Michelle V. Porche, Ed.D.

Senior Research Scientist

Michelle V. Porche, Ed.D., is a senior research scientist studying literacy and achievement for young children and adolescents. In her investigations of academic achievement, the role of gender and socio-emotional factors play a major part in her work. Her primary goal is to integrate research and practice in ways that contribute to programs and interventions that foster academic achievement for children from low-income families.

Dr. Porche is currently involved in several research projects:

• She is directing the Trauma and Literacy project, a pilot study of the impact of mental health on adolescent literacy and achievement and the ways that teachers can be supported in their instruction of troubled students.

• In collaboration with researchers at Dartmouth University and University of Massachusetts Medical School, she is director of a Needs Assessment of Resettled African Refugee Youth in New Hampshire.

• As Principal Investigator of the Success in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (SISTEM) study, she is helping to learn more about why girls and underrepresented minority boys drop out of this academic pipeline.

• To discover more about ethnic/racial minority identity development she is a Co-Investigator of the study of Adolescent Mixed Ancestry Identity: A Measurement Pilot.

Dr. Porche also leads two evaluation projects of literacy interventions:

• She directs an ongoing evaluation of the Collaborative Language and Literacy Instruction Project (CLLIP), a professional development intervention implemented in districts across Ohio. CLLIP has shown success in helping to narrow the achievement gap for low-income children from preschool to middle school in rural and urban districts.

• Last year she initiated a new project as director of the evaluation of Boston Ready, in order to assess the effectiveness of this professional development intervention for preschools using a randomized controlled trial. Boston Ready is led by the University of Massachusetts Boston, Institute for Community Inclusion in partnership with Boston Public Schools and Wellesley Centers for Women.

Dr. Porche's literacy research is informed by work of the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development at Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she had been a research team member for over 10 years, and where she received her doctorate. Her book Is Literacy Enough? Pathways to Academic Success for Adolescents (Snow, Porche, Tabors, & Harris, 2007) is a culmination of work on the Home-School Study and details achievement trajectories for children in the study followed from preschool to high school. In addition, Dr. Porche is a proud recipient of the Albert J. Harris Award for 2002 from the International Reading Association. This award honors an article making an outstanding contribution to the prevention and/or assessment of reading or learning disabilities: Jordan, Snow, & Porche, (2000). Project EASE: The effect of a family literacy project on kindergarten students' early literacy skills. Reading Research Quarterly, 35(4), 524-546.

Previously, Dr. Porche was the Associate Director of the Gender and Sexuality Project during its tenure at WCW. As primary methodologist on the longitudinal studies for that project, she helped develop several gender ideology scales: the Adolescent Femininity Ideology Scale (Tolman & Porche, 2000) and the Adolescent Relationship Masculinity Ideology Scale (Chu, Porche, & Tolman, 2005).

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