Dr Sally Larsen
Senior Lecturer - Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education; School of Education
Email: slarsen3@une.edu.au
Twitter: @sallylars_27
Biography
Dr Sally Larsen is a Senior Lecturer and researcher in the School of Education. She has previously worked as a secondary English and French teacher, research project manager, and researcher in a government agency. Sally’s research is in the area of reading and maths development across primary and early secondary school in Australia. She investigates patterns of growth and change in reading and maths in these middle years of school, and predictors of longitudinal development in these skills. Sally uses quantitative research methodology, in particular, longitudinal and multilevel modeling, and structural equation modeling. She is interested in questions surrounding the measurement of constructs employed in quantitative education research. Sally is also interested in exploring whether findings from educational genetics research may or may not be relevant to schools systems and educational practices.
Qualifications
Ph.D - University of New England (2022)
M.Ed. (Teacher-librarianship) – Queensland University of Technology (2011)
B.Ed. (Secondary) – University of Queensland (2004)
B.A. (English / French) – University of Queensland (2002)
Awards
Teaching Areas
Graduate Teacher Performance Assessment (GTPA)
Research methods and statistics
Research Interests
Reading and maths development across primary and early secondary school;
Educational assessment and measurement;
NAPLAN data analysis – particularly longitudinal analyses;
Behaviour genetics in education;
Quantitative methods including:
- Structural equation models
- Latent growth curve models and longitudinal designs
- Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis
- Multilevel modeling
Research Supervision Experience
Publications
Larsen, S.A. (2023). Are Australian students’ academic skills declining? Interrogating 25 years of national and international standardised assessment data. Preprint under review. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/hvw3j
Gosling, C.J., Caparos, S., Pinabiaux, C., Schwarzer, G. … Larsen, S.A. ... & Cortese, S. (2023). Association between relative age at school and persistence of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in prospective studies: An individual participant data meta-analysis. The Lancet: Psychiatry https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(23)00272-9
Larsen, S.A. & Little, C.W. (2023). Matthew Effects in reading and mathematics: Examining developmental patterns in population data. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 74, 102201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2023.102201
Larsen, S.A., Asbury, K., Coventry, W.L., Hart, S.A., Little, C.W., & Petrill, S.A. (2023). Measuring CHAOS? Evaluating the short-form Confusion, Hubbub and Order Scale. Collabra: Psychology, 9(1), 77837. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.77837
Coventry, W.L., Farraway, S., Larsen, S.A., Enis, T.P., Forbes, A.Q., & Brown, S.L. (2023) Do student differences in reading enjoyment relate to achievement when using the random-intercept cross-lagged panel model across primary and secondary school?. PLOS ONE, 18(6), e0285739. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285739
Larsen, S.A., Forbes, A.Q., Little, C.W., Alaba, S.H., & Coventry, W.L. (2023). The public-private debate: School sector differences in academic achievement from year 3 to year 9? The Australian Educational Researcher, 50, 275-306. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-021-00498-w
Larsen, S. A. (2022). Interpreting and reinterpreting heritability estimates in educational behavior genetics. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45, e168. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X21001631
Larsen, S.A., Little, C.W., & Coventry, W.L. (2022). The co-development of reading and attention from middle childhood to early adolescence: A multivariate latent growth curve study. Developmental Psychology, 58(6), 1017-1034. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001344
Larsen, S.A., Little, C.W. and Byrne, B. (2022). Teaching the teachers the genetics of learning: An application of the mixed blessings model. Mind, Brain, and Education, 16, 328-337. https://doi.org/10.1111/mbe.12315
