Adams is currently a visiting scholar at the
Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She has a Ph.D. in
cognitive and developmental psychology from Brown University in
1975.
In 1995 Adams received the American Education Research
Association’s (of which she was Vice President from 1995-1997)
Sylvia Scribner Award for Outstanding Contribution to Education
through Research. Adams is the author of Beginning to Read:
Thinking and Learning About Print, (MIT, 1990). This book was
a congressional mandate to examine reading practices historically and
critique them both for their theoretical and empirical value. Jagger
contends, based upon her thorough research, that a “child’s
success in learning to read in the first grade appears to be the best
predictor of her or his ultimate success in schooling as well as all
of the events and outcomes that correlate with that. Yet, across the
literature I reviewed, childrens’ first-grade achievement
depends most of all on how much they know about reading before they
get to school. (Eric publication, 1990) She goes on to state that:
“Differences in reading potential are shown not to be strongly
related to poverty, handedness, dialect, gender, IQ, mental age, or
any other such difficult-to-alter circumstances. They are due instead
to learning and experience--and specifically to learning and
experience with print and print concepts. They are due to differences
that we can teach away--provided, of course, that we have the
knowledge, sensitivity, and support to do so (ibid).
Like Marie Clay (Reading Rescue) Adams is also the principal author
of a classroom reading program (Collections for Young Scholars of
Odyssey: A Curriculum for thinking.
Jagger is a member of several National Committees:
She has advised a number of educational software companies, and has been on the editorial review board of several national journals.