertation Award And APA 2020 Paul R Pintrich Award
Congratulations to GSEP Faculty Dr. Kevin Wong for winning the 2022 American Educational
Research Association (AERA) Outstanding Dissertation Award for the Early Education
and Child Development SIG for his dissertation, “The Promise of Educational Media to Support Dual Language Learners' L1 and L2 Vocabulary
Development.” His dissertation also won the 2020 American Psychological Association (APA) Paul R. Pintrich Dissertation Award in Educational Psychology.
Dr. Wong’s dissertation examined the potential of educational media to help linguistically diverse preschool-aged children learn vocabulary words in a new language while also maintaining their heritage language. His dissertation is particularly important as children today are exposed to technology at a very young age, with educational media becoming increasingly salient in the lives of young children. In an age where “screen time” is in the everyday discourse of families, educators, health care providers, and policymakers, this dissertation addresses a timely question of what “quality” screen time might look like, and how it can be strategically used to promote second language development and heritage language maintenance for linguistically diverse populations.
Dr. Wong is Chair of the MA in TESOL program at GSEP and conducts research in the field of TESOL. Learn more about our Masters in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) program.