Assistant Professor
School of Education

mathematical cognition, executive functions, language variation, measurement, test bias

Language Variation and Academic Success lab

Dr. Rhodes began her position as an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Education in January 2020. Broadly, Dr. Rhodes’ research is focused on measuring children’s linguistic and mathematical problem-solving. Dr. Rhodes integrates theories of children’s language, executive functioning, and mathematical cognition, and uses modern measurement techniques such as IRT and cognitive diagnostic assessment to evaluate issues of theoretical and testing bias for students who are cultural and linguistic minorities in the U.S., in particular, African American children who use a cultural dialect of American English.

Washington, J. A., Brown, M. C., & Rhodes, K. T. (2013). B. The role of linguistic differences in reading and writing instruction. In B. Miller, P. McCardle, & R. Long (Eds). Teaching reading and writing: Improving instruction and student achievement. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

Rhodes, K. T., & Washington, J. A. (2015). The role of ethnic and linguistic cultural differences. In R. Sevcik, & M. Romski (Eds.), Examining the Science and Practice of Communication Interventions for Individuals with Severe Disabilities. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Rhodes, K. T., Branum-Martin, L., Morris, R., Romski, M., &, Sevcik, R. A. (2015). Testing math or testing language?: An examination of the construct validity of the KeyMath-Revised for children with Mild Intellectual Disability and associated language difficulties. American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 120(6), 542-568.

Terry, N. P., Petscher, Y., & Rhodes, K. T. (2017). Psychometric analysis of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Screening Test (DELV-S) with African American preschool students. Assessment for Effective Intervention, 42(3), 176-185.

Rhodes, K. T., Branum-Martin, L., Washington, J. A., & Fuchs, L. S. (2017). Measuring arithmetic: A psychometric approach to understanding formatting effects and domain specificity. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(7), 956-976.

Rhodes, K. T., Lukowski, S., Branum-Martin, L. A., Opfer, J., Geary, D. C., & Petrill, S. A. (2018). Individual differences in addition strategy choice: A psychometric evaluation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(3), 414-433.

Branum-Martin, L., Rhodes, K. T., Sun, C., Washington, J. A., & Webb, M. Y. (2019). Developing a longitudinal scale for language: Linking across developmentally different versions of the same test. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 62(6), 1859-1874.

Murray, B. K., Rhodes, K. T., & Washington, J. A. (Under Review). Measuring dialect density and syntax in school-age urban African American children.

Measuring and Modeling Children's Arithmetic Strategy Usage ; NICHD F32 HD090868 ; PI ; $177,222 ; 08/01/2017 to 12/31/2019 ; Description: The overall goal of this project was to examine measurement models of children's arithmetic strategy usage with an extant dataset of N=500 children, and to extend these models toward understanding the unique mathematics learning challenges of African American children during a sensitive diagnostic period for MLD.

Measuring Language Competence in AA Children Who Are High Dialect Speakers ; NIDCD R21 DC018689 ; Co-PI on DS (J. Washington, Principal Investigator) ; $350,950 ; 09/01/2021 to 08/31/2023 ; Description: The parent project will utilize and adapt traditional psycholinguistic tasks (e.g., elicited imitation and grammatical judgments) for use with bidialectal speakers in order to learn more about what African American children know about language structure and use, rather than assessing performance that we know is limited by MAE responding. Contemporary psychometric models, which have been long overlooked for these tasks, will be used to evaluate measurement properties. Dr. Rhodes’ diversity supplement contributes to the assessment and measurement modeling aims of the parent project by (1) developing a linguistic problem-solving task capable of capturing African American children’s mental representations of morphosyntactic rules, developmentally, across both AAE and MAE, (2) adding nonverbal measures of cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control to the battery of assessments and using psychometric analysis to explore the inter-relations among these EFs and other dimensions of language, and (3) integrating computerized measures of solution times and queries for African American children’s strategy choices and using these metrics of strategic problem-solving, as well as accuracy, to characterize African American children’s general strategic approaches to a variety of language assessment problems.

Project STELLAR: Statistical (learning) and Translanguaging in Education: Leveraging Language Assets for Reading ; AERDF (Reading Reimagined Program) ; Co-PI (J. Washington, Principal Investigator) ; $400,000 ; 07/01/2022 to 10/31/2023 ; Description: Project STELLAR aims to develop and test a specific, research-informed approach to teaching reading to AAE-speaking children that integrates, honors and affirms their cultural-linguistic assets, improves their reading fluency, and by implication comprehension of text. We will accomplish this by leveraging children’s implicit knowledge of patterns that exist in language and text using a translanguaging approach.

Fraction Ball ; New Schools Venture Fund (EF + Math Program) ; Co-PI (A. Bustamante, Principal Investigator) ; $2,562,727 ; 05/01/2020 to 07/31/2024 ; Description: The goal of this project is to extend math instructional time to non-traditional spaces like the school yard in recess, PE, and after school contexts. Our research team has developed an innovative, integrated play-space for informal math and EF learning called “Fraction Ball,” which provides an embodied, playful learning experience by reimagining the lines on a basketball court to emphasize fraction and decimal number learning.

Link to this profile
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=7095

Last updated
01/25/2023