Maureen W. Lovett, Ph.D., C.Psych.

Senior Scientist, Neurosciences and Mental Health Program
Director, Learning Disabilities Research Program
The Hospital for Sick Children
and
Professor of Pediatrics and Medical Sciences
University of Toronto

Mailing Address:
The Hospital for Sick Children
555 University Ave
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M5G 1X8

Phone: 416-813-6319
Phone: 416-813-6329
Fax: 416-813-6126
Email: mwl@sickkids.ca
http://www.sickkids.ca/AboutSickKids/Directory/People/L/Maureen-Lovett-staff-profile.html

Dr. Maureen W. Lovett was a Co-Principal Investigator of CSAL. She is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto and the Institute of Medical Science, Faculty of Medicine, and Human Development and Applied Psychology, OISE/UT. Until recently, Maureen Lovett’s research program has been devoted to the study of reading problems only in childhood and adolescence. She conducts research creating and evaluating interventions for children and teens with severe reading disabilities. In these treatment outcome studies, she has asked what constitutes effective intervention for reading-related learning problems, what intervention factors facilitate generalization and maintenance of a positive response, and what diagnostic factors predict intervention response and subsequent outcomes. Maureen Lovett is recognized internationally for her contributions to reading disabilities research and practice, particularly regarding intervention. Her research has been supported by NICHD and IES, as well as by provincial and federal granting agencies in Canada.

Recently this research has been extended to include a heavy knowledge translation effort. The interventions developed by Lovett and her group (the Learning Disabilities Research Program or LDRP), are now available to help struggling readers in elementary and high schools in 21 school boards across Canada. Published by The Hospital for Sick Children as EmpowerTM Reading in 2006, the LDRP has trained and mentored 800 teachers who have taught >8000 children and youth in the first six years of this community roll-out.

From 2009-2011, Dr. Lovett served on a National Academies of Science (NRC) Learning Sciences Panel undertaking a study of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, with the NRC report published in 2012. During this experience, she became very interested in the problems faced by adult struggling readers and the issues involved in developing effective literacy interventions for adult learners.

Within the CSAL Center, she directs all activities at the Toronto site where both assessment and intervention work is being conducted.  She is particularly involved in developing the content of the reading interventions being designed for CSAL adult learners, to deal with both the decoding and comprehension struggles experienced by adult readers.  She and her team are working with Art Graesser and The University of Memphis group on the design of comprehension programming that can be integrated into an intelligent tutoring platform like AutoTutor developed by Graesser and his group.