Mary Jean Tecce DeCarlo

Mary Jean Tecce DeCarlo, EdD is a Clinical Professor of Literacy Studies at Drexel University. Dr. DeCarlo designs and teaches courses in the Teacher Education Program and the Special Education program. She earned her EdD in Reading, Writing and Literacy from the University of Pennsylvania. During her nearly 30 years in education, Dr. DeCarlo has been a classroom teacher, a curriculum leader and a college professor. At Drexel she has focuses her research on reading comprehension, teacher education, challenges regarding reading and writing instruction for delayed readers and writers, and the development of information and digital literacy skills for learners K- 12.

Dr. DeCarlo is working with colleagues in education and biomedical engineering to create ACE (Adolescent Comprehension Evaluation), a digital reading comprehension tool. ACE uses brain-imaging techniques to validate that its test questions are text-based and has created a novel approach to measuring student progress. The research team has received $200,000 in research grants to support its development and pilot testing and has filed for a patent on this innovative approach to test validation. Dr. DeCarlo also does research in the areas of information and digital literacy. She has created collaborative research projects with elementary, middle school, and high school classroom teachers and a group of Drexel University researchers around the I-LEARN model created by Dr. Delia Neuman.