Rice, K., Larsen, S.A., Sharp, S. & Rock, A.J. (2022). Factorial and construct validity of the cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire in an Australian community sample. Australian Psychologist, 57(6). https://doi.org/10.1080/00050067.2022.2125280
Gleeson, J., Cutler, B., Larsen, S.A., Parker, B., Ridgeway, K., Rickinson, M., Walsh, L, & People, J. (2022). Supporting teachers to use research evidence well in practice: Survey findings and practical guidance from an AERO and Monash Q Project collaboration. Australian Education Research Organisation and Monash University. https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/55384
Larsen, S.A. (2021). Book review: Science fictions: Exposing fraud, bias, negligence and hype in science. Frontiers in Psychology. 12(1187). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.666441
Larsen, S.A., Little, C.W., & Coventry, W.L. (2021). Exploring the associations between delayed school entry and achievement in primary and secondary school. Child Development. 92 (2), 774-792. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13440
Little, C. W., Larsen, S.A., Byrne, B., Logan, J. A. R., Olson, R. K., & Coventry, W. L. (2020). Exploring the influence of early childhood education and care on the etiology of achievement. Behavior Genetics, 50(6), 387–400. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-020-10013-z
Byrne, B., Little, C.W., Olson, R.K., Larsen, S.A., Coventry, W.L., & Weymouth, R. (2020). Comment on Asbury and Wai (2019), “Viewing Education Policy through a Genetic Lens,”. Journal of School Choice, 14(3), 501-515. https://doi.org/10.1080/15582159.2020.1779577
Larsen, S.A., Little, C.W., Grasby, K., Byrne, B., Olson, R.K., & Coventry, W.L. (2020). The Academic Development Study of Australian Twins (ADSAT): Research aims and design. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 23 (3), 165-173. https://doi.org/10.1017/thg.2020.49
Grasby, K., Little, C., Byrne, B., Coventry, W., Olson, R., Larsen S.A., &Samuelsson, S., (2019). Estimating classroom-level influences on literacy and numeracy: A twin study. Journal of Educational Psychology. 112(6), 1154–1166. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000418
Larsen, S.A., Byrne, B., Little, C., Coventry, W., Ho, C.S., Olson, R., & Stevenson, A. (2019). Identical genes, unique environments: A qualitative exploration of persistent monozygotic-twin discordance in literacy and numeracy. Frontiers in Education, 4, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2019.00021
Conference presentations
Larsen, S.A. & Erbeli, F. (2023, July 19-22). Linking sequential developmental patterns of vocabulary and reading comprehension from age 4 to 14. Presentation at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Studies of Reading.
Larsen, S.A. & Mancenido, Z. (2022, Nov 27-Dec 1). Quantifying between-school variation in literacy and numeracy achievement from Year 3 to Year 9: Design parameters from national data for future interventions. Presentation at the 30th annual Australian Association for Research in Education conference.
Larsen, S.A., Lobb, A., & Coventry, W.L. (2022, Nov 27-Dec 1). Modelling the co-development of reading and numeracy using NAPLAN assessment data. Presentation at the 30th annual Australian Association for Research in Education conference.
Larsen, S.A. (2021, Nov 28-Dec 2). Using statewide NAPLAN data to model developmental patterns of reading and numeracy. Presentation at the 29th annual Australian Association for Research in Education conference
Larsen, S.A., Little, C.W., Coventry, W.L. (2020, July 8-11). Exploring reading and numeracy development using latent growth curve modeling. Paper accepted at the 27th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Studies of Reading, Newport Beach, CA, USA
Byrne, B., Ho, C., Larsen, S.A., Coventry, W., Little, C., & Olson, R. (2018, July). Non-genetic factors driving individual differences in reading, writing and numeracy in Australian students: Insights from discordant monozygotic twins. Poster presented at the 25th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Brighton, UK.
Little, C., Larsen, S.A., Byrne, B., Coventry, W., & Logan, J. (2018, June). An examination of the influence of early childhood care on academic achievement using quantile regression. Presentation at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Behavior Genetics Association, Boston, USA.
Clinical Skills and Experience
Memberships
Australian Association for Research in Education;
Society for the Scientific Studies of Reading;
Association for Psychological Science (Educational Psychology)
