Research

To date Janette Klingner has authored or co-authored more than 80 journal articles, books, and book chapters, and presented at numerous national and international conferences. She has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on federally funded grants totaling over $20 million. Currently, she is a co-Principal Investigator for two Institute of Education Sciences (IES) research projects: (a) Collaborative Strategic Reading, and (b) The Influence of Collaborative Professional Development Groups & Coaching on the Literacy Instruction of Upper Elementary Special Education Teachers. She is also a co-Principal Investigator for The National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt), a Technical Assistance Center on the Disproportionate Representation of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students in Special Education. She has been the Co-Principal Investigator on two Office of Special Education Program (OSEP) funded research grants, a Teacher Quality Enhancement Project, and the recipient of a Student-Initiated Research Grant that provided financial assistance for the completion of her dissertation. She is or has been a paid consultant on nine federally funded projects.

Research foci include reading comprehension strategy instruction for culturally and linguistically diverse students, outcomes for students with and without disabilities in inclusive classrooms, enhancing the sustainability of culturally responsive and evidence-based practices through professional development, and the disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education.

Janette’s interest in comprehension strategies for English language learners and students with learning disabilities began during her teaching career and led to her dissertation. This line of research expanded to focus on comprehension strategy instruction in inclusive classrooms, leading to quasi-experimental studies of the model she and colleagues developed (Collaborative Strategic Reading, or CSR), published in Elementary School Journal (1998) and Remedial and Special Education (2004), as well as a discourse analysis published in TESOL Quarterly (2000). Janette has also published two books on reading comprehension strategies and related book chapters and articles (e.g., in The Reading Teacher, Teaching Exceptional Children).

Her focus on the effects of inclusion prompted an investigation of academic outcomes for students with and without disabilities in inclusive classrooms (Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 1998) and studies of students’ perceptions of different special education service delivery models (e.g., Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1998; Exceptional Children, 1999), as well as a methods textbook for special education teachers in inclusive classrooms (2005).

Janette’s interests in inclusion and also professional development motivated her to work on Sustaining Effective Practices (STEP), an OSEP-supported research grant, which examined the extent to which teachers were still using the evidence-based practices they had learned through an intensive professional development program three years previously. This research explored changes teachers had made in the practices and factors that influenced their implementation. Findings from this line of research have been published in Remedial and Special Education (1999), Learning Disabilities Quarterly (2001 & 2002), Exceptional Children (2003), Journal of Learning Disabilities (2004), and Teacher Education and Special Education (2004), as well as in book chapters on these topics.

Janette’s initial interest in the disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education stemmed from her work as a member of a district-level bilingual assessment team responsible for preventing inappropriate referrals to and placement in special education. Project SEARCH, funded by OSEP, used ethnographic methods to study the phenomenon of disproportionate representation in depth and led to work as a co-principal investigator on the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems, funded to address disproportionate representation. Publications on this topic include articles in the Journal of Special Education Leadership (2003), Educational Leadership (2003 & 2007), Elementary School Journal (2006), Educational Researcher (2005 & 2006), Journal of Learning Disabilities (2006), Journal of Special Education (2008), Reading Research Quarterly (2006), Remedial and Special Education (in press & 2005), and Teachers College Record (2006), as well as two books with Teachers College Press (2006 & 2007) and eight book chapters.