My scholarship involves characterizing the challenges science teachers face in enacting reform-minded instruction, strategies to reduce those challenges, and ways teacher identity can be utilized as an opportunity for learning.

I identify effective teaching practices to support students struggling with academics and behavior.

My teaching interests include blindness, low vision, and the benefits of these exceptionalities on the blind/low vision population.  

I design and study meaningful and engaging ways for students and teachers to reconceptualize science education to be unintimidating, rigorous, and just.

My research uses ethnographic, narrative, and discourse analytic research methods to investigate students' and teachers' experiences in additional language education. I also teach courses in language teaching methods and language education research.

Amy S. Thompson, Ph.D. (Ph.D. Michigan State University) is the Mack and Effie Campbell Distinguished Professor and Director of the School of Teacher Education in the Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences at Florida State University. Her teaching experience includes a range of theoretical and methodological courses in Applied Linguistics.

Dr. LaPoint’s research interest centers on community-partnered research exploring the experiences of autistic transition-age youth and adults.