Jessica E. Whittaker

Jessica Whittaker's primary research interests lie in examining the association between early teacher-child interactions and children's academic and social-emotional outcomes. Her work focuses on understanding and supporting the inter-connections among young children’s foundational cognitive, behavioral, and social-emotional skills.  

Currently, she is involved in several research efforts to develop and test the efficacy of interventions that include curricula, online coursework, and coaching, designed to improve the quality of early teacher-child interactions and instruction with the goal of identifying evidence-based practices that are scalable and accessible. She is also engaged in efforts to develop valid and reliable measures of classroom processes that relate to children’s development in these areas.

Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2008
B.A., Duke University, 2000

Curriculum Vitae