Partnering for a Better Education Landscape
The Orange County Educational Advancement Network (OCEAN) faculty and their longtime partnerships are working together in realtime to create positive change for students and educators.
A beacon of innovation, OCEAN is a thriving network of partnerships that span throughout Orange County and across the nation. The initiative facilitates partnerships between the School of Education’s world-class research community with more than 30 partnerships and counting in schools, districts and education organizations.
At the core of these partnerships are UCI School of Education’s faculty and researchers who are working in tandem with these partners to address the most pressing local and large-scale needs and opportunities. OCEAN faculty have developed enduring relationships through these on-the-ground efforts, sharing the same goal with their education partners to investigate and implement ways to make teaching and learning more accessible and equitable. |
College and Career Preparation
The Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD) partners with June Ahn, Ph.D., and Frances Contreras, Ph.D., in a new collaboration funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation. In this work, UCI researchers are helping AUHSD improve upon their innovative work in promoting students' 21st Century skills and career preparedness. One strand of work will develop new metrics of critical thinking, collaboration, character, creativity and communication — using new generative AI and large-language models. Another strand of work will examine various, innovative practices such as dual-credit programs and career academies within the district to highlight best practices and student experiences. Through a $1.5 million grant from Chan Zuckerberg Foundation to initiate this work, AUHSD and OCEAN are currently developing new measurements and metrics using generative AI tools, and piloting this educational change effort in AUHSD in 2022-23.tion through mentorship, community-building, and agency.
Justice-centered Science Education
A National Science Foundation-funded project, “Expanding Latinxs’ Opportunities to Develop Complex Thinking in Secondary Science Classrooms through a Research-Practice Partnership,” aims to transform science teaching and learning at K-12 schools toward a more equitable, just and sustaining future. Hosun Kang, Ph.D., and a team of researchers work with educators, students, and community members to center the community’s concern in the design of science teaching and learning. Currently, they are partnering with Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD) to provide year-long professional development to science teachers across the junior high and high schools. They study the processes in which educators, students, and researchers work together to expand the possibilities of learning in an equitable and consequential way. In the 20-2023 academic year, the team has worked with 11 high and middle schools with more than 600 students and supported about 40 hours of professional learning for 22 teachers and education specialists.
The Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD) partners with June Ahn, Ph.D., and Frances Contreras, Ph.D., in a new collaboration funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation. In this work, UCI researchers are helping AUHSD improve upon their innovative work in promoting students' 21st Century skills and career preparedness. One strand of work will develop new metrics of critical thinking, collaboration, character, creativity and communication — using new generative AI and large-language models. Another strand of work will examine various, innovative practices such as dual-credit programs and career academies within the district to highlight best practices and student experiences. Through a $1.5 million grant from Chan Zuckerberg Foundation to initiate this work, AUHSD and OCEAN are currently developing new measurements and metrics using generative AI tools, and piloting this educational change effort in AUHSD in 2022-23.tion through mentorship, community-building, and agency.
Justice-centered Science Education
A National Science Foundation-funded project, “Expanding Latinxs’ Opportunities to Develop Complex Thinking in Secondary Science Classrooms through a Research-Practice Partnership,” aims to transform science teaching and learning at K-12 schools toward a more equitable, just and sustaining future. Hosun Kang, Ph.D., and a team of researchers work with educators, students, and community members to center the community’s concern in the design of science teaching and learning. Currently, they are partnering with Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD) to provide year-long professional development to science teachers across the junior high and high schools. They study the processes in which educators, students, and researchers work together to expand the possibilities of learning in an equitable and consequential way. In the 20-2023 academic year, the team has worked with 11 high and middle schools with more than 600 students and supported about 40 hours of professional learning for 22 teachers and education specialists.
