Catherine McBride-Chang
Encyclopedia
Catherine McBride-Chang is a Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
, and her area of expertise is in developmental psychology specializing in the acquisition of early literacy
skills
Books she has published include Children's Literacy Development and Reading Development in Chinese Children.
in Psychology from Oberlin College
, Oberlin, Ohio
. She received her MA
in 1992 and PhD
in 1994 from the University of Southern California
, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Florida State University
in Tallahassee, FL. Dr. McBride has published on a variety of topics in developmental psychology
, including parenting, child abuse
, peer relations, creativity, as well as reading development and impairment. The author of approximately ninety peer-reviewed journal articles, she has also edited one book (2003, Praeger) entitled Reading Development in Chinese Children (with Professor H.-C. Chen) and written a book entitled Children’s Literacy Development (2004, Oxford University Press). McBride-Chang is an Associate Editor of Developmental Psychology and currently serves on the editorial boards of six additional journals; these are the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, the Scientific Studies of Reading, Annals of Dyslexia, Reading Research Quarterly, the Journal of Educational Psychology, and Psychological Science. She is also a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and serves on the Board of the Scientific Studies of Reading.
,cross-cultural comparisons of the incidence of learning disability
, and cultural influences on achievement issues. The topics she researches include details of the orthography
of written language
, and achievement issues. The skills in learning to read are discussed with regard to incidence rates of dyslexia
worldwide.
acquisition, and secondly a perspective which demonstrates how disabilities and problems vary by culture, as the dynamics of the language, the orthography of the alphabet
, and the age at which students learn varies by country. Trends across continents are commented on, which give support to concerns that problems in one culture, such as boys' achievement. can also be problematic in other cultures. One of the most interesting results is that rates of dyslexia differ by country, and is correlated with the spelling
and phonetic rules associated with the language. English is one of the more difficult languages,with many irregular spellings and pronunciations, and notably a higher rate of diagnosed dyslexia in the population than countries where the alphabet script is more phonetically pronounced. This impacts current educational thinking under the No Child Left Behind Act: to provide support with response to intervention
for struggling readers rather than just use a discrepancy model, the gap between Full Scale Intelligence Test Score and a student's achievement on a standardized testing measure for special educational identification.
Books
Chinese University of Hong Kong
The Chinese University of Hong Kong is a research-led university in Hong Kong.CUHK is the only tertiary education institution in Hong Kong with Nobel Prize winners on its faculty, including Chen Ning Yang, James Mirrlees, Robert Alexander Mundell and Charles K. Kao...
, and her area of expertise is in developmental psychology specializing in the acquisition of early literacy
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
skills
Books she has published include Children's Literacy Development and Reading Development in Chinese Children.
Academic career
Catherine McBride-Chang received her BABachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in Psychology from Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
, Oberlin, Ohio
Oberlin, Ohio
Oberlin is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States, to the south and west of Cleveland. Oberlin is perhaps best known for being the home of Oberlin College, a liberal arts college and music conservatory with approximately 3,000 students...
. She received her MA
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
in 1992 and PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in 1994 from the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Florida State University
Florida State University
The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...
in Tallahassee, FL. Dr. McBride has published on a variety of topics in developmental psychology
Developmental psychology
Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...
, including parenting, child abuse
Child abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
, peer relations, creativity, as well as reading development and impairment. The author of approximately ninety peer-reviewed journal articles, she has also edited one book (2003, Praeger) entitled Reading Development in Chinese Children (with Professor H.-C. Chen) and written a book entitled Children’s Literacy Development (2004, Oxford University Press). McBride-Chang is an Associate Editor of Developmental Psychology and currently serves on the editorial boards of six additional journals; these are the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, the Scientific Studies of Reading, Annals of Dyslexia, Reading Research Quarterly, the Journal of Educational Psychology, and Psychological Science. She is also a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and serves on the Board of the Scientific Studies of Reading.
Current Research Interests
Her current research interests are social and cognitive development, especially reading (activity) and vocabulary developmentVocabulary development
Vocabulary development is the process whereby speakers of language enhance their working vocabularies with new words.During his/her infancy, a child builds a vocabulary by instinct, with little effort. Infants imitate words that they hear and then associate those words with objects and actions....
,cross-cultural comparisons of the incidence of learning disability
Learning disability
Learning disability is a classification including several disorders in which a person has difficulty learning in a typical manner, usually caused by an unknown factor or factors...
, and cultural influences on achievement issues. The topics she researches include details of the orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
of written language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
, and achievement issues. The skills in learning to read are discussed with regard to incidence rates of dyslexia
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...
worldwide.
Importance of her contribution to Literacy Research
The importance of McBride-Chang's work is firstly the provision of a global overview of the prerequisite skills for early literacyLiteracy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
acquisition, and secondly a perspective which demonstrates how disabilities and problems vary by culture, as the dynamics of the language, the orthography of the alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
, and the age at which students learn varies by country. Trends across continents are commented on, which give support to concerns that problems in one culture, such as boys' achievement. can also be problematic in other cultures. One of the most interesting results is that rates of dyslexia differ by country, and is correlated with the spelling
Spelling
Spelling is the writing of one or more words with letters and diacritics. In addition, the term often, but not always, means an accepted standard spelling or the process of naming the letters...
and phonetic rules associated with the language. English is one of the more difficult languages,with many irregular spellings and pronunciations, and notably a higher rate of diagnosed dyslexia in the population than countries where the alphabet script is more phonetically pronounced. This impacts current educational thinking under the No Child Left Behind Act: to provide support with response to intervention
Response to intervention
In education, Response To Intervention is a method of academic intervention used in the United States which is designed to provide early, effective assistance to children who are having difficulty learning. Response to intervention was also designed to function as one part of a data-based process...
for struggling readers rather than just use a discrepancy model, the gap between Full Scale Intelligence Test Score and a student's achievement on a standardized testing measure for special educational identification.
Selected bibliography
Publications- McBride-Chang, C., Cho, J.-R., Liu, H., Wagner, R. K., Shu, H., Zhou, A., Cheuk, C. S.-M., & Muse, A. (2005). Changing models across cultures: Associations of phonological and morphological awareness to reading in Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and America. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 92, 140-160.
- Chiu, M. M. , Chow, B. W.-Y., & McBride-Chang, C. (2007). Universals and specifics in learning strategies: Explaining Adolescent Achievement in mathematics, science, and reading across 34 countries. Learning and Individual Differences, 17, 344-365.
- Ip, H. M., Cheung, S. K., Chang, L., & McBride-Chang, C. (2008). Associations of parenting styles of Filipina domestic helpers and mothers with Hong Kong kindergarten children’s social competence. Early Education and Development, 19, 284-301.
- McBride-Chang, C., Lam, F., Lam, C., Doo, S., Wong, S. W. L., & Chow, Y. Y. Y. (2008). Word recognition and cognitive profiles of Chinese pre-school children at-risk for dyslexia through language delay or familial history of dyslexia. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 49, 211-218.
- Chow, B. W.-Y., McBride-Chang, C., & Cheung, H. (2008). Dialogic Reading and Morphology Training in Chinese Children: Effects on Language and Literacy. Developmental Psychology, 44, 233-244.
Books
- McBride-Chang, C. & Chen, H.C. (2003). Reading Development in Chinese Children. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishing.
- McBride-Chang, C. (2004). Children's Literacy Development, (Texts in Developmental Psychology Series). London: Edward Arnold/Oxford Press.