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We'd like to start Fall 2022 out right by sharing a highlight featuring one of our recent team alums! This individual team member feature is part of our series highlighting outstanding contributions to the Literacy Development among Diverse Learners (LDDL) research lab at the University of South Carolina.
Manaal Ahmed joined the Literacy Development among Diverse Learners (LDDL) team in the fall of 2019. She was involved in building the lab, supporting the adjustments and changes to the team during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and growing our work into increasingly meaningful spaces. After graduating from UofSC, Manaal remained involved through a research manuscript she co-authored alongside Molly Morgan. She completed the manuscript while working outside jobs and applying to medical school. Other key contributions include Manaal's work co-designing an Independent Study course she completed during Spring 2020 (adapting her plans considerably in response to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic) and her efforts spearheading the development of lab training materials to support new team members in learning lab protocols for standardized assessment administration. Manaal has contributed to the lab through a wide variety of activities (see list at the bottom of this feature), but there are three specific areas that stand out:
Manaal has shown both her leadership and collaborative approach to teamwork in a variety of ways during her time in the lab. Not only has she lead by example in her reliability, dependability, and responsiveness to feedback, but Manaal is also thoughtful in her interactions with other team members. She earned her position as a key collaborator on a UofSC Magellan Scholar grant (led by Molly Morgan) through her insightful feedback and ability to deliver constructive comments effectively. Her knowledge base and experience lead to her earning a paid role collaborating on the grant. Manaal has further demonstrated her leadership in her work supporting new team members through onboarding and training in the lab. A specific example is her efforts in designing training materials. To do this work well, she needed to consider the perspectives of team members with various levels of experience. She developed the materials carefully, resulting in training resources that are highly effective for increasing team member fidelity in completing work assignments. We still use her materials in the lab today. Manaal is also a highly skilled writer. Through her involvement on the Magellan Scholar grant, Manaal began contributing to the write-up of a research manuscript currently under review for publication. As second author, Manaal contributed substantially to the data collection, qualitative analyses (forward and backward coding), interpretation of results, and writing of the literature review, results, and discussion. She was highly involved throughout the development of the project, which was based on phone interviews with Spanish-speaking families regarding their children's linguistic experiences at home, family background, and sibling involvement in the home. Manaal provided feedback during the iterative refinement of survey procedures based on participant comments, and wrote much of the manuscript completed in spring 2022. Her aptitude for research writing has been evident throughout the drafting of the work; Manaal quickly took and implemented feedback to strengthen the paper. The final manuscript, entitled "The BiRDI Home Environment Questionnaire: A tool to promote conversation between Spanish-speaking families and early education providers in the U.S.", is currently under review for publication in an educational research journal. Perhaps Manaal's most important strength to highlight is her knowledge and experience working with individuals from cultural and linguistic backgrounds that are different from her own. As a bilingual English-Urdu speaker and an Indian American individual, Manaal is both highly aware of and has experience navigating cultural and linguistic marginalization in the U.S. She has drawn on her personal experiences, in combination with her experience working across cultural and linguistic lines (e.g., Spanish-English and Cantonese-English), to build skills that are conducive to improving accessibility in healthcare and in communication. This was evident in her work in the lab and in her contributions to our manuscript, which centers on better understanding Spanish-speaking families’ experiences and improving culturally responsive educational practice in the home. Manaal's strengths in this area have been further demonstrated in her efforts collaborating with two fellow team members to develop resources for administrative staff at a local elementary school to encourage more culturally-responsive interactions with Spanish-speaking families of students enrolled at the school (see several examples here). She has an incredible growth mindset that is critical to effective practice and is well-positioning to continue to learn to support her patients in ways that align well with their backgrounds, needs, and culture. Additional Contributions from Manaal
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Lisa Fitton
quantitative research. methodology. statistics. diversity. bilingualism. equity. education. assessment. speech-language pathology. Archives
November 2022
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orcid.org/0000-0003-0524-7339
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