Keeping up with educational research on teaching reading with Dr. Neena Saha
With a background as a classroom teacher, a master’s in educational neuroscience, and a doctorate in special education, Dr. Neena Saha has seen all facets of education. In her work, she noticed a gap in the research-to-practice workflow for early literacy and dedicated herself to streamlining the process of finding and disseminating the best educational research for educators. Together, Susan Lambert and Neena discuss the need for reading researchers to work together and collaborate in a more focused and concerted group effort, the challenges of implementation, and how educators can best keep up with research that often feels overwhelming.
Meet our guest(s):
Dr. Neena Saha
Dr. Neena Saha began her career in education as a classroom teacher for children with exceptional needs. She received her master’s degree in educational neuroscience from Columbia University and her doctorate in special education from Vanderbilt University. Neena’s doctoral work on decoding resulted in a patent for a new measure of text decoding difficulty. Her educational research can be found in publications such as The Journal of Learning Disabilities, Annals of Dyslexia, and Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Upon graduating, Neena founded Elemeno® to help bridge the research-to-practice gap in early literacy and started publishing a newsletter called the Reading Research recap that translates recent research in education into useful information for teachers. Both the Recap and Elemeno were acquired by MetaMetrics in 2021, and Neena joined their team to help build out their early literacy products, tools, and services. She continues to publish the Reading Research Recap, and is currently exploring better ways to translate research at scale.
Meet our host, Susan Lambert
Susan Lambert is the Chief Academic Officer of Elementary Humanities at Amplify, and the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast. Her career has been focused on creating high-quality learning environments using evidence-based practices. Susan is a mom of four, a grandma of four, a world traveler, and a collector of stories.
As the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan explores the increasing body of scientific research around how reading is best taught. As a former classroom teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer, Susan is dedicated to turning theory into best practices that educators can put right to use in the classroom, and to showcasing national models of reading instruction excellence.
