Michelle V. Porche News

• WCW Researchers Share Findings on Adolescents' and Immigrants' Mental Health & Risk-Taking Behavior
  

  For Immediate Release: January 21, 2014
• WCW Scholar Presents Study Findings on Adolescents & Substance Use at APA Convention
  

  For Immediate Release: August 8, 2012
• Spotlight: New Funding and Projects Spring/Summer 2012
  

  Research & Action Report, Spring/Summer 2012
  
  Wellesley Centers for Women research and action initiatives are funded primarily by federal, state, and corporate grants and contracts. Several new and continuing projects received funding over the past six months.
• What Makes Some Preschools Better Than Others?
  TIME Magazine August 25, 2011
  Alice Park
  
• Beyond Letters and Numbers When Tragedy and Trauma Exist: Social and Emotional Support for School Success
  

  August 2010
• Beyond Letters and Numbers When Tragedy and Trauma Exist: Social and Emotional Support for School Success
  

  Commentary by Michelle Porche, Ed.D., Senior Research Scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women, and Lisa R. Fortuna, M.D., MPH., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School.
  August 2010
• Q & A: Traumatic Stress among African Refugees in New Hampshire
  

  Michelle Porche, Ed.D., a senior research scientist at Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW), studies academic achievement in literacy and science among young children and adolescents. She is especially interested in the influence of gender and socioemotional factors on the academic achievement of children from low-income families. More recently she has expanded her work to study the impact of trauma on learning and achievement. In addition to work at WCW, Porche spent ten years as a researcher on the longitudinal Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, where she received her doctorate. She is co-author of Is Literacy Enough? Pathways to Academic Achievement for Adolescents, which describes findings from the Home-School Study. In 2002 she was a corecipient of the International Reading Association’s Albert J. Harris Award for contributions in literacy research.
• For Gay Couples, Married Matters
  

  The Boston Sunday Globe
  Stephen Smith
  May 24, 2009
• Examining Mixed-Ancestry Identity in Adolescents
  

  Two years ago, scholars at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) launched a study of racial and ethnic identification among adolescents of mixed ancestry. The reasons for pursuing the research were several. Most literature about ethnic/racial self-identification patterns derived from adult respondents. For example, the series of studies that led to the change in wording of racial self-identification in the 2000 Census was carried out with adults.
• Adolescent Literacy and Achievement: Widening the Path to Success
  

  by Michelle Porche, Ed.D., and Stephanie Harris, M.A.
  From the Fall/Winter 2007 Research & Action Report

  Is Literacy Enough?, which we co-authored with Catherine Snow and Patton Tabors, we explore the continuities and discontinuities of early literacy skills on adolescent achievement. In this book, we describe the original 83 low-income students who began participating in the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development at the age of 3, and we conclude with the outcomes for the 47 participants who continued in the study until they reached young adulthood. When this study began, Dr. Snow, the Principal Investigator, set a groundbreaking path into the importance of language as a foundation of early literacy. Results from this study have influenced conceptual and practical approaches to early reading instruction, helping to set national standards. At the end of the 16-year study many hypotheses were borne out, even as new questions were generated about our most vulnerable children. 
• Ordinary people, extraordinary lives
  

  by Anne Noonan, Ph.D. and Michelle Porche, Ed.D.
  Letter to the Editor published in the Boston Globe
  August 27, 2005