Carol McDonald Connor (February 21, 1953 – May 14, 2020) was an educational psychologist known for her research contributions to the field of early literacy development in diverse learners, in particular for work on individualized student instruction interventions and the lattice model of reading development. She held the position of Chancellor's Faculty and Equity Advisor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine.
Connor was the editor of The Cognitive Development of Reading and Reading Comprehension (2016), a text on theories of reading comprehension development. She also co-edited Advances in Reading Interventions: Research to Practice to Research (2015) and co-authored Improving Literacy in America: Guidelines from Research (Current Perspectives in Psychology) (2005).
Biography
Carol McDonald was born on February 21, 1953, in Chicago. She began her career in speech-language pathology. After receiving B.S. and M.S. degrees in Speech-Language Pathology from Northwestern University, she spent over ten years working as an ASHA certified speech-language pathologist in Utah, Massachusetts, and Illinois.
In the early 90s, she accepted a position as a speech-language pathologist at the Cochlear Implant Program University of Michigan Medical Center, where she spent five years working with deaf children with cochlear implants. In a 2018 interview with UC Irvine's Dean Richard Arum, Connor cites her experience at the Michigan Medical Center in her transition to literacy research, as she became interested in the reading gap between hearing children and deaf children with implants.
She received her PhD in language, Literacy, and Culture from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2002, under the supervision of Holly K. Craig. She did her post-doctoral work with Frederick J. Morrison at the University of Michigan.
Since 2002, Connor worked as a research scientist and professor around the country, including at the University of California, Irvine, Arizona State University, Florida State University, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
She was married to Jay Connor, who is the founder and CEO of a company that uses Connor's Assessment-to-instruction (A2i) software. They have three children. Connor died May 14, 2020, of ovarian cancer.
Research
Individualized Student Instruction and Child-by-Instruction Interaction Effects
Much of Connor's research has been fostered by a conviction that individual differences matter when it comes to reading instruction.
In 2004, Connor was the Principal Investigator of a three-year grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) to develop the Individualized Student Instruction (ISI) intervention system, which includes the A2i software. The intervention consists of a teacher training program and professional development in the design of targeted, individualized instruction, generally delivered to small groups of students with similar instructional needs. The A2i software supports teachers in developing individualized student instruction plans with specific recommendations on the type and quantity of instruction needed based on assessment data generated several times throughout the school year. The software employs algorithms that make use of the child-by-instruction effects that Connor has documented in her research, by which specific types of instruction are more or less effective for individual students depending on the specific skills they have at the time of instruction.
Randomized control studies showed that reading outcomes in ISI classrooms were significantly better than those in control classrooms, in Kindergarten through third grade. Connor was also the principal investigator on several follow-up grants on the project, including a four-year grant to make A2i software accessible to educators in more contexts and without extensive and ongoing researcher support.