Faculty Bios
Early Childhood Education Graduate Faculty Members
Tracy Collins, Assistant Professor. Dr. Collins has worked with a wide range of children in early childhood settings. These experiences in various environments and contexts, including home and center-based childcare, afterschool programs and residential programs, support her research, teaching and service at Texas A&M. After earning her master's of science degree in Child Development and Early Childhood Education at Boston's Wheelock College, Dr. Collins continued working with young children and families both nationally and abroad. She has taught infants, toddlers and preschool/pre-K aged children at a Harvard University affiliate childcare center. As a doctoral candidate, Dr. Collins conducted research with the national evaluation of Early Head Start working with families of young children in rural VT. The culmination of this work resulted in her dissertation, Building a helping relationship: An investigation of reported parenting beliefs and practices of home visitors and mothers. "My graduate research experiences were well matched with my interest in the parent/teacher/caregiver relationship and how they work together to benefit the child. That opportunity, as well as my early work experiences with young children and their families are a big part of who I am as a researcher and teacher," states Dr. Collins. Dr. Collins received both her master's degree and doctorate degree in education from Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Currently Dr. Collins teaches courses on young children's development and learning, family development and early childhood policy. She also conducts research on pre-service teacher education, reflective practice and issues of childcare quality.
L. Quentin Dixon, Assistant Professor. She earned her Ed.D. in Human Development and Psychology, specializing in Language and Literacy, from Harvard University Graduate School of Education in 2004. Dr. Dixon's research interests focus on the language and literacy development of young English language learners, on creating effective educational programs for English language learners, and in using rigorous quantitative research methods to evaluate educational programs for English language learners.
Dr. Dixon previously worked as a Senior Analyst on large-scale educational program evaluations at Abt Associates for clients such as the US Department of Education and the National Science Foundation. For the national Reading First Impact Study, she took a lead role in designing teacher and principal surveys and an instrument for classroom observations of reading instruction in grades 1 and 2. Dr. Dixon also served as a master trainer for the observation instrument, developing the video-based curriculum, delivery strategies, observers' manuals and trainers' manuals as well as training trainers and 170 field staff to use the instrument reliably to conduct observations in 250 schools located in 13 different states.
Dr. Dixon's dissertation examined the language and literacy development of bilingual kindergartners in Singapore, measuring English and mother tongue vocabulary, phonological awareness, and English reading and writing among a stratified random sample of 297 Singaporean kindergartners. She employed multilevel modeling techniques to analyze the data due to the nesting of the data brought about through sampling children by kindergarten center.
Prior to graduate school, Dr. Dixon taught English as a second language in public elementary schools near Seattle, WA.
Barbara K. Erwin, Clinical Professor. Dr. Erwin received her Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Texas A&M University. Currently, she teaches reading, language arts, and early childhood courses, serves as committee member and co-chair on master's and doctoral committees, and serve as coordinator of the senior methods field-based semester.
After returning to Texas A&M University in 2000, she was the Director of the Regents' Initiative for Excellence in Education, a multi-million dollar effort by the Texas A&M System to increase the number of teachers certified by the State of Texas. At the same time, she also served as Assistant Department Head for undergraduate programs in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture. Before returning to Texas A&M, she was the founding department chair of the Department of Urban Education at the University of Houston-Downtown where she established, in 1995, the first new teacher education program approved by the State of Texas in over 25 years. Dr. Erwin's areas of research include cross-cultural and urban education and she has presented at national and international conferences in the United States, Ireland, and New Zealand.
Blanca G. Quiroz, Assistant Professor. In 2005, she earned her Ed.D. in Human Development and Psychology from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. While doing her doctoral work, she served on the editorial board of the Harvard Educational Review where she edited a special issue on Immigration and Education. Prior to her dissertation work, she worked as a bilingual teacher in Los Angeles School District and as a research associate at UCLA where she completed her BA and MA. She has authored and coauthored multiple articles and chapters in the area of cross-cultural studies in psychology and home-school interactions in the education of minority children. Some of these articles have been published in New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, Aztlan: The Journal of Chicano Studies, and Handbook of Educational Psychology. She has also coauthored books and other materials for teacher training in cross-cultural conflict for WestEd Laboratories. Dr. Quiroz has extensive experience in conducting research with immigrant Latino population, especially at the family level. Currently she is conducting research on the language development of Spanish speaking children in the home and its impact on early language and literacy skills. She is also interested in studying the role of language on learning math and science for ESL students and other cognitive aspects of bilingualism.
Robin A. Rackley, Clinical Assistant Professor. Dr. Rackley received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Texas A&M University in 2004 and currently also serves as the Coordinator for the Early Childhood Undergraduate and Masters Programs. While working on her doctorate, Dr. Rackley was affiliated with the Center for the Study and Implementation of Collaborative Learning Communities.
