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. 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, which investigates how young children learn their native language. 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 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. 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. Golinkoff is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society.
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, and through her blogs at the Huffington Post and the Brookings Institution. Her new book, Becoming Brilliant, 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. It attracted over 50,000 people. Other Ultimate Block Parties were held in Toronto, Canada, and Baltimore, Maryland. 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.

Education

Golinkoff received her bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College and her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University. Her postdoctoral fellowship was completed at the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center.

Awards

Golinkoff was the recipient of the 2017 Society for Research in Child Development’s Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award. In 2015, Golinkoff won two awards. From the American Psychological Association, she was named a Distinguished Scientific Lecturer. The Association for Psychological Science made her a James McKeen Cattell Fellow for “a lifetime of outstanding contributions to applied psychological research.” Both awards were offered jointly to her and Dr. Hirsh-Pasek. She was also named a Francis Alison Professor at the University of Delaware. The University's highest competitive award for faculty, it is awarded to a faculty member who has made notable contributions to his or her field of study and encompasses research, teaching, mentoring, and service. Dr. Golinkoff and her colleague Kathy Hirsh-Pasek of Temple University were joint recipients of the 2009 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Service to Psychological Science and the 2011 Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society from the American Psychological Association. Golinkoff was also awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and a James McKeen Cattell Sabbatical Award, both in 1988. Her book Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less was awarded the Multiple Sclerosis Society's Books for a Better Life Prize in its Psychology division in 2003

Books