Amendum Wins Research Award

Dr. Steve Amendum, assistant professor of literacy education at NC State, won the 2009 Promising Researcher Award from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Standing Committee on Research. Amendum analyzed three types of Reading Excellence Act (REA) initiatives for his article titled “Federally Funded Reading Intervention and Reading Growth: Which Features Matter in High Poverty Schools?”

His work examines relationships between REA initiative practices, school effectiveness, and two-year growth in reading performance by kindergarten through second-grade students. The study identified specific features of school effectiveness (degree of structure and degree of support) related to students’ growth as readers.

Amendum, who teaches courses on literacy research and methods in the elementary education undergraduate and master’s programs, was invited to present his research at the 2009 NCTE Annual Convention in Philadelphia.