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Research Spotlight: Avery Closser

Q & A with Avery Closser, Ph. D., Assistant Professor in the School Teaching and Learning

What research are you currently working on?

 

I am currently leading an IES-funded project to examine whether and how subtle aesthetic changes to math problems (e.g., font colors, symbol spacing, symbol arrangement) can scaffold learning for elementary students in online activities. Our project team is designing two online experiments in an online tutoring system to examine the effects of perceptual scaffolding—subtle aesthetic features that highlight key information in math problems—on students’ performance and learning in online activities.

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Research Spotlight: Daryn Dever

Q & A with Daryn Dever, Ph. D., Assistant Professor in the School Teaching and Learning

What research are you currently working on?

I am currently focused on the enhancement of K-16 STEM education using game-based learning environments. Most recently, I have examined how a computer-based game has enhanced high-school and undergraduate students’ knowledge about infectious diseases and how they spread. My work looks at how students’ use of self-regulated learning strategies and processes changes over time captured via multimodal methodologies, such as eye-tracking, physiological responses, facial expressions of emotions, and log files. Through this, I can identify the behavioral and cognitive patterns indicative of optimal learning with game-based learning environments.

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Research Spotlight: Brady Nash

Q & A with Brady Nash, Ph. D., Assistant Professor in the School of Teaching and Learning

What research are you currently working on?

My research focuses on the incorporation of digital literacies into K-12 English language arts classrooms and within teacher education settings. I’m currently working on a qualitative study examining the incorporation of a new critical media literacy curriculum into high school English classrooms, a study exploring preservice teachers’ views of AI in K-12 schooling, and pedagogical materials that support teachers incorporating commercial video games into K-12 humanities classrooms.

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Research Spotlight: Melissa Mariani

Q & A with Melissa Mariani, Ph. D., Associate Professor in the School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education

What research are you currently working on?

I recently completed an American School Counselor Association (ASCA) Research grant that examined the impact of improving counselor-to-student ratios in high-need, Title I schools. This study, conducted through a partnership between at my prior university and a large, neighboring school district, analyzed de-identified, retrospective student data in schools where bilingual/bicultural (ESOL/ELL) counselors who completed school counseling degrees between 2001 to 2019 were placed. The findings revealed that lower counselor-to-student ratios were associated with significant improvements in student attendance, behavior, and academic achievement. The results will be published in an ASCA Research Report by the end of the year, and further analysis is planned for submission to a peer-reviewed journal.

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Research Spotlight: Christopher Engledowl

What research are you currently working on? Currently, in my role as a Research Scientist in the Lastinger Center for Learning, I am engaged in 4 major areas of research. Drawing on my background in mathematics education research, in a collaborative role with the mathematics education team, I am leading a study of the impact […]

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Research Spotlight: Elyse Hambacher

Q & A with Elyse Hambacher, Ph. D., Clinical Associate Professor in the School of Teaching & Learning

What research are you currently working on?

My current research focuses on the development of educators’ critical social justice literacy and how teaching for social justice is operationalized in education settings. I am the Principal Investigator of a Spencer Foundation grant that examines how justice-oriented White teachers and administrators in one predominantly White school district engage with concepts of race, anti-racism, and whiteness. Our research team is working on several manuscripts related to this project.

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Research Spotlight: Christopher Anthony

Q & A with Christopher Anthony, Ph. D., Assistant Professor in the School of Special Education, School Psychology, & Early Childhood Studies

What research are you currently working on?

I always have several projects in progress, but the one that I’m most excited about involves developing better assessment tools for measuring what we call academic enablers. Academic enablers are skills, attitudes, or behaviors that aren’t academic skills, but are critical for fostering learning and growing in the classroom and beyond. I focus on four in particular: classroom interpersonal skills (e.g., whether a student can work effectively with peers to complete a class assignment), academic engagement (e.g., whether a student can attend and participate in class), motivation (e.g., whether a student can persist in the face of academic challenges), and study skills (e.g., whether a student can strategically organize materials to more efficiently learn and remember academic content).

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Research Spotlight: Helena Mawdsley

Q & A with Helena Mawdsley, Ph. D., Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education

What research are you currently working on?

Currently, I am working on the motivation and achievement of the college student population in our post-pandemic climate. I am investigating college student reflection on their academic motivation during and after the Covid-19 pandemic to learn if their motivation levels changed during these periods. Additionally, I ask, What do the students believe accounts for the change? I conducted a study titled “’Back to Normal’: Undergraduate perspectives on regaining motivation during the Covid-19 pandemic,” which will be presented at AERA.

