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Snow Given Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education Award at AERA

Professor Catherine Snow has been given the Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) for her wide-ranging and influential research in language and literacy development.

"It is a great honor to be added to the list of those who have received this award," Snow said. "It is also testimony to the power of the Harvard Graduate School of Education students to lure those of us doing basic research into thinking about issues of schools, teachers, and students."

AERA acknowledged Snow's noteworthy research for its solid grounding in both linguistics and psychology, and its impact on theory and practice.

"Catherine Snow's work ranges from detailing the contexts and processes by which children do -- or don't -- acquire the register of academic language, to recent interventions that demonstrate how students develop the language and knowledge of academic disciplines," said P. David Pearson of University of California-Berkeley, who presented the award.

Snow also has synthesized and critiqued collective knowledge of important issues in language and literacy policy, practice, and assessment. "She has provided a compelling example of how to bridge the theory-practice gap in ways that inform both sides of the divide," Pearson said.

In addition to the AERA honor, Snow also received a 2010 National Awards for Education Reporting First Prize from the Education Writers Association, a national professional organization of members of the media who specialize in education. The award was for Snow's opinion piece published in Science entitled, "Academic Language and the Challenge of Reading for Learning about Science."

For the past 33 years, Snow's research has ranged from detailing the contexts and processes by which children do -- or don't -- acquire the register of academic language, to recent interventions that demonstrate how students develop the language and knowledge of academic disciplines, to significant syntheses and critiques of our collective knowledge of important issues in language and literacy policy, practice, and assessment. Snow has provided a compelling example of how to bridge the theory-practice gap in ways that inform both sides of the divide.

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