Jennifer Wallace Jacoby

she/her

  • Associate Professor of Psychology and Education
  • Director of First-Year Seminars
  • Director of the Teaching and Learning Initiative
Jennifer Wallace Jacoby

Jennifer Jacoby is interested in how both children and teachers develop in school contexts. In particular, she seeks to understand how teachers can best support the learning of linguistically and socio-economically diverse groups of children. Jacoby's current research investigates how school settings support the language and literacy development of young English learning children, as well as, how these school settings support the professional learning of the teachers who work with English learners. She uses both qualitative and quantitative methods in her research.  

Areas of Expertise

Education

  • Ed.D., Harvard Graduate School of Education
  • Ed.M., Harvard Graduate School of Education
  • M.A., University of California, Berkeley
  • B.A., Amherst College

HAPPENING AT MOUNT HOLYOKE

Recent Campus News

Mount Holyoke College鈥檚 2024 Common Read is 鈥淚 Never Thought of It That Way,鈥 a timely personal guide to the front lines of a crisis that threatens America 鈥 broken conversations among confounded people.

Faculty and teaching staff at 果冻传媒 College gathered for their annual Teaching and Scholarship Renewal Week, which had been suspended since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mount Holyoke College鈥檚 Common Read for fall of 2022 is 鈥淏raiding Sweetgrass.鈥 鈥淏raiding Sweetgrass鈥 centers Indigenous knowledge as an alternative or complementary approach to mainstream scientific methodologies.

Recent Publications

Jacoby, J.W. (2021). Assistant teachers in Head Start: Important drivers of a diverse and competent workforce. Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/research/publication/assistant-teachers-head-start-important-drivers-diverse-and-competent-workforce

Jacoby, J.W., & *Corwin-Renner, A. (2021). . Journal of Career Development. 

Jacoby, J.W. (2019). When, where, and how do Head Start teachers use Spanish in the context of English curriculum?: Increasing native language support in preschools. Perspectives: A Publication of the National Association for Bilingual Education, 43(2), 6-9.

Jacoby, J.W., & Edlefsen, K. [MHC '16] (2019). .

Mancilla-Martinez, J. and Jacoby, J.W. (2018). The influence of risk factors on preschoolers' Spanish vocabulary development in the context of Spanish instruction. Early Education and Development. 

Recent Awards

Jennifer Wallace Jacoby received the Taylor & Francis/National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators Foundation鈥檚 Outstanding Journal Article Award for 2019 for her article, Supporting Dual Language Learners in Head Start: Teacher Beliefs about Teaching Priorities and Strategies to Facilitate English Language Acquisition from the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education. She was recently honored with the award at the NAECTE Annual Conference, which was held virtually on November 4, 2020.  

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