Complete - College of Medicine - University of Illinois at Urbana ...

Helping Children Succeed
MSP student conducts language
assessment research
While working in the Teach For America program as a
member of the District of Columbia Corps, Joanna Burton
learned a lot herself – both from her students and from
the educational process itself. And what she learned put her
on a path that led her back to school herself in an effort to
help future students.
As a special education teacher in D.C. for four years, Joanna
worked in a noncategorical classroom with students with a
variety of disabilities including learning disabilities,
language impairments, mental retardation, and behavioral/
emotional disabilities in second through sixth grades. During
that same time, she served as the special education
chairperson for the school and its intensive tutoring program
director. In both these capacities, she gained a great deal
of experience in the team approach to assessing children
with disabilities.
It was that experience that prompted her to pursue an
M.D./Ph.D. “I found that there was often a gap in
communication among the team members,” Joanna
says. “Few specialists seemed to have been trained to
communicate effectively with people outside their
professional expertise. In addition to training me to practice
clinically as well as to conduct research, the joint degree
program is a way for me to continue to serve as an advocate
for children with disabilities and their families, while helping
to improve communication among the professionals who
work with them.”
And when she began looking at programs across the country,
the logical joint degree choice was “home.” Joanna grew
up in Champaign-Urbana, and her family has ties to the
University as well. Her father Vernon Burton, Ph.D., is a
professor of history and sociology, associate director of
humanities and social sciences, and senior research
scientist with the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications.
Researching language development
Joanna’s doctoral research, under the direction of Ruth
Watkins, Ph.D., in the Department of Speech and
Hearing Sciences, focuses on assessing language skills –
specifically, determining how children learn words and
what environmental and cultural experiences affect a
child’s ability to learn.
Vera Joanna Burton
“The joint degree program is a
way for me to continue to serve
as an advocate for children with
disabilities and their families, while
helping to improve communication
among the professionals who
work with them.”
“Language development is critical to academic achievement
and to success in the educational system,” Joanna says.
“Accurate assessment of language skills is of fundamental
concern to speech-language pathologists as misdiagnosis
of a language disability can alter the educational outcomes
of a child. The overall goal of my research study is to
develop a culturally and linguistically appropriate measure
of children’s word-learning ability.”
Joanna’s current research builds on earlier work she
conducted on dynamic assessment of word learning, which
is a technique that measures learning potential rather than
previous experience. A four-year predoctoral fellowship award
from the National Institutes of Health will allow her to focus
on refining that technique, evaluating the tool’s diagnostic
accuracy, and evaluating factors that influence performance
on vocabulary and word learning.
Joanna’s future plans include specializing in pediatric
neurology and pursuing opportunities that allow her to teach,
practice, and conduct research.
T h e P o w e r o f C o l l a b o r a t i o n
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