Teach Effectively!

The Division for Research of the Council for Exceptional Children (DR-CEC) awarded Michael Coyne, of the University of Connecticut, its 2008 award for distinguished achievement in research about special education. This prestigious award recognizes Professor Coyne’s substantial contribution to understanding individuals with disabilities and the provision of services to those individuals. According DR-CEC,

The Division for Research recognizes the critical role of research to both current practice in and the future of the field of Special Education through its Distinguished Early Career Research Award. This annual award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding scientific contributions in special education, in basic and/or applied research, within the first 10 years following receipt of the doctoral degree. For the 2008 award, candidates must have received their doctoral degree in 1998 or later. Nominations are sought across all areas of Special Education as well as all forms of research methodology.

In the accompanying photo, Karen Harris reads from some of her notes about the achievements of Professor Coyne. Since Professor Coyne received his doctoral degree, he has published multiple articles about instruction in reading and received several grants for further study. He plows ahead diligently, but he does his work with humility and care for those around him.

I’m pleased to have had the chance to work with Professor Coyne when he was a student at U.Va. We collaborated on a study of teachers’ views about how decisions regarding placement were made during school-based meetings of educators concerned with students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. He’s far surpassed that work now.

Link to the DR-CEC Web page about the award. (Note the previous recipients of the award!) Also, see Professor Coyne’s vita as of the time of this post (these sorts of document change because [a] university Web folks alter their archiving strategies and [b] professors do more work).