Jessica Hall
As a Senior Research Scientist, Dr. Jessica Hall is involved in the research and evaluation of CAST projects focused on improving outcomes for all learners, from well-being and cognitive skills to engagement and academic performance, as well as examining and supporting the efficacy of education agencies’ systems of support.
Prior to joining CAST, Jessica was a Senior Research Scientist at Pearson and at the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching. In those roles, she studied the efficacy of programs designed for professional learners, teachers, university students, and K-12 students. Her background is in first- and second-language learning in impaired and typically developing populations. Her research has focused on understanding and improving the efficacy of products, programs, and interventions for learners from preschool through adulthood. As a former classroom teacher, she is especially interested in employing implementation science methods to better understand the ease with which any suggested change can be made. She has expertise in quantitative methods of analysis and outcomes/impact measurement, and she received funding from the NIH National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders for her doctoral and postdoctoral research. In her early career, she served as an English literature teacher and an English language instructor in high school, university, and community classrooms.
My Inspiration
The work of good science is to try to peer beyond the ‘convenient’ lines we draw over nature. To peer beyond intuition, where something wilder lives. To know that in every organism at which you gaze, there is complexity you will never comprehend.
Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don't Exist
I really loved this book and the perspective that there is always more to know. In education, I believe our duty as researchers and practitioners is to try to see past the convenient lines drawn over students and embrace the complexity and dynamism within the individual and the group when co-designing effective learning environments.
Education
Ph.D., Communication Sciences & Disorders, University of Iowa
M.A., Linguistics, Specialization in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, University of Iowa
B.A., English, Xavier University
Selected Publications
Hall, J.E. & Plante, E. (2020). Data-informed guideposts for decision-making in Enhanced Conversational Recast Treatment. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_AJSLP-20-00017
Hall, J.E., Owen Van Horne, A.J., & Farmer, T.A. (2019). Individual differences in verb bias sensitivity in children and adults with developmental language disorder. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 13 (402). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00402
Hall, J.E., Owen Van Horne, A.J., McGregor, K.K., & Farmer, T.A. (2019). Deficits in the use of verb bias information in real-time processing by college students with developmental language disorder. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 62(2). https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-17-0267
Hall, J.E., Owen Van Horne, A.J., McGregor, K. K., & Farmer, T.A. (2018). Individual and developmental differences in distributional learning. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 49(3S), 694-709. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_LSHSS-STLT1-17-0134
Hall, J.E., Owen Van Horne, A.J., & Farmer, T.A. (2017). Distributional learning aids linguistic category formation in school-age children. Journal of Child Language, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000917000435
Owen Van Horne, A.J., Curran, M., Hall, J.E. (2017). Can vocabulary lessons increase the amount of complex syntax at-risk children hear? A pilot study. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 33(3), 305-319. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265659017734336
Hall, J.E., McGregor, K.K., & Oleson, J.J. (2017). Weaknesses in lexical-semantic knowledge among college students with specific learning disabilities: Evidence from a semantic fluency task. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 60(3), 640-653. https://doi.org/10.1044/2016_JSLHR-L-15-0440
Selected Presentations
Hall, J.E., Owen Van Horne, A.J., McGregor, K.K., Farmer, T.A., & McMurray, B. (2016, November). Individual Differences in Online Language Processing. Panel presented at American Speech Language Hearing Association Convention; Philadelphia, PA. (Presenter & Panel Chair).
Hall, J.E., Owen Van Horne, A.J., & Farmer, T.A. (2016, June). Distributional learning ability in typically developing children. Talk presented at Fifth Implicit Learning Seminar; Lancaster, UK.