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Laura Berk is pictured here with her two sons, David and Peter. David (right), a graduate of Grinnell College, received his masters in public health at Tulane University and masters in education from UC Santa Barbara. Currently, he teaches elementary school in Southern California. Peter (left) a graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University received his doctor of law degree from Loyola University of Chicago and practices in Chicago |
Laura E. Berk is a distinguished professor of psychology at Illinois State University, where she teaches human development to both undergraduate and graduate students. She received her bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her master's and doctoral degrees in early childhood development and education from the University of Chicago. She has been a visiting scholar at Cornell University, UCLA, Stanford University, and the University of South Australia. Berk has published widely on the effects of school environments on children's development, the development of private speech, and most recently the role of make-believe play in the development of self-regulation. Her research has been funded by the U.S. Office of Education and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. It has appeared in many prominent journals, including Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Development and Psychopathology, and Early Childhood Research Quarterly. Her empirical studies have atttracted the attention of the general public, leading to contributions to Psychology Today and Scientific American. Berk has served as a research editor for Young Children and is a consulting editor for Early Childhood Research Quarterly. She is author of the chapter on the extracurriculum for the Handbook of Research on Curriculum (American Educational Research Association) the chapter on development for The Many Faces of Psychological Research in the Twenty-First Century (American Psychological Association) and the entry on Vygotsky for the Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. Her books include Private Speech: From Social Interaction to Self-Regulation, Scaffolding Children's Learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education, and Landscapes of Development: An Anthology of Readings. In addition to Child Development, she is author of the best-selling texts Infants, Children, and Adolescents and Development Through the Lifespan, published by Allyn and Bacon. Her recently published book for parents and teachers is Awakening Children's Minds: How Parents and Teachers Can Make a Difference.
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