Hrafnhildur Hanna Ragnarsdóttir (born 1948)Kvennasögusafn Íslands. Íslenski kvendoktorar 1990. Retrieved April 18, 2020. is professor emerita in Developmental and Educational Science at the University of Iceland. Her research is concerned with long-term language development and its relation to cognition, social-emotional development and literacy. Her primary research focus has been on the development of vocabulary, grammar, and narratives in early childhood and the first school years and on later language development as it appears in oral vs/written text construction and in narratives vs/expository texts from middle grades through adolescence and into adulthood. She received her PhD in Psychology and Educational Science from Université d’Aix-Marseille in 1990.
Education Hrafnhildur completed her matriculation examination from Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík (Reykjavik Higher Secondary Grammar School) in 1968. The same year she received a scholarship from Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, where she studied English and American literature. From 1969 to 1976 and again from 1985 to 1990, she studied at Université d’Aix-Marseille, with a grant from the French State and completed her licence ès lettres 1973, Maîtrise de Psychologie 1974, Diplôme d’Études Approfondies 1985 and a PhD in Psychology and Educational Science in 1990.Skrá um doktorsritgerðir. Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir. Titill doktorsritgerðar: Système Patronymique et construction des relations des relations de parenté chez les enfants islandais. Thèse de doctorat (nouveau régime), Université d´Aix-Marseille. 300 pages + viðaukar. Sótt 5. mars 2020.
Professional experience In 1974, Hrafnhildur began working at the Iceland University of Education (IUE, later the University of Iceland), first as a part-time teacher, later as an assistant professor (from 1976), associate professor and, finally, professor in Developmental and Educational Science from 1990 until she retired in 2018. Her main subjects were developmental psychology in particular language development in childhood and adolescence - and their implications for literacy and education. Her administrative positions include being vice rector, the first dean of graduate studies at the IUE and the first director of the IUE Research Centre (1991–96). She was elected teachers’ representative on IUE's School Council, which later became the University of Iceland's School of Education. After the merger of IUE and the University of Iceland in 2007, she, along with others, founded the Research Centre on Language, Literacy and Development and has since been its director.Rannsóknarstofa um þroska, mál og læsi barna og unglinga. Um stofuna . Retrieved April 18, 2020.
Research administration Hrafnhildur was appointed to the Boards of the Icelandic Science Council, of the Science Council and of the Icelandic Centre for Research on behalf of the humanities and social sciences. She was Iceland's representative on the European Science Foundation Standing Committee for the Social Sciences (ESF-SCSS) and on the boards of the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NOS-HS) as well as of the ERANET New Opportunities for Research Funding Collaboration in the Social Sciences (NORFACE, vice chair in 2004). She has been Iceland's representative on the management committees of three European research networks under the auspices of the EU: COST A8: Concerted Research Action on Learning Disorders as a Barrier to Human Development, COST IS0207: The European Research Network on Learning to Write Effectively (ERN-LWE)European Research Network on Learning to Write Effectively. Retrieved April 18, 2020. (Financial Rapporteur 2010 and 2011), and European Literacy Network (ELN).Eln. Retrieved April 18, 2020. In addition to advancing increased collaboration of scholars in the field of language development and literacy in Europe, these networks have all specifically focused on research training, mobility, and educational opportunities for doctoral students and young researchers.
Research Main research emphases Hrafnhildur's main research emphases can be summarized as follows: Language development is a long-term process, ranging from infancy to adulthood. It is strongly influenced by input and environmental factors. Language development, cognition and social-emotional development are intertwined and together they form the foundation of literacy, in particular reading comprehension and writing, and as a result, lead to academic achievement. Language is context dependent. It is therefore important to use different methods and combine different kinds of data in research on language and language development, such as recordings of children's spontaneous language under normal conditions as well as experiments and observations under standardised conditions, longitudinal as well as cross-sectional studies, language use in different modalities, and comparisons of the language development of children learning different languages.
