The Overlooked Pieces of the Science of Reading

About the Presenters

Dr. Kate Cain is Professor of Psychology at Lancaster University and Past President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR). Beginning in the late 1990s, her research established inference making as a core component of comprehension difficulties and identified “poor comprehenders” (i.e., children who decode accurately yet fail to understand text) as a distinct population requiring targeted intervention. Throughout the 2000s, she built the critical connection between vocabulary knowledge and inference ability, showing how these skills develop interdependently. Her research on comprehension monitoring consistently demonstrates that early childhood oral language abilities are strong predictors of later reading success. With over 25 years of active research and recognition through the Samuel Torrey Orton Award and AIM Academy Hollis Scarborough Award (2025), her work bridges research and practice in reading comprehension development.

Kristin Bourdage, Ph.D., is a former elementary and middle school teacher who served as Associate Professor and Department Chair at Otterbein University for 13 years before transitioning to district leadership. From 2020 to 2024, she led secondary curriculum and instruction for a large Midwest district, implementing a large-scale vocabulary initiative across middle schools. Her research focuses on classroom dialogue and how the questions teachers ask during reading powerfully shape students’ comprehension and thinking. She co-authored Quality Talk About Text (2021) with Ian Wilkinson and Nell Duke, and has published in Language and Education on dialogic teaching. She currently bridges research on classroom talk and K-12 implementation through professional development and leadership at Partnerships for Authentic Learning and Leadership.

Beth Lawrence, M.A., CCC-SLP, is a veteran speech-language pathologist specializing in supporting literacy skills. She co-founded InferCabulary, now part of Really Great Reading, which builds depth of vocabulary through semantic reasoning, replicating with images and captions how avid readers naturally build word knowledge across multiple contexts. She has authored papers on semantic reasoning, including Abstract Vocabulary Development: Embodied Theory and Practice in Educational Psychology Review (2023) with dual coding theory researcher Mark Sadoski, demonstrating how semantic reasoning offers one approach to the challenge of teaching nuanced, abstract vocabulary. She co-authored the norm-referenced Test of Semantic Reasoning and bridges research and practice through professional development and product development.

About the Moderator

Dr. Donna Wright has served in many roles in her 40-plus-year career as an educator. She has positively influenced the educational field as a classroom teacher, assistant principal, principal, assistant superintendent, deputy director, and school superintendent. Dr. Wright earned her doctorate in leadership studies from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She has been published in numerous educational journals, invited to present at national and state conferences, and has served as an adjunct professor at various institutions of higher learning. Although Dr. Wright recently retired from K-12 public education, she continues to support and consult with colleagues and school districts around the country. Currently, she serves as the AASA Lead Superintendent, directing the National Women’s Leadership Consortium, and collaborates with public school districts around the country.