Perry Klein, Western University
Associate Professor
Education
London, Ontario
pklein@uwo.ca
Office:
(519) 661-2111 ext. 88872
Bio/Research
I began my career in education as a classroom teacher in North York, Ontario. As a teacher, I was impressed by the effectiveness of research-based methods for helping struggling students learn to read and write. After completing a PhD in Applied Educational Psychology and Curriculum, I came to th...
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Bio/Research
I began my career in education as a classroom teacher in North York, Ontario. As a teacher, I was impressed by the effectiveness of research-based methods for helping struggling students learn to read and write. After completing a PhD in Applied Educational Psychology and Curriculum, I came to the University of Western Ontario, where I now teach courses in educational psychology and literacy education.
One focus of my research is literacy education, particularly writing education, for diverse students. Recently, I examined the effectiveness of a nonfiction writing framework for low, medium, and high achieving students, and for girls and boys. I have also supervised graduate studentsí theses on the literacy of diverse students, including: the writing of students with Aspergerís syndrome; teaching text structure to low and high achieving students; the reading comprehension of high functioning students with autism; the reading comprehension of students with various learning disabilities; and a small group intervention for struggling primary readers.
Another strand of my research concerns writing to learn. Writing is not simply a way for students to demonstrate what they knowóit is also a way for them to understand difficult concepts in subjects such as science and social studies. In a forthcoming paper in the Reading Research Quarterly, a classroom teacher and I collaborated to teach junior students to use nonfiction writing to understand science and social studies. In other studies, elementary students have learned about science concepts by writing journal-style notes, and university students have learned about physics by writing analogies. On a related topic, I recently authored the Ontario Ministry of Education document on Content Literacy.
In exploring literacy and content education, I became interested in how we can select educational theories that are well-supported by research and useful for classroom teaching. Papers on this issue can be found here and here, and in a forthcoming chapter on writing as distributed cognition.
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One focus of my research is literacy education, particularly writing education, for diverse students. Recently, I examined the effectiveness of a nonfiction writing framework for low, medium, and high achieving students, and for girls and boys. I have also supervised graduate studentsí theses on the literacy of diverse students, including: the writing of students with Aspergerís syndrome; teaching text structure to low and high achieving students; the reading comprehension of high functioning students with autism; the reading comprehension of students with various learning disabilities; and a small group intervention for struggling primary readers.
Another strand of my research concerns writing to learn. Writing is not simply a way for students to demonstrate what they knowóit is also a way for them to understand difficult concepts in subjects such as science and social studies. In a forthcoming paper in the Reading Research Quarterly, a classroom teacher and I collaborated to teach junior students to use nonfiction writing to understand science and social studies. In other studies, elementary students have learned about science concepts by writing journal-style notes, and university students have learned about physics by writing analogies. On a related topic, I recently authored the Ontario Ministry of Education document on Content Literacy.
In exploring literacy and content education, I became interested in how we can select educational theories that are well-supported by research and useful for classroom teaching. Papers on this issue can be found here and here, and in a forthcoming chapter on writing as distributed cognition.
Click to Shrink <<