Peter Bowers

Major Field
Cognitive Studies

Contact Information
Email: peterbowers1@mac.com

Curriculum Vitae

Supervisor
Dr. John Kirby

 

Research Interests

• Reading, spelling, vocabulary learning and instruction
• Morphological awareness and instruction

Biography

Peter Bowers is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Education, Queen’s University. He first became interested in morphology and the spelling as a rich context for teaching how our writing system works in classrooms when he encountered a teacher resource called Real Spelling in his 9th year as a classroom teacher. He had taught Grades 4-6 in a variety of international schools (Ecuador, Romania and Indonesia) after graduating from the B. Ed. program at Queen’s. As a long-time terrible speller, one more year in the classroom investigating how the spelling system actually worked, and seeing the effect on the learning in his classroom and those of his colleagues, he returned to Kingston. Soon thereafter he started a Masters degree working with John Kirby in which he conducted a morphological intervention for Grade 4/5 students for his thesis which won the Faculty of Education Master’s Thesis Award (2006-2007). He continued with the PhD program, again with Kirby as supervisor. His dissertation investigated the vocabulary effects of that intervention which were not included in the Master’s thesis, and then a meta-analysis of morphological interventions. This work has since been published in Review of Educational Research and Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal and presented at scientific conferences including the annual conferences for the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading and the International Dyslexia Association. 

During this time, he founded the WordWorks Literacy Centre. WordWorks supports a unique, interactive approach to building literacy skills that develop reading, comprehension, vocabulary and spelling abilities by teaching children how to investigate the structures and conventions of English orthography. This “structured word inquiry” (Bowers & Kirby, 2010) approach fosters not only generative word learning, but also the problem-solving skills essential to all areas of academic growth. These workshops have been received enthusiastically at international schools and educational conferences in Asia, South East Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, North America and Australia.

Sample Publications

Research Spotlight:   Morphology improves literacy development

Bowers, P.N., Cooke, G. (in press). Understanding Morphology: A means to address the Common Core State Standards’ goal of fostering students’ understanding of the conventions of the English writing system.Perspectives on Language and Literacy.

Bowers, P.N., Kirby, J.R., & Deacon, S.H. (2010) The Effects of Morphological Instruction on Literacy Skills: A Systematic Review of the Literature, Review of Educational Research, 80, 144–179.

Bowers, P.N. & Kirby, J.R. (2010) Effects of Morphological instruction on Vocabulary Acquisition, Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 23, 515–537.

Kirby, J.R. & Bowers, P.N. (2012). Morphology Works. What Works? Research into Practice, Ontario Ministry of Education Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat. (Available here)

Kirby, J.R., Deacon, S.H., Bowers, P.N., Izenberg, L. Wade-Wooley, L., Parrila, R. (2012) Morphological Awareness and Reading Ability, Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 25, 389-410.