Lisa G. Dornan

Revised Professional Goal Statement

              In my initial goal statement when I applied to George Mason University’s Ph.D in Education and Human Development program, I outlined the many ways I was involved in current research and professional development related to literacy and early childhood education. Since I started the doctoral program as a part-time student and completed 21 credit hours, I have continued to work on these areas of research. Although my primary areas of interest have remained the same, my goals have also evolved to include more Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work as well as the decision to create an interdisciplinary secondary specialization that combines multilingual and multicultural as well as early childhood education. I also am more focused on my future career goals. I am interested in working at a university as a professor conducting research as well as working with future teachers and providing professional development to companies, organizations, and school systems.

              While working as a Graduate Research Scholar for Dr. Mattix Foster, I have worked on several research projects involving the use of children’s literature to teach both future and current educators about anti-racism and global competencies as well as teachers working with military connected children and families. I was given the chance to participate in a poster presentation at the Access to Research and Inclusive Excellence (ARIE) Conference in March of 2023 on this research. I was associated with work at two other conferences, Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers (ALER) in November 2024 and the Global Conference on Education and Research (GLOCER) in December 2024. I hope to present future research at the ALER Conference in November 2025. I have worked on other research initiatives including scripts for tutorial videos and interactive read-louds for the LEAP project. For future goals, I hope to continue to work with Dr. Mattix Foster on literacy research related to children’s literature and teacher preparation. I am also interested in assisting in teaching the children’s literature course and other literacy and early childhood courses offered at GMU. I also hope to start my first research study that stemmed from my preliminary research project for EDRS 812 on perceptions of how multilingual learners’ lived experiences relate to their language acquisition journey by interviewing ESOL teachers. I hope to continue this initial work and present my findings at ALER 2025.  Additionally, through my job with Fairfax County Public Schools, where I work as a PreK teacher, I have been given opportunities to led professional developments on teacher in-service days on literacy as well as work on creating lesson plans for interactive read- alouds for PreK teachers. I plan to continue to work on professional and curriculum development with FCPS and the Office of Early Childhood.
             I am primarily interested in working on research with early childhood multilingual learners in the areas of language and literacy as well as with teacher preparation and professional development. I previously thought that I wanted to work in education policy but I have decided my interests are more related to working with students and teachers directly to create change. I continue to be interested in interactive read-alouds and now I am interested in teacher talk and language that occurs in the classroom as well as direct instruction in vocabulary and language. I am still interested and believe in partnering with families and I am very interested in the work conducted by Dr. Letiecq and Dr. Vesely on preschool access for immigrant families. My goal for the next academic year is to take more classes in the MME and early childhood specializations to broaden my research scope. I have decided to pursue the certification in qualitative research methods as I am primarily interested in conducting mixed methods and qualitative research.

              Throughout my first two and half years as a part-time doctoral student who has completed 21 credit hours, I have strengthened my original interests and broadened my intended areas of research. I have also realized that I am primarily interested in higher education as a career goal and I hope to have more opportunities to work on this goal in coming semesters. I would enjoy the opportunity to coteach a course or partner on research with other institutions to network and strengthen my research. I am excited to continue my coursework, growth as a researcher, career goals through my GRS work, courses, and other opportunities for research and professional development.

​