Awards & Grants

Timothy & Cynthia Shanahan Outstanding Dissertation Award

The International Literacy Association (ILA) Timothy & Cynthia Shanahan Outstanding Dissertation Award honors an outstanding doctoral student who focused their research in the reading field or who conducted related research with implications for reading. Interviews with the winning scholar are published each year in Reading Research Quarterly.

Sponsored by Timothy and Cynthia Shanahan

Deadline: March 30, 2023

Guidelines

Apply for this award

Recent recipients

2022

alida-hudson

Alida K. Hudson, Texas A&M University
Upper Elementary Teachers’ Knowledge of Reading Comprehension, Classroom Practice, and Students’ Performance in Reading Comprehension

 

2021

Yukie Toyama, University of California, Berkeley
What Makes Reading Difficult? An Investigation of the Contribution of Passage, Task, and Reader Characteristics on Item Difficulty, Using Explanatory Item Response Models

2020

John Strong, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Effects and Social Validity of a Text Structure Intervention for Reading and Writing

2019

Courtney Hattan, Illinois State University, Normal
Prompting Rural Students’ Use of Background Knowledge and Experience to Support Comprehension of Unfamiliar Content
Completed dissertation for the University of Maryland, College Park, chaired by Dr. Patricia Alexander

2018

Elena E. Forzani, Boston University, MA
How Well Can Students Evaluate Online Science Information? Contributions of Prior Knowledge, Gender, Socioeconomic Status, and Offline Reading Ability

2017

Laura Northrop, Cleveland State University
Breaking the Cycle: Cumulative Disadvantage in Literacy

2016

Julie Learned, University at Albany, State University of New York
"Feeling Like I'm Slow Because I'm in This Class": Secondary School Contexts and the Identification and Construction of Struggling Readers

2015

Meghan Liebfreund, Towson University
Success with Informational Text Comprehension: An Examination of Underlying Factors

 

For additional information, contact ILAAwards@reading.org.