Tracy Bradfield is a research associate and project coordinator for the Center for Response to Intervention in Early Childhood (CRtIEC) at CEED. CRtIEC is federally funded multi-institution center examining the feasibility of adopting a Response to Intervention (RtI) framework in early education settings. As a part of this work, Dr. Bradfield co-manages the research and development of a new battery of Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs) that will be used as the framework for decision making within an EC RtI model. Dr. Bradfield also provides training and consultation on the use of IGDIs within problem solving models and provides content specific technical assistance to users of the Get it! Got it! Go! web-based data management system.
In addition, Dr. Bradfield supports two community-based research projects: "Family Academy: Researchers and Practitioners Improving Outcomes for 0-3 year olds" and the NAZ Internal Evaluation. Both of these projects support efforts of the Northside Acheivement Zone (NAZ), a collaboration made up of over 60 organizations and schools whose mission is to build a culture of acheivement in a targeted geographic area in North Minneapolis to ensure all youth graduate from high school college-ready. The Family Academy project is a community-based participatory research project whose overarching goal is to strengthen and validate the community-developed Family Academy model of parent education and empowerment. The NAZ Internal Evaluation is a formative evaluation of NAZ's efforts to achieve its stated goals and objectives.
Dr. Bradfield’s research interests include measurement, progress monitoring, language and literacy development, early childhood public policy, and community engaged research.
Dr. Bradfield received her Master of Science in Occupational Therapy from the University of Minnesota and worked as an educational occupational therapist before returning to the University of Minnesota to earn a doctorate in Educational Psychology with an emphasis on Early Childhood Special Education. Dr. Bradfield's dissertation focused on examining the reliability and validity of general outcome measures of beginning handwriting development.
Selected Presentations
McConnell, S. R., Seiwert, M., Wackerle-Hollman, A., & Bradfield, T. A. (2012, October). Early childhood in Promise Neighborhoods: Northside Achievement Zone's Early Childhood Action Team. Spotlight symposium presented at the annual meetings of the Division for Early Childhood, Council on Exceptional Children, Minneapolis MN.
Wackerle-Hollman, A., Bradfield, T., McConnell, S., & Spencer, T. (2012, October). Measuring a response to intervention model in early childhood: Examining assessments for identification, decision making and progress monitoring. Poster presentation at the annual meetings of the Division for Early Childhood (DEC), Council on Exceptional Children, Minneapolis, MN.
Bradfield, T., & Potter, L. (2012, September 21). Using a partial credit model with picture naming IGDIs 2.0. Poster presented at Center for Response to Intervention in Early Childhood (CrTIEC) 4th Annual Summit on RTI in Early Childhood, Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico.
Bradfield, T., Wackerle-Holman, A., & McConnell, S. (2012, September 21). Post-summit workshop: Using individual growth and development indicators. Presented at Center for Response to Intervention in Early Childhood (CrTIEC) 4th Annual Summit on RTI in Early Childhood, Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico.
McConnell, S., Wackerle-Holman, A., & Bradfield, T. (2012, September 19). IGDIs and beyond: Measurement and decision-making for language and literacy RTI efforts in early childhood education. Presented at Center for Response to Intervention in Early Childhood (CrTIEC) 4th Annual Summit on RTI in Early Childhood, Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico.
Bradfield, T. (2012, February). Response to intervention (RtI) in early childhood: Decision making implications. Poster presented at the Conference on Research Innovations in Early Childhood, San Diego, CA.
Clayton, K., Bradfield, T., Schmitt, B., and McConnell, S. (2011, Sept. 27). The impact of instructional support on oral language development for preschoolers living in poverty. Poster at the 3rd Annual RTI Early Childhood Summit, Santa Ana Pueblo, NM.
McConnell, S., Bradfield, T., and Wackerle-Hollman, A. (2011, Sept. 26). Using IGDIs for identifying children for tiered early literacy and language support. Presentation at the 3rd Annual RTI Early Childhood Summit, Santa Ana Pueblo, NM.
Albano, A. D., Rodriguez, M. C., McConnell, S., Bradfield, T., & Wackerle-Hollman, A. (2011, April). Scaling with measures of early literacy. Paper presented at the meeting of the National Council for Measurement in Education, New Orleans, LA.
Bradfield, T., Wackerle-Hollman, A., McConnell, S., Rodriguez, M. C. & Albano, A. D. (2011, April). Construct identification to support early literacy measurement. Paper presented at the meeting of the National Council for Measurement in Education, New Orleans, LA.
Rodriguez, M. C., Albano, A. D., McConnell, S., Wackerle-Hollman, A. & Bradfield, T. (2011, April). Standard setting with innovative measures of early literacy: Contrasting Groups. Paper presented at the meeting of the National Council for Measurement in Education, New Orleans, LA.
Wackerle-Hollman, A., Bradfield, T., McConnell, S., Albano, A. D., & Rodriguez, M. C. (2011, April). Task development and item analysis in innovative measures of early literacy. Paper presented at the meeting of the National Council for Measurement in Education, New Orleans, LA.
McConnell, S., Rodriguez, M., Schmitt, B., Bradfield, T.A., & Clayton, K. (2011, February). Early Childhood Response to Intervention: Using Second-Generation IGDIs. Symposium presented at annual meetings of the National Association of School Psychologists, San Francisco, CA.
Bradfield, T.A., & McConnell, S. R. (2011, January). Expanding & improving assessment of early literacy and language development in preschool: IGDIs 2.0. Paper presented to the annual meeting of the Minnesota School Psychologists Association.
Bradfield, T. Carta, J., & Atwater, J. (2010, February 25-27). Individual Growth and Development Indicators: Their Role in the CRtIEC Measurement Architecture. Panel presentation at the Conference on Research Innovations in Early Intervention (CRIEI), San Diego, CA.