Selected research projects directed by Hrafnhildur
Development in early childhood: Self-regulation, language development, and literacy from four to eight years of age. A longitudinal study where over 270 children in two age-groups, four and six-year-old at the beginning of study, were followed up annually for three years (2009–2011) with a broad range of assessments. The main goal was to provide an overview of developmental changes in vocabulary, grammar, narrative proficiency, listening comprehension, emotion understanding, self-regulation, linguistic awareness and various literacy skills among children over this important developmental period, and to investigate how these factors interact and predict later academic achievement. Principal investigator Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir, co-directors Freyja Birgisdóttir and Steinunn Gestsdóttir. Funded by the Icelandic Centre for Research (RANNIS) and the University of Iceland's Research Fund.Rannsóknarstofa um þroska, mál og læsi barna og unglinga. Þroski leik- og grunnskólabarna: Sjálfsstjórn, málþroski og læsi á aldrinum 4 til 8 ára. Retrieved April 18, 2020.Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir, Steinunn Gestsdóttir and Freyja Birgisdóttir. (2009). Þroski leik- og grunnskólabarna: Sjálfstjórn, málþroski og læsi 4ra - 8 ára íslenskra barna. Kynning og fyrstu niðurstöður úr nýrri rannsókn. In Gunnar Þór Jóhannesson and Helga Björnsdóttir (Eds), Ráðstefnurit Þjóðarspegils Félagsvísindadeildar HÍ, pp. 645-657, Reykjavík: Félagsvísindastofun HÍ.Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir (2015). Málþroski leikskólabarna: Þróun orðaforða, málfræði og hlustunarskilnings milli fjögra og fimm ára aldurs. Netla - Veftímarit um uppeldi og menntun. Language development between ages four and nine and its relation to academic performance (Icelandic National Examination) in 4th grade. Hrafnhildur's follow-up of the younger group of children from the above described study, extended the longitudinal data for this group from three to six consecutive years. Funded by the University of Iceland Research Fund.Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir (2018). Orðaforði íslenskra barna frá 4 til 8 ára aldurs: Langtímarannsókn á vaxtarhraða og stöðugleika. Netla - Veftímarit um uppeldi og menntun. Development of text production in different genres and different modalities in childhood through adolescence to adulthood. Study of language development (vocabulary, grammar, syntax, etc.) and language use for text construction (structure, coherence, discourse stance, etc.) in four age groups: ages 11, 14, and 17 and adults (age-range 26-40), as manifested in two different text types – narratives and expositories – and in spoken compared to written modalities. This research is the Icelandic part of a seven-country comparative study Developing literacy in different contexts and different languages (Project manager Ruth Berman), supported by The Spencer Foundation.Rannsóknarstofa um þroska, mál og læsi barna og unglinga. Mál í notkun – tal – og ritmál barna, unglinga og fullorðinna. Retrieved April 18, 2020.Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir (2012). Development of written and spoken narratives and expositories in Icelandic. In M. Torrance, Alamargot, D. et al. (Eds.), Learning to write effectively: Current Trends in European Research, pp. 243-248. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir and Sven Strömqvist. (2005). The development of generic maður/man for the construction of discourse stance in Icelaíndic and Swedish. Journal of Pragmatics, 37:143-155.Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir, Melina Aparici, Dalia Cahana-Amitay, Janet van Hell, and Anne Viguié. (2002). Verbal structure and content in written discourse. Expository and narrative texts. Written Language and Literacy, 5(1):95-126.Berman, Ruth, Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir and Sven Strömqvist (2002). Discourse stance. Written Language and Literacy, 5(2):255-289.Strömqvist, Sven, Victoria Johanson, and Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir. (2002). Towards a crosslinguistic comparison of lexical quanta in speech and writing. Written Language and Literacy 5(1):45-93. Continuing research on the Icelandic part of the project has received grants from RANNIS (The Icelandic Centre for Research) and the University of Iceland Research Fund.Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir (2007). Þróun frásagna og álitsgerða frá miðbernsku til fullorðinsára: Lengd texta og tengingar setninga. Uppeldi og menntun, 16(2):139-159.Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir (2011). Textagerð barna, unglinga og fullorðinna: Samanburður á orðaforða í rit- og talmálstextum, frásögnum og álitsgerðum. Uppeldi og menntun, 20(1), 75-98. The language proficiency of children on the boundaries of preschool and primary school (ages three to eight/nine). Various research projects, funded by RANNIS, NOS-HS, Iceland University of Education and the University of Iceland research funds.Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir. (2000). Barnets sprog ved 5 til 8-års alderen. In R. Heilä-Ylikallio (Ed.), Aspekter på skolstarten i Norden, pp. 88-107. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Examples: The subject of Hrafnhildur's doctoral thesis was Icelandic children's acquisition of the meaning of words and concepts about family relations. She later extended this research to include a cross-linguistic comparison with children from a closely related language (and culture) – Denmark. Since Danish children do not experience the same linguistic transparency in family names and some other kinship terms as the Icelandic ones provide, this allowed her to explore of the effect of different linguistic information on three to eight-year-old children's understanding of words and concepts on family relations.Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir (1999). The acquisition of kinship concepts. In P. Broeder and J. Murre (Eds.), Language and thought in Development. Cross-Linguistic Studies, pp. 73-94. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir. (1999). "Bráðum verður pabbi ég, ég verð pabbi og mamma verður mamma hans pabba". In Helgi Skúli Kjartansson, Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir, Kristín Indriðadóttir og Ólafur Proppé) (Eds.), Steinar í vörðu, pp. 187-209. Reykjavík: Rannsóknarstofnun Kennaraháskóla Íslands.Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir. (1994). “Hann afi minn er búinn að flytja sér aðra mömmu.” Hvernig læra börn hugtök um fjölskylduvensl? Uppeldi og menntun. Tímarit Kennaraháskóla Íslands, 3:9-28.