“This identity-safe space is not only a community, but also a space to hone skills related to youth participatory action research, leadership, and advocacy,” Powell said.
In the second phase, the students’ high school teachers will participate in a transformative, 8-week professional development centered on themes expressed by the focus group. Students’ multimedia artifacts will be integrated into their teachers’ professional development curriculum to creatively, and courageously, reveal students of color’s realities while provoking teachers’ critical reflection about how their classroom practices may influence those experiences. “The goal of this study is to elevate students of color’s voices to illuminate their lived experiences in schools,” Powell said. “Their words are vital in shedding light on the educational, social, political, and racial inequities embedded within schools and classrooms. The goal of this study is to determine if this highly contextualized professional development, grounded in students of color voices, has the capacity to inspire the enactment of more culturally responsive teaching.” Powell’s doctoral research explores diversity and equity, cultural competence, teacher-student interactions, and professional development. Prior to joining the doctoral program, Powell taught for 10 years in Title I schools in Georgia and in the Maryland/D.C. area. She is certified in Early Childhood Education, Middle Grades Social Sciences, STEM, and Gifted/Exceptional Learners. Distinguished Professor Jacquelynne Eccles and Assistant Professor Adriana Villavicencio serve as her advisors. The UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement explores how the fundamental democratic and academic principles of free speech and civic engagement should enrich the discovery and transmission of knowledge in America’s colleges and universities. Through research, advocacy, debate and discussion, the Center is dedicated to ensuring that the next generation of leaders is prepared to understand, defend, and advance these values. The Association for Psychological Science (APS) awarded Assistant Professor Andres Bustamante a Rising Star designation. The designation recognizes psychological scientists in the earliest stages of their post-Ph.D. research careers whose innovative work has already advanced the psychological science field. “It's a huge honor to get this recognition from APS,” Bustamante said. “It's a reflection of the amazing mentors and collaborators that I've had early in my career. I feel extremely lucky to work with people that I learn from every day and to spend my time on projects that I'm passionate about and truly love doing.” Bustamante’s research interests encompass early childhood STEM education, playful learning, and research practice partnerships. He is the director of the STEM Learning Lab, which designs and implements play-based STEM learning interventions in school and community contexts. Bustamante is the principal investigator on a $2.57 million NSF grant, “Stimulating STEM in the City: Co-Designing with Latinx Families to Promote Informal STEM Learning.” Through the grant, he and his team are designing playful learning installations with a local community organization – the Santa Ana Early Learning Initiative (SAELI) – for public spaces in Santa Ana, Calif. Additionally, in August 2020, the NewSchools Venture Fund’s EF+Math Program awarded a UCI School of Education team led by Bustamante a three-year, $1.25 million research award, “Fractions in the School Yard: Play-based Executive Function and Math Learning,” to adapt Fraction Ball, an innovative math game, for the Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD). The California Teacher Education Research and Improvement Network (CTERIN) selected three UCI School of Education doctoral students – Jonathan Montoya, Ethan Rubin, and Steven Skoropad – as CTERIN Fellows. Montoya, Rubin, and Skoropad are among 24 doctoral students selected from across the UC system for the depth of their professional activities and experience, proposed research statements, and experience in K-12 classrooms. The 24 fellows will function as a community to expand the preparation of doctoral students in teacher education while receiving mentorship from UC senate faculty and staff.
Prado is a founding member of the UC Office of the President Family Engagement Taskforce, as well as a peer mentor in the School of Education’s Diverse Education Community and Doctoral Experience (DECADE) program.
This year, Prado co-designed the Community Education Fellows program. The program works with schools in under-served communities across Orange County, partnering UCI undergraduates with families in need of support with their children’s remote learning during the COVID crisis. Prado’s background as a migrant, language learner, and special-education-student-turned-scholar informs her approach to equity and inclusion in her scholarship, teaching, and service. She is sharing her research as first author of a forthcoming book from MIT Press - Voices on the Margins: Inclusive Education at the Intersection of Language, Literacy, and Technology. Professor Mark Warschauer, who is co-author on the book, serves as Prado’s advisor. You can learn more about Prado’s research and the community work she is conducting vis-à-vis the Community Education Fellows and the School of Education’s OCEAN network here. Inspired by then-School of Education doctoral student Veronica Ahumana-Newhart (Ph.D. ‘18), the LEAD Gala is the only awards ceremony in the UC system dedicated to elevating Hispanic and Latinx graduate student success. The gala recognizes key leaders, graduate students, staff, and faculty who support and champion student success and research excellence in the Latinx/Hispanic community at UCI and in Orange County. Past School of Education recipients include alumna Ahumada-Newhart in 2018, alumna Wendy Ochoa in 2019, and doctoral candidate Mariela Rivas in 2020. Book to present first case study focused on digital technologies’ potential to facilitate inclusion for linguistically and culturally diverse students with disabilities.
Having migrated to the United States from Mexico at a young age, Prado’s work is deeply personal. Her path to Ph.D. candidacy started in elementary school as an English language learner receiving special education services. With perseverance and support, she earned her B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University and an M.Ed. specialized in reading intervention from Harvard University. Her lived experience navigating an education system that still excludes linguistically and culturally diverse students with disabilities drives her scholarship on inclusive education.
