Rachael Gabriel is associate professor of literacy education at UConn’s Neag School of Education. When large numbers of people showed up at legislative hearings in Connecticut, she became interested in their unusual engagement and strangely similar comments. Gabriel used critical discursive psychology, positioning theory, and narrative policy analysis to analyze the dyslexia law advocacy.

“Our special education candidates are very well prepared,” says Michael Coyne, department head of Educational Psychology at UConn’s Neag School of Education. “It’s incredibly important and one of the critical skills that teachers need to have.”

Dr. Fumiko Hoeft, director of the Brain Imaging Research Center at the University of Connecticut and faculty member at the University of California San Francisco, and Roland Hancock, associate director of the Brain Imaging Center at the University of Connecticut, conceived the app in 2014. Hoeft, along with Devin Kearns at the University of Connecticut, John Gabriell at MIT, and the Dyslexia Center at the University of California San Francisco, are leading the project, which is currently in the final validation phase.

UConn researchers, including Neag School’s Devin Kearns, collaborate with schools across the country to help identify kids at risk of dyslexia. The AppRise project uses a free, game-like app to help teachers assess kids as young as five and get them the help they need to learn to read.

“Teachers and parents often hear about intervention programs through advertising and promotion,” says Devin Kearns, co-author of the article and an associate professor of special education at the Neag School of Education. “However, it can be difficult to judge whether these programs are supported by reliable research – especially for students with dyslexia.”