Reducing Inequalities in Math
A partnership between the Buena Park School District (BPSD), Rossella Santagata, Ph.D, Adriana Villavicencio, Ph.D., Jody Guarino, Ph.D., and John Drake at the Orange County Department of Education (OCDE) is working tot reduce inequalities in opportunities to learn mathematics for children from minoritized communities. The team works closely with partners in two elementary schools to design professional learning experiences for grades PK-5 teachers that are responsive to their local context, including existing teacher expertise and community assets, and recurring instructional challenges. The research, funded by the William T. Grant Foundation, explores how cognitive and socio-cultural perspectives can be integrated to create spaces for children and adult learning that are both ambitious and equitable. The project team supports teachers directly in the classroom through collaborative planning and co-teaching while also collecting data that informs both school improvement and the broader field of research on mathematics teaching and teacher learning.
Outcomes for Immigrant Youth
Adriana Villavicencio, Ph.D., and a team of researchers partner with the Internationals Network for Public Schools, a national network of 22 district-run public schools designed to address the opportunity and achievement gaps between English learners (ELs) and non-ELs that are exacerbated by traditional public high schools. While the whole-school model has shown great success, they are also difficult to scale. As a result, Internationals launched the Internationals Academy (IA) model, which are small learning communities embedded within public secondary schools. Building on prior research of the Internationals whole school model, the research team is currently engaged in a multi-site case study of eight IAs from four different regions across the country. The team will assess the impacts of IAs on students’ academic outcomes compared to outcomes of non-academy peers enrolled in host schools and peers who are ELs within the district, as well as explore the core dimensions of the IAs across sites. Integration of both studies will allow us to understand the relationship we may find between implementation and student outcomes, thereby uncovering the mechanisms underlying the intervention’s impact on students and informing policies and practices in other schools serving immigrant ELs.
Teacher Retention
A partnership with Emily Penner, Ph.D., and the Oregon Educator Advancement Council (EAC) emerged from broader work with several divisions of the Oregon Department of Education that Penner and her colleagues have been working with since 2015. In this partnership, Penner and a team of researchers support the work of the EAC by examining issues related to staffing and retention across the State of Oregon for all types of school staff. The work evaluates educator preparation pathways and in-service teacher support policies, examines educator labor markets, and supports state-wide annual surveying and reporting. This year, the team will be supporting Oregon’s 10 Regional Educator Networks as they work to grow and diversify their school staff and improve student success across rural, suburban, and urban areas in the state.
Foster Youth Support
For the past six years, UCI doctoral students have been doing research-practice partnership work at the Samueli Academy, a charter school in Santa Ana that serves students from seventh to 12th grade in the local community with a focus on providing services to foster youth. In January 2023, in partnership with the Orangewood Foundation, the school opened a dormitory that provides residential support for foster youth during the school week, with students transferring out to host families during the weekend. Led by Richard Arum, Ph.D., UCI researchers have administered longitudinal surveys to track students through secondary school, college and into the labor market to inform the school on efforts to improve outcomes. In addition to focusing on academic outcomes, researchers have documented student friendship networks to monitor foster youth integration into the larger school community, student sense of belonging, and psychological well being and flourishing.
Ethnic Studies Curriculum
Emily Penner, Ph.D., has worked with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Ethnic Studies department since 2014 when she evaluated a high school Ethnic Studies course being piloted in several schools in the district. That course had large, positive effects on students’ academic outcomes throughout high school and into higher education. These results have helped to inform the adoption of a state model Ethnic Studies curriculum and high school graduation requirement. The district subsequently decided to expand the program to all high schools in the district and has a graduation requirement that will take effect two years before the state requirement. Penner has been working with the Ethnic Studies team to learn about how they are growing and sustaining the program in terms of pedagogy, curriculum, and teacher professional development, as well as its impact on students.
