The Rowe Lab is based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. We study the role of social interactions in children’s cognitive development, primarily language and literacy development from birth to age five. 

Meredith Rowe is an educational psychologist interested in environmental effects on learning. She examines the role of parent and family factors in children’s early language and cognitive development and develops intervention strategies for caregivers of young children.

Anna Kirby is a doctoral student in the Human Development, Learning and Teaching program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). She received a B.A. in music and psychology from Williams College and an Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology from HGSE. Anna is interested in children’s sociopolitical development and socialization, especially within caregiver-child relationships. She is also interested in critical pedagogy and community-based and participatory research methods.

Qianru (Tiffany) Yang is a doctoral student in the Human Development, Learning and Teaching program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Tiffany graduated from the University of Washington, Seattle, with a B.A. in psychology in 2016. She then earned her Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2018. Driven to close the gender and SES achievement gap in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), Tiffany is interested in early childhood STEM learning. She is particularly interested in the effects of home learning environment and parental input on children’s mathematical and cognitive development. Additionally, she hopes to understand how children develop STEM-related stereotypes and how these beliefs influence their learning outcomes.

Sandra G. El Hadi is pursuing her Ph.D. in Human Development, Learning, and Teaching at Harvard University. Prior to joining Harvard, she worked with United Nations (UN) agencies, governments, and multilateral organizations. She received her master’s degree in General Linguistics and Comparative Philology from the University of Oxford and pursued her undergraduate studies in Political Science and English at the American University of Beirut. Her interests lie primarily in developmental psychology, language acquisition, and early childhood education.

Zhongyu Wei is a doctoral student in the Human Development, Learning and Teaching program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is interested in how the early home environment, particularly parent-child language interactions, shapes children’s language and cognitive development. Zhongyu holds a B.A. in linguistics and economics from Tsinghua University and an Ed.M. in international education policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Lauren Schilling is a doctoral student in the Human Development, Learning and Teaching program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She received a B.A. in Psychology and Education Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and taught preschool in Waunakee, Wisconsin. Lauren is interested in how early language environments support literacy development, particularly children’s word recognition and decoding skills. She hopes to apply quality language input in play-based learning settings for children from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.

Gabriela Vescovi is a visiting Ph.D. candidate from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, Brazil). She is interested in how early language environments shape children’s language trajectories. Her research focuses on language input in a low-resource setting and how public policies and interventions can promote language-rich interactions in the home. She’s also interested in how digital media such as television, smartphones, and tablets impact language environments and development.

Selest Sleight graduated with an Ed.M in Human Development and Education with a concentration in Early Childhood from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2022. She earned a B.S. in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Wisconsin- Madison in 2019. In the Rowe Lab, Selest assists with the research project investigating early childhood STEM learning. She is interested in improving educational equity through early childhood education and how to best leverage knowledge about early literacy development to improve children’s later educational outcomes.

Erica Friedman is a research assistant in the Rowe Lab interested in language acquisition and early learning, as well as the developmental link between gesture and speech in typical language development. She graduated from Colgate University in 2022 with high honors in Psychology and minors in Educational Studies and Linguistics. 

Lizzie Baird is an early childhood educator with a decade of experience serving in elementary school classrooms. She graduated with an Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard in 2020 where she was a fellow with the Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative. Lizzie earned a B.A. in sociology from Bates College in 2014. In the Rowe Lab, she assists with intervention curriculum writing and training focused on parents and caregivers of young children.