Dr. Jenny Root

Associate Professor
Dr. Jenny Root

Contact Information

Office Location
2209H Stone Building
Phone
(850) 645-2542

Dr. Jenny Root is an Associate Professor of Special Education in the School of Teacher Education at Florida State University. She teaches courses on differentiating instruction, access to the general curriculum, and transition for students with disabilities. Dr. Root is a board-certified behavior analyst (BCBA) and uses applied behavior analysis as a theoretical framework in designing and evaluating interventions and practices.

Dr. Root’s research focuses on instructional methods to promote academic learning for students with autism and intellectual disability. She is currently working with undergraduate, masters, and doctoral students in the General Curriculum Access lab to develop and evaluate strategies for teaching meaningful mathematical skills.

One of her current projects (described in video below) centers on how to use augmented reality to teach mathematical and social problem solving skills to transition age youth are funded by the Organization for Autism Research and the FSU Council on Research and Creativity.

A second project, funded by a four-year Early Career Development and Mentoring Grant from the Institution for Education Sciences will develop and test the effectiveness and feasibility of a curriculum designed to increase real-world mathematical problem solving skills of secondary students with extensive support needs (i.e., autism and intellectual disability).

Dr. Root was the 2019 recipient of the Tom E. C. Smith Early Career Award from the Division of Autism and Developmental Disabilities and 2015 recipient of the Alice Hayden Emerging Leader award from TASH. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and she has written several invited and refereed book chapters on the education and assessment of students with moderate to severe disabilities. She is co-author of Math Skills Builder, a curriculum for teaching students with disabilities to solve math problems.

Dr. Root is a former classroom teacher of middle school students with disabilities in North Carolina. She completed an undergraduate degree in Special Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she was a NC Teaching Fellow, and a masters degree in Special Education and graduate certificate in autism spectrum disorders at East Carolina University. She earned her PhD. In Special Education with emphasis on severe disabilities and applied behavior analysis from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she was a Snyder Fellow and OSEP Special Education Leadership Scholar.