Playful STEM Learning
For the last 5 years, Andres Bustamante, Ph.D., has maintained a deep collaborative relationship with a community organization Santa Ana Early Learning Initiative (SAELI) and the Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) — both of whom he has partnered with on several research projects. With SAELI, Bustamante leads a collaborative project with Professor June Ahn, Ph.D., and Temple University Professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., to design playful learning environments in everyday spaces (parks, bus-stops, grocery stores). They design in partnership with SAELI families so installations reflect their culture, history, and cultural strengths. The team recently installed the “Yo Veo” or “I see” mural at Washington Elementary in Santa Ana, which challenges children to use their observation skills and spatial language to find hidden objects that represent the Santa Ana community. Several additional designs will be installed this year, including a giant abacus at a bus-stop; a statue that will allow children to measure their height compared to California native animals; and a life-size version of Loteria, a popular game similar to bingo, infused with early science and math learning. The team also partners with the City of Santa Ana to own, maintain, and replicate these installations. Other collaborative projects with SAUSD include a basketball game for children to learn fractions and decimals and a robotics playground that teaches children computational thinking.
Math Remediation
Shayan Doroudi, Ph.D., and UCI Ph.D. student Christopher Lechuga — who is also the senior manager in Math Curriculum and Development at ALEKS — have been working with two middle school math curriculum specialists at Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) over the past two years in order to improve their ability to use ALEKS, an adaptive learning software, in the districts' summer school and after-school programs for remediation in mathematics. The team is investigating how to group students together based on ALEKS' determination of what math skills each student has mastered. They came up with a simple approach for teachers to make grouping decisions, which is currently being used in the SAUSD summer school program.
Youth Development
A partnership between the Buena Park School District (BPSD), Rossella Santagata, Ph.D, Adriana Villavicencio, Ph.D., Jody Guarino, Ph.D., and John Drake at the Orange County Department of Education (OCDE) is working tot reduce inequalities in opportunities to learn mathematics for children from minoritized communities. The team works closely with partners in two elementary schools to design professional learning experiences for grades PK-5 teachers that are responsive to their local context, including existing teacher expertise and community assets, and recurring instructional challenges. The research, funded by the William T. Grant Foundation, explores how cognitive and socio-cultural perspectives can be integrated to create spaces for children and adult learning that are both ambitious and equitable. The project team supports teachers directly in the classroom through collaborative planning and co-teaching while also collecting data that informs both school improvement and the broader field of research on mathematics teaching and teacher learning.
Outcomes for Immigrant Youth
Adriana Villavicencio, Ph.D., and a team of researchers partner with the Internationals Network for Public Schools, a national network of 22 district-run public schools designed to address the opportunity and achievement gaps between English learners (ELs) and non-ELs that are exacerbated by traditional public high schools. While the whole-school model has shown great success, they are also difficult to scale. As a result, Internationals launched the Internationals Academy (IA) model, which are small learning communities embedded within public secondary schools. Building on prior research of the Internationals whole school model, the research team is currently engaged in a multi-site case study of eight IAs from four different regions across the country. The team will assess the impacts of IAs on students’ academic outcomes compared to outcomes of non-academy peers enrolled in host schools and peers who are ELs within the district, as well as explore the core dimensions of the IAs across sites. Integration of both studies will allow us to understand the relationship we may find between implementation and student outcomes, thereby uncovering the mechanisms underlying the intervention’s impact on students and informing policies and practices in other schools serving immigrant ELs.
Teacher Retention
A partnership with Emily Penner, Ph.D., and the Oregon Educator Advancement Council (EAC) emerged from broader work with several divisions of the Oregon Department of Education that Penner and her colleagues have been working with since 2015. In this partnership, Penner and a team of researchers support the work of the EAC by examining issues related to staffing and retention across the State of Oregon for all types of school staff. The work evaluates educator preparation pathways and in-service teacher support policies, examines educator labor markets, and supports state-wide annual surveying and reporting. This year, the team will be supporting Oregon’s 10 Regional Educator Networks as they work to grow and diversify their school staff and improve student success across rural, suburban, and urban areas in the state.