“I take an interdisciplinary approach to studying the intersecting influences of school context, family engagement, language and literacy practices, and uses of digital media on inclusion,” Prado said. “My goal is to identify and sustain environments that help linguistically and culturally diverse children with disabilities thrive. As one of the last segregated groups in our education system, too few of these children have the opportunities for academic success and social inclusion they deserve.” In Voices on the Margins, Prado discusses the ways schools can use digital media to support the inclusion of diverse students with and without disabilities across in-person and remote learning environments. The book will investigate how schools can use technology to amplify student agency and voice, shifting the broader ecology of the learning environment. This new ecology emphasizes interdependence - collaborative uses of technology - as a means to foster relationships and support inclusion. As a whole, Prado’s work is shaping the discussion around inequality, inclusion and access in schools. For the past three years, Prado has been a member of the Orange County Educational Advancement Network (OCEAN), a network of research-practice partnerships between the UCI School of Education and K-12 school sites. At each site, a School of Education faculty member and doctoral student work with school leadership to identify the greatest needs and goals of the school, and in turn conduct research that will positively impact the school. Prado’s work with OCEAN extends to the Community Education Fellows program, which promotes equitable formation of pandemic pods in diverse, under-served, communities. These small groupings of children for socialization, education, and play present an innovative extension to remote learning in the COVID era. The Community Education Fellows program scales this approach, matching families with UCI undergraduate students mentored by Prado. Prado has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and Science News. UCI Grad Division selected fourth-year doctoral students Sharin Jacob and Sirui Wan as finalists for the 2021 Grad Slam Competition. Grad Slam participants are selected for the quality of a three-minute presentation of their research, suitable for a lay audience. Jacob and Wan are among 10 UCI finalists selected from a group of 50 semi-finalists.
"Expanding the computer access pipeline is a critical issue for our nation," said Professor Mark Warschauer, Jacob’s advisor. "Jacob's research on developing computer science curriculum for diverse elementary school students is making an invaluable contribution toward that goal."
Associate Professor Drew Bailey and Distinguished Professor Jacquelynne Eccles serve as his advisors. “Sirui’s work is important for understanding how students come to view themselves as being stronger students in math or reading over time,” Bailey said. “Sirui is doing strong work, and we’re proud of him for making the Grad Slam Finals!” Grad Slam is a UC systemwide competition that showcases and awards the best three-minute research presentations by graduate scholars. The competition is designed to showcase graduate scholars and their research, while encouraging graduate students' communication skills and their capacity to effectively present their work with poise and confidence. The event is open to the public. On March 4, the student presenting the best three-minute explanation of their research will be declared the UCI Grad Slam Champion and will advance to a system-wide UC Grad Slam Competition in May. Research Statements Sharin Jacob -- Learning computer science (CS) provides access not only to high-paying jobs, but also the power and influence that comes from designing the technologies, entertainment, and businesses of tomorrow. Unfortunately, multilingual students do not have the same access to CS as native English speakers. We represent the first team in the country to develop a CS curriculum designed to help predominantly Latinx, multilingual students from low-income backgrounds learn CS. Upper elementary students code in a child-friendly language that helps them learn about foundational CS concepts. More importantly, we added culturally responsive materials and linguistic scaffolding to help students develop CS and language skills. We are rolling this curriculum out to all 4,000 fourth grade students in the district, eventually reaching Santa Ana’s 53,000 students. In elementary school there is no dedicated time for CS instruction during the school day. Our project provides a protected 50 minutes of CS instruction weekly for all fourth-grade students in the district. This initiative will provide early CS exposure to diverse students and build our nation's diverse talent in the field.
Sirui Wan -- When students make self-evaluations, they may not only use information from interindividual comparisons with others (i.e., social comparison), but also use information from intraindividual comparisons across domains such as math and language arts (i.e., dimensional comparison). Dimensional comparisons play a key role in specialization, and it may have implications for education policies and interventions aimed at promoting students’ motivation in school and cultivating talent development. However, there is a lack of empirical work on investigating the developmental changes in dimensional comparisons and the mechanisms underlying such changes. To help address this gap, my research focuses on changes in dimensional comparisons during K-12. I found that students’ reliance on dimensional comparisons to form motivational beliefs increases across the K-12 school years. In addition, I found that the increase in dimensional comparisons may result from 1) the increase in students’ ability to make dimensional comparisons and 2) the increase in their tendency to use dimensional comparison information in ability self-evaluation.
Dowell is the creator of an innovative software known as Group Communication Analysis (GCA). GCA analyzes conversation transcripts on six metrics: general participation; consistency or novelty; responsivity to peers’ contributions; ability to evoke replies; originality in statements; and level of conciseness. The software then identifies individuals as performing one of six roles: Chatterer, Driver, Follower, Lurker, Socially Detached, or Influential Actor.