Dr. Rackley focuses her research on early childhood teachers. In particular, she is interested in the development of teacher leadership among early childhood educators, teacher efficacy and the development of pre-service teachers. Dr. Rackley has published on topics in educational psychology and human development. Dr. Rackley has also held workshops for numerous Texas school districts on topics such as integrating technology into the classroom, teacher leadership and classroom management. She has presented conference papers in the field of teacher efficacy and leadership as well as in the area of classroom observation.
Nancy S. Self, Clinical Assistant Professor- Dr. Self received her Ph.D. in Elementary Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1978. She has been at Texas A&M in the Department of TLAC for 23 years and has served in various capacities: supervisor of student teachers, Director of Student Teaching, Director of Undergraduate Advising, Coordinator and Instructor in the Early Childhood Program. She has taught each of the undergraduate courses offered in the Early Childhood Program with the course on Creative Inquiry Through the Arts for Young Children being her favorite.
Dr. Self was the founder of the local Bluebonnet chapter of ACEI in 1990 and has served as its advisor since then. She has assisted the officers in providing informative programs for all majors in the department and also has made numerous presentations at the International conference for ACEI.. Her current interest is in storytelling in classrooms as a means of enhancing literacy and multicultural appreciation. A recent Internet publication through Phi Delta Kappa on the skills of storytelling was distributed to chapters of future teachers throughout the country. Dr. Self was a co-founder of two local storytelling guilds, one of which is the Aggie Storytelling Association which meets on campus monthly.
Radhika Viruru, Clinical Associate Professor. Dr. Viruru received both her Masters degree and her Ph.D in early childhood education from Texas A&M in 1988 and 1990 respectively, and currently also serves as the Coordinator for the Early Childhood Undergraduate Program.
Dr. Viruru's interests include postcolonial theory and its application to international early childhood education. She is the author of Early Childhood Education: Postcolonial Perspectives from India published by Sage Publications in 2001 and the co-author of Childhood and Postcolonization: Power, Education and Contemporary Practice along with Gaile Cannella, published by Routledge in 2004. She is also the author of numerous journal articles, edited book chapters and conference papers in the field of postcolonial theory, early childhood education and qualitative research. She serves on the editorial board of both the Journal of Education as well as the International Journal of Educational Research, Policy, and Practice: Reconceptualizing Childhood Studies.
Hersh C. Waxman is Director of the State of Texas Education Research Center at Texas A&M University and a Professor in the Department of Teaching, Culture and Learning in the College of Education and Human Development at Texas A & M University. In 1983, he received his Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis, Educational Research and Evaluation from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and then received a postdoctoral fellowship in 1983 and 1984 from the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh. He formerly served as Associate Dean for Research and Director of the Educational Research Center at the University of Houston. He also was a Senior Research Associate at the National Research Center for Education in the Inner Cities, and a Principal Researcher in the National Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence. Prior to receiving his doctorate, he worked for the State of Illinois as a program evaluator in the Bureau of Planning and Evaluation and as a classroom teacher in the Chicago Public Schools.
Hersh received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the College of Education at UIC, and Outstanding Research Awards from the American Educational Research Association, Southwest Educational Research Association, and the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education. He also has received the University of Houston Teaching Excellence Award, College of Education Alumni Service Award, and the College of Education Research Excellence Award. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 research articles in journals such as the International Journal of Educational Research, Learning Environment Research: An International Journal, Journal of Educational Research, Journal of Research and Development in Education, Bilingual Research Journal, Urban Education, Journal of Educational Computing Research, and Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences. He has co-edited several books such as: Preparing Quality Educators for English Language LearnersObservational Research in U. S. Classrooms: New Approaches for Understanding Cultural and Linguistic Diversity (Cambridge University Press, 2004), Research on Educational Resiliency: Student, Teacher, and School Perspectives (Information Age Publishing, 2004), New Directions for Teaching Practice and Research (McCutchan, 1999), Students At Risk in At-Risk Schools: Improving Environments for Learning (Sage, 1992), and Effective Teaching: Current Research (National Society for the Study of Education, 1991).
Hersh has extensive experience in program evaluation and he has been involved in many national, regional, and local program evaluations of early childhood programs/initiatives. He was the evaluator of a five-year longitudinal evaluation of the Greater Houston Collaborative for Children that focused on (a) helping low-income parents improve their parenting skills and their children's success in school, and (b) improving the quality of child care centers across the Houston metropolitan area. He also completed a six-year evaluation of Child Advocates Inc, an organization that helps children and parents who come from abusive family situations. In that study, they focused on a number of indicators of healthy parenting such as family functioning measures, social services obtained by mothers and fathers, and placements of children back to their families. Recently, Hersh has been involved in several evaluation projects with the Children's Museum of Houston.
