Dr. Carlos Calderon’s current grant-supported project, “Assessing the temporal reliability of cognitive-achievement relations and factor structure of the Woodcock-Johnson (WJ) Tests of Cognitive Abilities and Academic Achievement, Fourth Edition” is a series of research studies funded by the Woodcock Institute for the Advancement of Neurocognitive Research and Applied Practice. His grant started in March 2020 and will last until March 2022. The first study under this grant is the basis for doctoral candidate Shannon Winans’s dissertation (Combined Counseling/School Psychology PhD program) entitled, “The stability of the Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Abilities factor structure in a school referral sample.” Shannon is examining both the technical adequacy of the WJ, as well as the theoretical model followed by this instrument. Ms.Winans and Dr. Calderon presented a peer-reviewed paper session at the 2021 National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) annual meeting providing an overview of cognitive assessment theory, history, and current practices. Their paper session for 2022 NASP is currently under peer-review, and they hope to present results from their first wave of data collection looking at the factor structure of the WJ, and the implications for that instrument’s technical adequacy, as well as potential implications for cognitive assessment theory and practices in school psychology. Future projects under this grant include looking at the impact of speaking English as a second language on performance on this cognitive test; disentangling acculturation factors from cognitive assessment performance among culturally-diverse populations; and proposing refinements to cognitive assessment theory and recommendations for school psychology practice.
Project Website: https://sites.google.com/a/nau.edu/carloscalderon/research-focus