Laura D'Amico
Research Associate and Adjunct Professor
Faculty of Education
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6
CANADA

ldamico@sfu.ca

SFU | Faculty of Education

(last updated: November 2011)

EDUCATION

Ph.D. (June 1999), Learning Sciences program (LS), School of Education and Social Policy (SESP), Northwestern University (NWU)
B.S. Education-Mathematics (May 1990), School of Education (SOE), University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison);

RESEARCH INTERESTS
Study of systems useful for supporting and implementing educational improvement and reform, including: assessment infrastructures; learning technologies; professional development systems for teachers and principals; and relationships between researchers and pracitioners.

CURRENT PROJECT

Manifestations of Religion and Accommodation Practices in the BC Public Education System
Through interviews with key administrators and practioners and review of documents, this project explores existing guidelines (policies, rules, procedures, etc.) pertaining to the inclusion of religious diversity in school in order to better understand how school districts address issues related to cultural/religious values or beliefs, which may conflict with existing educational values. (Research consultant, 2009-present)

PREVIOUS PROJECTS

A Sociocultural investigation of Literacy Instruction for Children Learning English as a Second Language (SILICLE)
SILICLE was a three year longitudinal study (2006-2009) of English langauge learners as they moved through grades 4, 5 and 6. The project team investigated the first language and English literacy practices of these students at home and in school and the ways in which they participated in those practices, the ways in which school literacy instruction based on sociocultural learning theories might provide those students with access to school literacy practices, and the extent to which theoretical models of and/or practical research on sociocultural approaches to literacy instruction for second language learners might be helpful to teachers working in multilingual classrooms. Some of the instructional innovations experiented with by the teachers participating in the study included: students investigating examples of literacy and literate activity in their homes and communities; students creating photo slideshows to represent their lives; students creating videos to introduce new students to their school and surrounding communites; students creating graphic novels with Comic Life and students creating PodCasts of stories they have written from wordless picture books. (Research Associate, 2006-2008)

Current Trends in the Evolution of School Personnel in Canadian Elementary and Secondary Schools
The School Personnel Study was a five year investigation (2002-2007) involving researchers across Canada in an effort to understand the effects of budget cuts, class sizes, curriculum changes, exanding diversity and technological and educational reforms on teaching and learning conditions in Canadian public schools. I worked with a team based at Simon Fraser University to investigate these conditions in schools and classrooms in the greater Vancouver area. (Resarch Associate, 2003-2008)

Grimmett, P. P. & D’Amico, L. (2008). Do British Columbia’s recent education policy changes enhance professionalism among teachers. Submitted to Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, (78), 1-35.

Grimmett, P. P., Dagenais, D., Jacquet, M., D’Amico, L., Ilieva, R. & Waldern, B. (2008). The contrasting discourses in the professional lives of educators in Vancouver, British Columbia. Journal of Educational Change, 9(2), 101-121..

D’Amico, L. & Riopel, M. C. (2005, May). The existence and focus of professional community in schools across Canada. A paper presented in Exploring the State of Professional Community in Canadian Schools, a symposium at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, May 28-31, 2005, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.

Case study of LeTUS for the Research Network on Teaching and Learning Meta-Study
The Meta-Study investigated strategies for improving educational research to make it more useful and usable to educational practioners and policy makers" by "systematically investigating qualities of recent projets that reconceptualized and reorganized the role of research vis-a-vis practice in ways that may have led to improved practice and increased student learning outcomes." As part of this endeavor, I wrote a case study of the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schoos (LeTUS). (Research consultant, 2003-2005)

Final full case study of LeTUS — full interpretive case (116 pages, 1.85MB)
[Note: The full case was initially made available in July, 2005. Full typo cleaned version released on May 2006.]

Assessment and Technology Study
I devleoped a questionnaire to capture the ways in which technology use affects teachers assessment practices. This questionnaire was used as part of program evaluation efforts by the Integrating Strategies and Technology in Education Practice (InSTEP™) Project of the Center for Educational Technologies in Wheeling, West Virginia in Summer 2003. InSTEP was a multi-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Education focused on training West Virginia teachers in problem-based/inquiry learning and effective integration of technology into teaching and leanring. (Research consultant, 2003).

The High Performance Learning Communities Project (HPLC)
Based out of the Learning Research and Development Center of the University of Pittsburgh, HPLC investigated the efforts of New York City's Community School District #2 in Manhattan to produce district wide improvements in teaching and learning in literacy and mathematics. Technical reports and conference papers available on the HPLC website. (Post-doctoral researcher, 1997-2001)

Stein, M. K. & D'Amico, L. (2002). Inquiry at the Crossroads of Policy and Learning: A Study of a District-Wide Literacy Initiative. Teachers College Record, 104(7).

The Learning through Collaborative Visualization Project (CoVis)
Run out of Northwestern University, CoVis was a collaboration between researchers and nearly 150 teachers in 40 schools across the country to implement project based science supported by computing and telecommunications technology into earth and environmental science classes. Research papers and teaching materials available at the CoVis website. (Graduate Student, 1992-1997)

D'Amico, L. (April, 1999). The implications of project-based pedagogy for the classroom assessment infrastructures of science teachers. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 19-23, 1999, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (This paper is a rough summary of my dissertation. [132K]).

D'Amico, L. (1999). The role of classroom assessment infrastructures in crafting project based science classrooms. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (main document [420K]; appendices [188K]) .