Biography

I am a South Carolina native and a product of the public school system here in our state. My first experience with educating young children was in my early teens in a volunteer capacity. These experiences led me on a path to education, and I was a first-grade teacher for Fort Mill Schools. After realizing the intense disparity between research and practice, I pursued and obtained a PhD in Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I worked as a Graduate Assistant, on various evaluation and research projects in early childhood during my program. I also taught at Winthrop University as an adjunct professor for elementary math methods.

Education

• B.S. in Early Childhood Education from Winthrop University
• M.Ed in Special Education Interventions from Winthrop University
• Ph.D. in Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Course Information

SPED 692

Research

Bottoms, B.L. (Eds.) (2023). Adventures and intervention in early education spaces. HS Dialog: The Research to Practice Journal for the Early Childhood Field. 26(1). https://journals.charlotte.edu/dialog/issue/view/134 

Holcomb, T. S., Lambert, R. G., & Bottoms, B. L. (2022). Reliability evidence for the NC Teacher Evaluation Process using a variety of indicators of inter-rater agreement. Journal of Educational Supervision, 5(1). 27-43. https://doi.org/10.31045/jes.5.1.2 

Lambert, R. G., Moore, C. M, Bottoms, B. L, Vestal, A., & Taylor, H. (2021). Using Rasch modeling and focus group interviewing to inform the process of teacher performance evaluation. International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches, 13(2), 213-227. https://doi.org/10.29034/ijmra.v13n2a4 

Oyarzun, B.O., Bottoms, B. L., & Westine, C. (2021). Adopting and applying the universal design for learning principles in online courses. Journal of Applied Instructional Design, 10(1). 

Lambert, R.G., McCarthy, C., Moore, C.M., & Bottoms, B. L., (2020). Response differences in appraisals of working conditions among elementary and high school teachers. Journal of Applied Measurement, 21(3). 

Awards

Bottoms, B. L. (2022). Examining Strictness, Leniency, and Rater Bias within an Early Childhood Teacher Performance Evaluation Process. North Carolina Association for Research in Education’s Distinguished Paper Winner.