Ana Taboada
PhD, University of Maryland
Assistant Professor
George Mason University, Fairfax Campus
Robinson Hall A A320
4400 University Dr.
MS 4B3
Fairfax, VA 22030
Profile
Ana Taboada, Ph.D, is a member of the education faculty at George Mason University. Dr. Taboada’s research focuses on the examination of classroom contexts that support reading engagement for monolingual and second language learners. She is specifically interested in the psychology of literacy from a cognitive and motivational perspective. As such, her work focuses on studying the influence of motivational variables, such as autonomy support, on the literacy and language development of all learners, with a specific focus on second language learners. She also studies the role that cognitive variables such as student-self generated questions and academic vocabulary play on the reading comprehension and motivation of late elementary and middle-school learners in the United States and in Spanish-speaking countries.
In the past she worked on the development of the model of reading engagement as it applies to all learners (e.g., native-speakers of English and second-language learners) in the late elementary grades. She is currently working on the development of frameworks within the engagement model as they apply to second language learners. Her research has been published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Journal of Literacy Research, Journal of Educational Research and Lectura y Vida: Latin American Journal of the International Reading Association. Prior to obtaining her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, she obtained a Master’s in Educational Psychology at Temple University, Philadelphia, and a Bachelor’s in School Psychology in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She was also a classroom teacher in bilingual schools in Buenos Aires before coming to the United States as a Fulbright scholar.
Research Interests
Motivation in classroom contexts for second-language learners; reading motivation; reading comprehension; academic vocabulary impact on reading comprehension; students' text based questioning
Recent Publications
Taboada, A. & Ruhterford, V. (in press) Developing Reading Comprehension and Academic Vocabulary for English Language Learners through Science Content: A Formative Experiment. Reading Psychology
Guthrie, J. T., Taboada, A., Wigfield (in press). Alignment of Cognitive Processes in Reading with Motivations for Reading. In Lapp, D, Flood, J., Hartman, D. & Morrow, L. Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum
Taboada, A., Tonks, S.M., Wigfield, A. & Guthrie, J. (2009). Effects of motivational and cognitive variables on reading comprehension. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 22, 85-106
Taboada, A. (2009). English language learners, vocabulary, and reading Comprehension: What we know and what we need to know. Yearbook of the College Reading Association.
Wigfield, A., Guthrie, J.T., Perencevich, K. C., Taboada, A., Lutz, S., McRae, A., & Barbosa, P. (2008). Role of reading engagement in mediating the effects of instruction on reading outcomes. Psychology in the Schools, 45 (5), 432-445
Taboada, A., Guthrie, J. T., & McRae, A. (2008). Building engaging classrooms. In R. Fink and S. J. Samuels (Eds.), Inspiring success: Reading interest and motivation in an age of high-stakes testing. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Taboada, A. (2006). La generación de preguntas y la comprensión lectora [Question generation and reading comprehension]. Lectura y Vida, Revista Latinoamericana de Lectura, IRA, International Reading Association, 27(4), 18-28.
Taboada, A., & Guthrie, J.T. (2006). Contributions of student questioning and prior knowledge to construction of knowledge from reading information text. Journal of Literacy Research, 38(1),1-35.
Campus Affiliations
Courses Taught This Semester
No courses taught this semester.