Rate My Professor Elizabeth Schaughency

Dr. Elizabeth Schaughency is an Honorary Academic in the Department of Psychology at the University of Otago, where she previously served as Senior Lecturer. She holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Pittsburgh, a Master of Science, and a PhD from the University of Georgia. With over 25 years of university teaching experience at both graduate and undergraduate levels, her career has focused on educational and developmental psychology, particularly bridging the research-to-practice gap in professional services for children. Prior to her long tenure at Otago, she worked as a Teacher Consultant in the Ottawa area. Recently, after 20 years of full-time service in the department, she was honored with a retirement celebration.

Dr. Schaughency's research interests center on the interplay between critical socialization environments—such as home and school—and children's developing self-regulation, literacy, and oral language skills. Her work explores factors influencing early academic achievement, including parent-child interactions during learning tasks, educator-toddler conversations, sleep-related breathing problems, and parent-mediated interventions. She has led and collaborated on significant projects like the New Zealand Best Start study (Kia Tīmata Pai), which examines oral language enrichment in early childhood education centers, and the Tender Shoots initiative, a randomized controlled trial evaluating preschool shared reading and reminiscing programs for long-term socio-emotional and self-regulation benefits post-school entry. Her publications, exceeding 100 in number and cited over 3,500 times, include 'Tender Shoots: Effects of a preschool shared reading and reminiscing initiative on parent-child interactions and for socio-emotional and self-regulation outcomes after school entry' (2022), 'Patterns of early literacy and word reading skill development from school entry to age 10' (2024), 'Assessment of Self-Regulation at School Entry: A Literature Review' (2024), 'Quality of educator-toddler conversations varies across activity settings in centre-based ECEC' (2024), and 'Cohort Profile: The New Zealand Best Start study (Kia Tīmata Pai)' (2025). Through these contributions, she has advanced evidence-based practices in Aotearoa New Zealand's educational landscape, supervising theses and engaging in multidisciplinary health and development research.