I am also interested in the impact of experiential learning on course motivation. Does engaging in an experiential service-learning project outside the classroom correlate with a high level of motivation for that course? I collected data on student motivation during the pandemic when students could not engage in service-learning and then after the pandemic when service-learning resumed. My study called “The impact of service learning on student motivation” will be proposed at the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) meeting this spring.

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Research Spotlight: Taryrn T.C. Brown

Q & A with Taryrn T.C. Brown, Ph. D., Assistant Professor in the School of Teaching and Learning

What research are you currently working on?

My research interests sit at the nexus of Black feminist thought and Black girlhood studies in education. My research agenda thus contributes to the growing scholarship in experiences of Black women and girls through an overarching attention to mapping spatial geographies across time and space, centering relationships in knowledge production and epistemology, and acknowledging the ways Black women and girls document themselves against the archival grain. This collective interdisciplinary work embodies a theoretical extension of intersectionality as a tangible way to support research projects that center equity, advocacy, and culturally sustaining pedagogies both inside and outside of various educational contexts.

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Research Spotlight: Ana Puig

Q & A with Ana Puig, Ph. D., Research Director in the Office of Educational Research and Ana Puig Profile PhotoClinical Professor in the School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education

What research are you currently working on?

I am actively involved in a national study with three institutions of higher education in the southeastern United States (led by Oklahoma State University) that explores adverse childhood experiences and academic performance of undergraduate college students. Our aim is to determine factors that hinder or support ACE survivors in their educational journeys.

Additionally, I am engaged in a study that builds on research I have conducted with the Streetlight palliative care program (https://streetlight.ufhealth.org/) that provides psychosocial support to chronically or terminally ill adolescents and young adults. Our research team has explored the experiences of Streetlight volunteer members, treatment providers, and, more recently, its patients. We are in the process of completing a research proposal for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support conducting a feasibility study of the program with the goal of manualizing its services and comparing outcomes with other palliative care programs across the United States.

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Research Spotlight: Hakeem Hasan

Q & A with Hakeem Hasan, J. D., Senior Researcher at the P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School

What research are you currently working on?

I am currently looking into COVID-19’s impact on public education grades 9-12. Many have hypothesized that the three-year pandemic is going to have long-term effects on student learning. I am attempting to unpack the extent of this so that educators nationwide can have more to think through when delivering instruction at the high school grade levels.

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Research Spotlight: Yiqin Pan

Q & A with Yiqin Pan, Ph. D., Assistant Professor in the School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education

What research are you currently working on?

I leverage quantitative methodologies, including artificial intelligence, statistical modeling, and psychometrics, to address applied issues in educational measurement and to optimize the learning process. Most of my recent research has centered on aspects of test security and personalized learning. My current projects include (i) developing anomaly detection algorithms for identifying potential fraud in tests, (ii) implementing item selection designs by recommendation systems for preventing potential fraud in adaptive testing, (iii) using anomaly detection methods to identify disengagement in learning, and (iv) building recommendation systems to select appropriate learning materials for students. My research has been supported by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).

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Research Spotlight: David Miller

Q & A with David Miller, Ph. D., Director of and Professor in the School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education

What research are you currently working on?

I am currently developing assessments of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in higher education, including assessment standards for fair and equitable evaluation.

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Research Spotlight: Larisa Olesova

Q & A with Larisa Olesova, Ph. D., Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Teaching and Learning

What research are you currently working on?

I am working on the effectiveness of a case-based discussions strategy to increase interaction among students. I am also collecting data from various online discussions where different general, role-based, inquiry-based, and debate instructional strategies are used to examine their effectiveness to increase interaction among students. I am studying the levels of students’ interactions by applying social network analysis to understand how to better design online students’ cognitive engagement. In addition, I am currently conducting research on examining engineering students’ cognitive skills in active learning courses using the Community of Inquiry (COI) theoretical framework.

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Research Spotlight: Kathrin Maki

Q & A with Kathrin Maki, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the School of Special Education, School Psychology, and Early Childhood Studies

What basic questions does your research seek to answer?

My work focuses on the identification of learning needs and development of academic skills for children with learning difficulties and disabilities. Specifically, my work centers on two interconnected lines of research through examination of: (a) methodologies used to identify children with learning difficulties and disabilities, and (b) academic interventions and data-driven decision making to ensure all children receive appropriate academic support in schools.

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