justice received her bachelor of arts degree (1992) and bsed (1996) from ohio university. she continued her education there receiving her phd in speech hearing sciences in 2000 under the advisement of helen k. ezell. justice's early research with ezell investigated ways parents of children diagnosed with speech delays engaged with their children during story time. their research revealed that parents' questions to their children about the books tended to focus entirely on the pictures and not on the print. justice's doctoral dissertation, titled "an experimental evaluation of an intervention to stimulate written language awareness in preschool children from low-income households" initiated a program of research on literacy interventions.