{"id":76381,"date":"2023-12-12T13:30:29","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T18:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wheelock\/?post_type=profile&p=76381"},"modified":"2026-05-14T09:41:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T13:41:02","slug":"sen-wang","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wheelock\/profile\/sen-wang\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen Wang"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dr. Sen Wang is a research assistant professor in the Teaching & Learning Department at BU Wheelock. She is also a faculty affiliate of the\u00a0<\/span>Wheelock Institute for the Science of Education<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(WISE). Dr. Wang\u2019s research examines how children\u2019s interactions with their learning environments shape language and literacy development, with a particular focus on vocabulary growth, knowledge building, and reading comprehension. Grounded in ecological and instructional perspectives, she conceptualizes children\u2019s learning environments as both social environments, such as adult\u2013child interactions, teacher scaffolding, content-rich instruction, and AI-mediated interactions, and symbolic environments, such as books, curricula, videos, digital media, and AI-supported systems. Through this child\u2013environment lens, her research identifies the social, instructional, and symbolic features that support children\u2019s word learning, conceptual growth, and reading comprehension. Ultimately, she aims to translate these insights into interventions that strengthen the quality of children\u2019s learning environments and expand opportunities for language and literacy development. <\/span><\/p>\n

At WISE, Dr. Wang works for the <\/span>National Center on Improving Literacy<\/span><\/a> (NCIL), focusing on the dissemination of evidence-based practices for screening, identifying, and teaching students with literacy-related disabilities, including dyslexia. Her contributions include translating research into practical tools; developing toolkits with accessible resources for families, educators, and state education agencies; and overseeing internal review and quality assurance processes to ensure high-quality feedback and adherence to review protocols for product development. In addition, Dr. Wang designs instructional components for text reading and comprehension as part of an IES-funded project developing a Tier 3 reading intervention for early elementary students. She also actively engages in collaborative research projects exploring innovative applications of AI to enhance literacy learning.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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