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 […]
Q & A with Elyse Hambacher, Ph. D., Clinical Associate Professor in the 
School of Teaching & Learning
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.
Q & A with Christopher Anthony, Ph. D., Assistant Professor in the 
School of Special Education, School Psychology, & Early Childhood Studies
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).
Q & A with Helena Mawdsley, Ph. D., Clinical Assistant Professor in the 
School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education
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.
Q & A with Taryrn T.C. Brown, Ph. D., Assistant Professor in 
the School of Teaching and Learning
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.
Q & A with Ana Puig, Ph. D., Research Director in the Office of Educational Research and 
Clinical Professor in the School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education
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.
Q & A with Hakeem Hasan, J. D., Senior Researcher at the P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School 
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.
Q & A with Yiqin Pan, Ph. D., Assistant Professor 
in the School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education
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).
Q & A with David Miller, Ph. D., Director of and Professor in the
School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education
I am currently developing assessments of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in higher education, including assessment standards for fair and equitable evaluation.
Q & A with Larisa Olesova, Ph. D., Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Teaching and Learning
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.
Q & A with Kathrin Maki, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the School of Special Education, 
School Psychology, and Early Childhood Studies
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.
Q & A with Mary Bratsch-Hines, Ph.D., Senior Manager for Research and Evaluation 
in the Lastinger Center for Learning
I am currently working on several research projects, which generally fall in three overarching buckets. These projects include numerous colleagues with whom I collaborate at UF and at other institutions across the US.
Q & A with Blake Beckett, Ed. D., Assistant Professor at the 
P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School
I recently completed my dissertation research focused on how teachers and students experience the intersection of Universal Design for Learning and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy in my own sixth-grade classroom at the P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School here at the University of Florida. I am interested in empowering students and teachers to understand their own assets and variabilities, as well as those of others. This year I am extending this research with a focus on how students understand and engage in critical thinking in different contexts.
Q & A with Elizabeth Washington, Ph. D., Professor in the School of Teaching and Learning
The overarching theme of my research lies at the intersection of democratic citizenship education, controversial issues teaching, the teaching of difficult/traumatic history, and social justice teaching in a democratic society, mainly for grades 6-12 social studies curriculum and teaching. This is also where my research, curriculum development, and teaching coalesce.
Drawing from a rich body of research that includes the work of Diana Hess, Paula McAvoy, Wayne Journell, Li-ching Ho, Steven Camicia, Judy Pace, and others, I am driven by such questions as What do “traumatic” and “difficult” history mean? How can preservice teachers best be prepared to teach difficult history and controversial issues? How do we make sense of what issues/topics should be treated as controversial in the classroom? What can we learn from content analysis of specific curriculum materials for teaching controversy–especially in terms of the range of perspectives they provide? What controversial topics might help students gain the skills and attitudes necessary to tackle even tougher topics? What is the nature of the arguments about these topics/issues in the larger society? How might we facilitate more inclusive discussions of controversial issues? What factors complicate teachers’ efforts to conduct inclusive discussions? What identity risks and attacks are likely to come up as students consider certain topics, and how do we help students deal with possible risks? What are some issues related to teacher political disclosure that help us sort through the larger issues of how disclosure can be done responsibly, professionally, and ethically? What can we learn from international and cross-cultural settings about teachers’ decision-making regarding their rationales, chosen topics, instructional practices, and perceived obstacles and pathways to teaching about issues that carry implications for democracy and social justice?
Q & A with Julie C. Brown, Ph. D., Associate Professor in the School of Teaching and Learning
I lead two National Science Foundation-funded grants, RIEL Biology and CRAFT, both of which include classroom-based research and the professional development of Florida’s science and math teachers. On both projects, we have some really interesting research in the works. Please visit our social media pages, @RIELBiology and @CRAFTSciMath, for more information.
In February 2022, RIEL Biology was spotlighted by the National Science Foundation as an exemplary project that advances culturally responsive STEM education. More recently (October 2022), CRAFT was spotlighted by the National Science Foundation as an exemplary project that advances students’ social emotional learning (SEL). While SEL is not taught explicitly in CRAFT, we draw upon the tenets of a race-visible, culturally responsive pedagogy that supports academic goals alongside affective domains, funds of knowledge, and asset-based, humanizing pedagogies, all of which are critical components of CRAFT.
