Carol Mardell, PhD

Carol Mardell is a professor emeritus in the Department of Educational Technology, Research, and Assessment at Northern Illinois University. She holds an MA in educational psychology from the University of Chicago and a PhD in communicative disorders with a specialization in learning disabilities from Northwestern University. She is a registered clinical psychologist and a certified school psychologist with extensive experience as an elementary classroom teacher, school psychologist, learning disabilities teacher and consultant, and university professor. She initiated the early-childhood special education program at Northern Illinois University and directed several personnel training programs funded by the federal government.

She has written a textbook (with G. Mindes and H. Ireton) entitled Assessing Young Children, served as a consultant to many city and state agencies and as a program validator for the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and conducted research for extended periods of time at universities in Taiwan, Canada, Israel, Finland, and Sweden. This research originated her interest in, and resulted in her contributions to, the cross-cultural comparative study of early-childhood development and to the methodology of the cross-cultural validity of assessment tools. Additionally, she has given lectures in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China, Hungary, Romania, and Russia under the auspices of the George Soros Open Society Institute.

More recently, she has lectured in Indonesia, Australia (Sydney and Melbourne), and South Africa (Johannesburg and Cape Town). She has written many journal articles and served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Early Intervention, Learning Disabilities Focus, Journal of Learning Disabilities, and the Mental Measurements Yearbook. She is a fellow and served as the executive secretary of the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities. She is a fellow and life member of the American Psychological Association and a life member of the Council for Exceptional Children. In Mexico from 1992 to 2006, she was the co-founder and co-director of the Resource Center for Education under the auspices of the Lake Chapala Society in Ajijic, Jalisco.