About the Instructor
Shira Peterson is a research associate at Children's Institute with 10 years of experience conducting research and evaluation in the field of early childhood education. Her research investigates how adult-child conversations, especially causal explanations, support children's language and literacy development. For six years, she worked on a research team at the University of Rochester to evaluate the ScienceStart! Curriculum, an inquiry-based preschool curriculum that was recognized by the National Research Council as a promising new early learning curriculum. She currently directs the community initiative "Partners in Family Child Care" to assist family child care providers in supporting young children's language and literacy development. She has taught numerous courses and workshops for early childhood educators, family child care providers, and administrators.
Dr. Peterson completed her Ph.D. in Teaching and Curriculum at the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelor's degree in Cognitive Science. Dr. Peterson has published research articles in the peer-reviewed journals Early Childhood Research Quarterly and Discourse Processes, co-authored a chapter in the Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy, and presented her research at numerous conferences, including internationally.