Education professor earns doctoral degree
D. Reece Wilson, assistant professor of education, has earned his Doctor of Education in reading education from the University of Pittsburgh.
For his doctoral dissertation, Wilson studied how students comprehend material depending on what genre of writing is used to explain it.
He worked with two fifth-grade classes at School Street Elementary School to see whether students comprehended scientific information better if it was presented in poetry or in informational text.
The results surprised him.
Wilson said he expected students to have an easier time comprehending the informational text, but in reality, both genres produced similar scores on comprehension activities performed after students read the material.
Some individual students, he said, learned much better from one type of writing or the other, so his conclusion was to recommend that teachers present material through both types of writing, when possible.
Wilson came to Pitt-Bradford last year from the Clarion University Siler Learning Complex, where he was the director. The Siler Leaning Complex is the lab school for early childhood education majors at Clarion.
Before working at Clarion, he taught first grade.
His academic focus is on early childhood education and comprehension in reading education.
A native of Coudersport, he now lives in Bradford.
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