Improving Children’s Educational Outcomes

The RITES research team develops and tests the effectiveness of instructional and intervention practices to improve children’s academic outcomes.  We are particularly invested in developing effective techniques to improve children’s writing skills, as this is a relatively neglected area in the research.  A central goal of our work is to develop techniques that produce lasting, generalizable skill gains.

Collaborating with Community Partners

RITES conducts its research in local schools in and around Central New York.  When we are invited to collaborate with a school community, we work hard to make the partnership worthwhile and effective for our school collaborators and the students they serve.  We are particularly interested in partnering with school communities that face unique challenges, including staff and resource shortages, limited time for intervention planning and implementation, or other barriers that hinder effective instruction and service delivery.  Given these challenges facing schools, we work to develop research-based practices that are time and resource efficient and that are feasible for educators to implement.

Conducting Rigorous Scientific Research

RITES applies a problem-solving approach to our research paradigm.  From this perspective, we use descriptive methods to identify problems that exist in school communities, and we use correlational and experimental methods to analyze the causes of those problems.  Our team works to develop innovative, research-based solutions to those problems, and we evaluate the effectiveness of our solutions using rigorous randomized controlled trials.

Preparing Undergraduates for a Future in Psychology

The RITES research team resides in the Department of Psychology at the State University of New York at Cortland (SUNY Cortland).  As many of our undergraduate team members seek a future career in school psychology, RITES emphasizes the need for psychologists to become competent scientists who use research to solve important practical problems, as well as competent practitioners who use research-supported practices when serving clients.