Judy Carta

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Dr. Carta is a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Life Span Studies and Professor of Special Education at the University of Kansas. Her research focuses on developing strategies to minimize the effects of poverty on children’s outcomes. She also develops practices that teachers and parents can use to promote children’s early learning and social development. Her interests also include advancing the quality of children’s caregiving environments, methods for monitoring the progress of young children, and strategies for promoting family engagement in early intervention programs.

Dr. Carta is one of the primary developers of the TPITOS: The Pyramid Infant-Toddler Observation System, an approach for enhancing teachers’ competence in promoting the social-emotional competence of infants and toddlers. She is currently the Director of the Bridging the Word Gap Research Network and has been the PI of several multi-site research projects and centers funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Institute of Educational Sciences, and the Administration on Children and Families. She was a member of the Federal Advisory Panel on Head Start Research and Evaluation, Division of Early Childhood’s Commission on Recommended Practices, and served as the Editor of Topics in Early Childhood Special Education.