معرفی
Kausalai Wijekumar is the Houston Endowed Chair and Chancellor EDGES Fellow in the College of Education & Human Development at Texas A&M University, specializing in TEACHING, LEARNING & CULTURE. Her research focuses on intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) for K-12 education, particularly improving reading comprehension and writing skills for diverse student populations, including English Language Learners (ELLs). She has secured over $30 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education and IES, leading large-scale efficacy trials for tools like SWELL (for ELLs) and We-Write (persuasive writing tutor). Her work emphasizes teacher professional development through MOOCs and integrates technology to address educational inequities in high-poverty schools.
Dr. Wijekumar’s grants include projects like Promoting Improvements in Teacher Quality ($7.5M) and Efficacy of We-Write Persuasively ($3.29M), focusing on scalable solutions for literacy instruction. She has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles in journals like Journal of Educational Psychology and Reading and Writing, with key contributions on text structure strategies, meta-analyses of educational technologies, and VR training for first responders. Her leadership roles include directing the Center for Urban School Partnerships and serving on editorial boards for major literacy journals.
Research projects currently active include PRISM (multimodal science texts) and LEELLE (longitudinal language-learning effects). Awards include the AFS Outstanding Researcher Award (2022). Her advising includes 3 doctoral students with topics ranging from ELL instructional ecology to ITSS implementation.