“Roles are one of the most important concepts in understanding human socio-cognitive behavior,” Dowell said. “The software allows us to understand the underlying human socio-cognitive process.” Potential applications for GCA range from improving conversations to addressing larger societal issues in group dynamics such as equity and inclusion. (GCA is described in more detail in the fall 2020 issue of the School of Education magazine, Advancing.) Dowell has already filed a patent and established a corporation for GCA. As a Faculty Innovation Fellow, Dowell’s next steps include making a minimum viable product available and pursuing Small Business Innovation Research funding to help scale the technology and business. Dowell will also focus on the next stage of translating her scholarship to maximize the social benefit of the software. This will include collaborating with other educational researchers to make the software available at low or no cost for researchers and consulting with EdTech startups and other interested companies to make sure the tools and techniques are well disseminated and can be applied for improving educational, business, and broader societal outcomes. Dowell’s research foci include cognitive psychology, discourse processing, group interaction, and learning analytics. She is particularly interested in the use of language and discourse to uncover the dynamics of socially significant, cognitive, and affective processes. Her studies highlight the practical applications of computational discourse science in the clinical, political, and social sciences areas. UCI Beall Applied Innovation will host a virtual recognition ceremony for the 18 new Fellows on January 26 at 1:00 p.m. Learn more about Applied Innovation here. Read the Applied Innovation Press Release announcing its Faculty Innovation Fellows here. Two films created by two sixth grade students as part of the UCI Writing Project’s Summer Youth Program won prizes in three categories at the 2020 My Hero Project 16th International Film Festival. Wear a Mask Hamilton Parody #STOPTHESPREAD, created by Angelina Pendleton-Mendez and Leila Woodward, won first place in two categories: “Student Sheltering Stories” and “Young Audience Poll Award.” Additionally, Pendleton-Mendez received the first place Middle School Award for her entry, My Family Journey: Empowering Hispanic Women. The films were created in the Summer Youth Program's Digital Storytelling workshop, which teaches students how to use digital media technology and video production knowledge and skills to create projects that raise awareness around a community issue. “We wrote, recorded, filmed and edited the video separately in the comfort of our own homes in less than 48 hours,” Woodward said. “We are extremely grateful to the UCI Writing Project for providing a platform for us to be able to bring out and share an important message.”
“We are truly thankful to the UCI Writing Project for teaching us how to tell compelling stories through digital media,” said Pendleton-Mendez. “Instructors Frank Guttler and Dr. Viet Vu are wonderful mentors who helped and guided us in our journey.” “Knowing how to create videos in the YouTube era is an essential skill for all students, but more importantly, students need to be able to use digital tools to effectively communicate their ideas, beliefs, and experiences to make a difference in the world,” said Vu, UCI School of Education lecturer and teacher of the Digital Storytelling workshops. The UCI Writing Project Summer Youth Program, now in its 42nd year, transitioned to a virtual space in 2020 to continue offering literacy support to students during the pandemic. More than 600 students participated in the summer 2020 online program. Based on outstanding reviews of the Summer Youth Program, and at the request of many parents, the UCI Writing Project extended its literacy support by establishing its Virtual Program for Youth (VPY), which features yearlong literacy courses for K-12 students. Registration is now open for Winter/Spring courses, which include “Multi-Media Storytelling,” “Digital Storytelling About My Heritage and History,” “STEM: Coding Yourself Into a Digital World,” and more. For a full list of classes, please click here. “These courses are taught by credentialed teachers who engage students in fun, academic literacy activities to promote interest, engagement, and academic motivation,” said Tracy Gov, UCI Writing Project Director of Operations. The My Hero Project is a globally connected learning community promoting cross-cultural communication, human rights, environmental awareness, tolerance, media literacy and the arts. My Hero hosts an annual competition to recognize filmmakers, artists and activists working towards positive change and inspire audiences to become involved. Watch the #STOPTHESPREAD film here. Watch My Family Journey film here. UCI School of Education doctoral students Sharin Jacob and Jennifer Renick are two of 14 UCI graduate students selected for 2021 Public Impact Fellowships.
Jacob will receive $12,000 to support her research.
Renick will receive $1,000 to support her study.
Public Impact Fellowships highlight and support graduate students whose research has the potential to "substantially impact the public sphere" and "significantly improve or enrich the lives of Californians and/or national and global communities."
In granting the award, IARSLC wrote that the group’s work has “had local and national impacts as their scholarship has informed policy and practice in the development, adoption, and defense of ethnic studies requirements in K-12 schools.”
Penner, Dee, and Sanderson will be recognized during the IARSLCE virtual recognition event in January and will present their research to colleagues during the early part of 2021. Penner studies educational inequality and policy, and considers the ways that policies, districts, schools, teachers, and parents can contribute to or ameliorate educational inequality. She is currently involved in projects examining teacher recruitment and retention in constrained labor and housing markets, how school sorting processes affect student opportunities to learn, and how educator-initiated curricula that center the cultural and historical experiences of traditionally marginalized students impact student outcomes. The International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE), founded in 2005, is an international non-profit organization devoted to promoting research and discussion about service-learning and community engagement across the educational spectrum (primary, secondary, post-secondary, and further education). |