Foster Youth Support
For the past six years, UCI doctoral students have been doing research-practice partnership work at the Samueli Academy, a charter school in Santa Ana that serves students from seventh to 12th grade in the local community with a focus on providing services to foster youth. In January 2023, in partnership with the Orangewood Foundation, the school opened a dormitory that provides residential support for foster youth during the school week, with students transferring out to host families during the weekend. Led by Richard Arum, Ph.D., UCI researchers have administered longitudinal surveys to track students through secondary school, college and into the labor market to inform the school on efforts to improve outcomes. In addition to focusing on academic outcomes, researchers have documented student friendship networks to monitor foster youth integration into the larger school community, student sense of belonging, and psychological well being and flourishing.
Ethnic Studies Curriculum
Emily Penner, Ph.D., has worked with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Ethnic Studies department since 2014 when she evaluated a high school Ethnic Studies course being piloted in several schools in the district. That course had large, positive effects on students’ academic outcomes throughout high school and into higher education. These results have helped to inform the adoption of a state model Ethnic Studies curriculum and high school graduation requirement. The district subsequently decided to expand the program to all high schools in the district and has a graduation requirement that will take effect two years before the state requirement. Penner has been working with the Ethnic Studies team to learn about how they are growing and sustaining the program in terms of pedagogy, curriculum, and teacher professional development, as well as its impact on students.
Playful STEM Learning
For the last 5 years, Andres Bustamante, Ph.D., has maintained a deep collaborative relationship with a community organization Santa Ana Early Learning Initiative (SAELI) and the Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) — both of whom he has partnered with on several research projects. With SAELI, Bustamante leads a collaborative project with Professor June Ahn, Ph.D., and Temple University Professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., to design playful learning environments in everyday spaces (parks, bus-stops, grocery stores). They design in partnership with SAELI families so installations reflect their culture, history, and cultural strengths. The team recently installed the “Yo Veo” or “I see” mural at Washington Elementary in Santa Ana, which challenges children to use their observation skills and spatial language to find hidden objects that represent the Santa Ana community. Several additional designs will be installed this year, including a giant abacus at a bus-stop; a statue that will allow children to measure their height compared to California native animals; and a life-size version of Loteria, a popular game similar to bingo, infused with early science and math learning. The team also partners with the City of Santa Ana to own, maintain, and replicate these installations. Other collaborative projects with SAUSD include a basketball game for children to learn fractions and decimals and a robotics playground that teaches children computational thinking.
Math Remediation
Shayan Doroudi, Ph.D., and UCI Ph.D. student Christopher Lechuga — who is also the senior manager in Math Curriculum and Development at ALEKS — have been working with two middle school math curriculum specialists at Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) over the past two years in order to improve their ability to use ALEKS, an adaptive learning software, in the districts' summer school and after-school programs for remediation in mathematics. The team is investigating how to group students together based on ALEKS' determination of what math skills each student has mastered. They came up with a simple approach for teachers to make grouping decisions, which is currently being used in the SAUSD summer school program.
Youth Development
Through the UCI Center for Afterschool and Summer Excellence, Sandra Simpkins, Ph.D., and team of researchers partner with several after-school organized activities throughout Orange County — including Girls Inc., Boys and Girls Club, KidWorks, and UCI Math CEO. These programs have served more than 1,700 youth at 78 schools throughout O.C., including some programs helping teens apply and transition to college. These partnerships, many of which started more than 10 years ago, have three main goals. First, UCI faculty and students support local community by working directly with youth in these programs through guided fieldwork. Second, the team has developed a Certificate in Afterschool & Summer Education to help train the next generation of individuals to work with youth in their communities. Through this program, undergraduates learn about best practices in after-school activities and apply their knowledge as they complete their fieldwork associated with the course. Third, they work with several of our partners to conduct research to identify program strengths and evidence-based practices that help support positive youth development. About 250 undergraduate students annually participate in these after-school programs, which deepens their learning and inspires many to continue to contribute to their community and work towards a career working with youth.
|
Read the Fall 2023 issue of Advancing in its entirety, here.