FPG News

International Scholars Join FPG’s Recognition & Response Project

Chapel Hill, N.C. — Two international scholars, Eleni Soucacou and Franziska Egert, will join FPG Child Development Institute’s Recognition & Response project this fall. Recognition & Response focuses on high quality instruction and targeted interventions that are matched to the learning needs of young children.

Eleni Soucacou will be working as a postdoctoral fellow from September 2009 through the summer of 2011. She will work closely with the Recognition & Response project’s co-directors, Drs. Virginia Buysse and Ellen Peisner-Feinberg, to design the intervention and conduct an experimental study to evaluate the results. Soucacou earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Education degree at Oxford University, a Master of Arts degree in early childhood special education from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the National and Kapodistriako University of Athens. This year she received an American Educational Research Association (AERA) Dissertation Award, and her research has been published in peer reviewed journals and presented at international conferences. Soucacou resides in London and most recently served as the coordinator of intervention planning and learning support services at Children’s Evaluation Network, a private clinical practice.

Franziska Egert will be at FPG from August through October 2009 conducting a comparative study of the Recognition & Response/Response to Intervention model and a similar model used in Germany. Franziska earned her Master of Arts degree in social work from the University of Applied Science in Landshut, Germany, and is currently pursuing a Master of Science degree in educational science and psychology from Otto-Friedrich University in Bamberg, Germany. She is a certified language and literacy consultant and has experience teaching and supervising in child care settings.

“We’re very excited to welcome these international scholars to the Recognition & Response project,” said Dr. Virginia Buysse, senior scientist at FPG and co-director of the Recognition & Response project. “We look forward to the opportunity for intellectual and cultural exchange that their involvement in this work offers.”

The Recognition & Response project seeks to help early childhood teachers recognize children who show signs of early learning difficulty and respond in ways that help them experience early school success. This process of early intervening reflects a broader movement within education called Response to Intervention. The Recognition & Response model is based on the principles of RTI, but adapted for younger children in pre-k settings.

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For MEDIA:
Media Contact: Anne Hainsworth, Director of Public Relations, FPG Child Development Institute, anne.hainsworth@unc.edu/(919) 966-0867. Photo: Eleni Soucacou

[Posted 08/17/09]