Roberta Michnick Golinkoff

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff holds the Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Chair in the School of Education at the University of Delaware and is also a member of the Departments of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Linguistics and Cognitive Science.[1][2][3] An award-winning author of 14 books and over 150 professional articles on early childhood and infant development, she founded and directs the Child's Play, Learning, and Development Laboratory (formerly called The Infant Language Project), which investigates how young children learn their native language.[4] Among her current projects is the creation of a computerized language assessment for preschoolers called the QUILS: Quick Interactive Language Screener. Created with Jill de Villiers, Aquiles Iglesias, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Mary Wilson with a grant from the Institute for Education Sciences, the screener is dialect and culture free, measures receptive vocabulary, syntax, and children's language learning abilities, and takes 15-minutes to administer on a touch screen. It will be brought out by Brookes Publishing in the Winter of 2017. She is also involved with Kathy Hirsh-Pasek of Temple University and the Brookings Institution and David Dickinson of Vanderbilt University, on a project to teach vocabulary to disadvantaged preschoolers through playful learning. Research on the conceptual underpinnings of language has brought her to the study of event perception in infants and how language itself may influence infants' attention to the events their language encodes.

In addition to her research on language acquisition, Golinkoff is also an expert on the importance of play and playful learning for children's development, learning, and education. "Guided play," the construct that she and her collaborators Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Deena Weisberg continue to develop, is an alternative to direct instruction and free play. She is also studying how preschoolers learn about space and geometric forms with an eye to contributing to the improvement of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) teaching in the United States. That research is supported by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences./Her research has been supported by funding from national agencies, including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Institute of Education Sciences.[5] Dr. Golinkoff served as an Associate Editor of Child Development, one of the premier research journals in her field, and serves on many advisory boards for organizations devoted to children's well-being and education.[6] Golinkoff is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society.[7]

Golinkoff is determined to disseminate the findings of her field and speaks all over the world to both lay and professional audiences. She also can be found on Twitter (@KathyandRo1), and through her blogs at the Huffington Post and the Brookings Institution. Her new book, Becoming Brilliant (2016, APA Press), written for parents, practitioners, and policy makers, organizes a large body of psychological and educational literature to present the six skills that are essential for children's academic, personal, and career success in the 21st century. It was launched at the Brookings Institution, followed by a panel, as it fits within their Skills for a Changing World framework.

Golinkoff also consults with toy companies, governmental bodies, children's museums and libraries, and a variety of organizations dedicated to bettering children's and families' lives. She is committed to translating developmental science for use in the world. In addition, she is one of the founders of the Ultimate Block Party movement, an event that took place in Central Park to celebrate playful learning.[8] It attracted over 50,000 people.[9] Other Ultimate Block Parties were held in Toronto, Canada, and Baltimore, Maryland.[10] She is now working in partnership with the Association of Children's Museums to spread block parties. She is also a founder of the Urban Thinkscape Project, designed to bring playful learning to urban areas to encourage parent-child interaction. The first installation will be placed in Philadelphia, PA.