Lydia M. Conca, Ph.D.
Professor of Education
Director, Urban Education Partnership Graduate Program
Contact
Phone: 860.231.5510
E-mail:
lconca@sjc.edu
Known throughout the College community as knowledgeable, enthusiastic and approachable, Dr. Lydia Conca describes herself as a "teacher at heart." She says, "Teaching at its core must engage and involve students. It should help them find a voice and create a vision. To that end, I believe in academic rigor. I hold very high expectations in terms of the thinking and writing that students must do."
Dr. Conca specializes in Urban School Improvement, Language-Based Learning Problems including Dyslexia and Teaching in Diverse, General Education Classrooms. She has extensive experience working with elementary, middle and secondary students and their teachers from disadvantaged communities. Before coming to the College, she worked as a teacher, a consultant, and a Title I administrator in the area of reading.
Dr. Conca co-founded and directs the Urban Education Partnership, an innovative graduate degree and certificate program tailored to meet the needs of urban teachers through action research, an approach which uses classroom assessment data to drive instructional decision-making. She is also co-director of the Unification Grant Project, a multi-year Connecticut State Improvement Grant that is designed to foster collaboration among general education and Special Education faculty, as well as with the College faculty at Saint Joseph College. "Overall," Dr. Conca states, "Saint Joseph College is a wonderful place for enhancing special education and working with disadvantaged children." "We help teachers in Hartford and other urban settings to quantify if they were having a positive effect on their students' learning. It's important for teachers to know if they are making a difference." Dr. Conca notes.
Degrees
Ph.D., Northwestern University
M.Ed., University of Illinois
B.S., West Chester University
Recent Research/Publications/Presentations
CT State Department of Education, Bureau of Special Education and Pupil Services
Conca, L. M., "Strategy Choice by Learning Disabled Children with Good and Poor Naming Abilities in a Naturalistic Memory Situation," Learning Disabilities Quarterly (12), 1989.
Stone, C.A. and Conca, L.C., "The Origin of Strategy Deficits in Children with Learning Disabilities: A Social Constructivist Perspective," in L. Meltzer, Strategy Assessment and Instruction, Austin, Texas, 1993.
Conca, L. M., "Evaluation Frames: A Powerful Staff Development Tool for Teacher Centered School Improvement," Journal of Staff Development, (17), 1996.
Conca, L.M. and Devlin-Scherer, R., "Communicating Standards and Opportunities in Teacher Education: The Future Teacher Forum," New Directions in Education Reform
, (3), 1997.
Conca, L.M., "Performance Breakthroughs for Adolescents with Learning Disabilities or Attention Disorders," (Book Review), Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, (41), 1997.
Conca, L.M., "Teacher Conversations about Literacy," The Forum, (1), Connecticut Center for School Change, Hartford, Connecticut, 1999.
Conca, L.M. Schechter, C.P., & Castle, S., "Challenges Teachers Face as They Work to Connect Assessment and Instruction," Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, Vol. 10 (1), 59-75, 2004.
Conca, L.M. (2008) Text highlighting: Helping students understand what they read. Teaching Professor, Vol 22 (10). Reprinted in Inside the School, an electronic newsletter for secondary school teachers, http://www.Insidethe School.com
Conca, L.M. (2009) Can learning to read really be natural? Reading Today, Vol 26 (3).
Legere, E., and Conca, L.M. (in press) Response to intervention by a child with a severe reading disability. Exceptional Children.
Grants
Unification of Teacher Preparatory Programs to Meet the Diverse Learning Needs of Students, Co-director, January 2001 to June 2005, funded for three consecutive years, $180,000.
CT State Department of Education, Department of Higher Education Teacher Quality Partnership Grant, $81,844, assistant director, June 2003 to Sept. 2004.
CT State Department of Education, Division of Higher Education, May 1999, Funds for Research and Dissemination, $2,000.
Saint Joseph College, January 1999, Faculty Educational Technology Development Grant, $1,232.
Dwight D. Eisenhower Federal Activities Program, October 1995 to September 1998,
Connecticut Elementary Education Program, $109,196.
Goals 2,000: Educate America Act, September 1997 to June 2001, Connecticut
School Improvement Initiative Grant, Funded for three consecutive years, $75,000.
