Yawen Ma

I am a PhD student in CHICAS supervised by Dr Anastasia Ushakova and Prof. Kate Cain. I am funded by EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council). I am collaborating with Amplify Reading to apply and enhance statistical models in order to gain a deeper understanding of early literacy development through digital reading support.

To analyse Amplify data and answer research questions posed by the literacy field, while considering the complexity and diversity of data will consider a variety of approaches to be applied and tested on the data in order to answer distinct questions about how children learn to read. My work will be formed from three main papers focused on distinct pieces of analyses:

1. Application of cluster analysis to identify different reader groups through their engagement with a digital reading supplement
2. (TBC)a test of the application of Gaussian Graphical Models as an exploratory tool and their interpretation on an educational dataset;
3. (TBC)test of already developed methodology framework in Paper 2 to answer a different research question.