Karen Wieland
School of Education
University of Pittsburgh
5114 Wesley W. Posvar Hall
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
PHONE: 412-648-7304
EMAIL:
kwieland@pitt.eduFull Time Faculty - Assistant Professor
Karen Wieland joined the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Education in the fall of 2007. Karen is a certified reading specialist (grades K-12) with 16 years of high school teaching experience. She received her Ph.D. and her Ed. M. in reading education from the State University of New York at Buffalo under the advisement of Michael W. Kibby. As an undergraduate, Karen studied music and economics at The Catholic University of America. At the University at Buffalo, she served as an adjunct instructor within the graduate literacy education program, as a graduate assistant and clinical supervisor in Center for Literacy and Reading Instruction, and as a research assistant on an interdisciplinary research project funded by the National Science Foundation entitled “Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition (CVA): from Algorithm to Curriculum.” Karen also taught reading diagnosis courses as an adjunct instructor at D'Youville College in Buffalo.
Karen’s dissertation research concerned the processes used by adolescent readers to learn new words and word meanings from multiple contexts. Her current research projects with high school and college age readers concern vocabulary acquisition and development as these relate to reading comprehension. Karen is also interested in concept development, reading diagnosis, diagnostic teaching, and content area literacy instruction.
School Affiliations
- Department: Dean's Office
- Department: Instruction and Learning - Assistant Professor
- Program: Language, Literacy, and Culture - Assistant Professor
- Program: Reading Education - Assistant Professor
Education
Recent Course Instruction
Spring 2010 (2104)
Fall 2009 (2101)
Summer 2009 (2097)
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Recent Presentations
- Wieland, K.M. (2009, May). Contextual vocabulary acquisition in action: Analyzing reading and reasoning moves made by excellent adolescent readers while deriving unknown word meanings from multiple texts.
Research poster session presented at the International Reading Association 54th North Central Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN.
- Wieland, K.M. (2009, April). Toward a unified theory of contextual vocabulary acquisition: Exploring lacunae through verbal protocol analysis.
Paper presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA. (discussant: Judith Scott)
- Wieland, K.M. (2008, December). A study of excellent readers thinking aloud during CVA.
In M.W. Kibby, K.M. Wieland, T.M. Christ, Acquiring a sense of a word’s meaning from verbal context: Processes, outcomes, and curricular directions. Session presented at the National Reading Conference, Orlando, FL. (discussant: Susan Watts Taffe).
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Current Professional Participation
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Recent Grants
- University of Pittsburgh School of Education Faculty and Student Research Fund Grant, $3,000.00 awarded May 1, 2009
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Recent Fellowships, Awards, and Honors
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Recent Collaborative Efforts
- Research or Scholarship
- Academic Advisor, DICTIONARYSQUARED, INC., Belle Harbor, NY. Work in collaboration with Adam Kapelner, Founder and Webmaster. Provide suggestions for development and enhancement of pedagogical components and content. Lay groundwork for future research projects.
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Recent Service
- School of Education-level Service
- School of Education Centenary Celebration Planning Committee
- Participate in the Social Justice Across the Curriculum Committee
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Recent Projects
- Contextual vocabulary acquisition processes and outcomes of college age readers
Contextual vocabulary analysis (CVA) is a deliberate strategic process used by readers to derive and learn the meanings of unfamiliar words from print contexts during normal reading. Much evidence suggests that readers of all ages and ability levels acquire significant proportions of their total lexical knowledge by doing CVA. This investigation uses a mixed methods design. Qualitative data analysis is used to explore the influence that potentially critical factors (such as the relative considerateness of texts and readers’ prior knowledge) play on the CVA processes and outcomes of undergraduate student participants. Between-subjects factorial analysis is used to examine the relationship between two predictor variables—target text length (TTL) and level of target text exposure (LTTE)—and CVA outcomes. Standardized norm-referenced measures of participants’ receptive vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension abilities will be used as covariates. The design of the study controls for text readability levels, the frequency with which target words are used in English print and oral language, and the conceptual complexity of target words. Since there is only limited evidence in the extant literature concerning the relationship between TTL and LTTE and readers’ CVA outcomes, this study addresses these lacunae and the results are being used to inform the ongoing design of curricular materials (e.g., texts) and instructional methods to promote CVA with adolescent and young adult readers.
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