LRDC Newsletter | Learning Research & Development Center

Apr-May-June
2018
Volume 9
Issue 2
LRDC Home

Kudos...

Jamie Amemiya, Psychology in Education, School of Education, doctoral advisee of Ming-Te Wang, has received the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship. More information here.

Emily Braham received the "IWALS 2018 Emerging Scholar Best Poster Award."

Xioping Fang and Emily Braham were awarded Mellon fellowships from the University of Pittsburgh. Mellon fellows are awarded to students in programs leading to the Ph.D. in various fields of the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. More information here.

Lindsay Page is the recipient of the 2018 AERA Division L Early Career Award. She has been selected as a result of her work summer melt. Page has also been appointed as one of 45 Faculty Research Fellows to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the program on the economics of education. More information here.

Natasha Tokowicz is the recipient of a University Honors College Faculty Fellows Award. Natasha has been recognized for her outstanding work with students pursuing their Bachelors of Philosophy (B. Phil) projects

Three LRDC projects are among the first recipients of the University of Pittsburgh's Personalized Education Grants Program, faculty members Brian Galla and Tim Nokes-Malach received funding for "Personalizing Undergraduate STEM Learning through Mobile Mindfulness Training. Research Associate Omid Fotuhi was awarded for "Non-Cognitive Skills and Psychological Resilience Training for Students and Faculty: An Adaptive Mindset Toolkit for the Modern Education Experience." Graduate students Suzie Chen and Eben Whiterspoon also received a grant for "YouPitt: Using Behaviorally-Informed Advising to Personalize Career Pathways for Pre-Health Students."

2018 Hosts Second Successful Undergraduate Research Internship

On June 30, 2018, six interns completed the second round of the LRDC Summer Undergraduate Research Internship program. Created in 2017, the aim of the program is to promote broader participation in training in the learning sciences (research on instruction and learning) and to bring students to the University of Pittsburgh who embody the diversity of our nation, region, and city.
Interns work on a project with a faculty member who specializes in an area of the learning sciences of interest to the intern. Participating in the six-week program gives interns firsthand experience in the labs of faculty members. Interns may also work with advanced graduate students or postdoctoral fellows in the faculty members’ labs. Faculty mentors have primary appointments in the Department of Psychology and the School of Education.

Internship director Natasha Tokowicz, Associate Professor, Psychology and Linguistics (secondary appointment) and LRDC Research Scientist, states that “LRDC is committed to increasing the pool of students from diverse backgrounds entering graduate study in Psychology and related fields in the learning sciences. Our summer undergraduate internship program is designed to help take a step toward achieving this goal.”
The internships provide valuable experience for students who intend to apply for graduate programs and are most appropriate for students who will be entering the final year of undergraduate study.

In survey collected at the end of the 2017 program, one of the interns stated, “In my opinion, [this program] . . . has potential to be a national model for programs helping historically marginalized groups of students. . . It was because of this program that I feel more prepared and more competitive for graduate study at the Ph.D level.”

For those students interested in applying, interns generally have a primary field of study in an area relevant to the learning sciences. GPA should be over 3.0; however promise can be demonstrated through other means, such as student letters of recommendation, student background, and research experience. Women and members of under-represented minority groups are especially encouraged to apply. Learn more about the program at www.lrdc.pitt.edu/Diversity/internship

(L-R) Dagmawit Demere, University of Pennsylvania (graduated), Edith (Lizzie) Andrews, The University of North Caroline at Chapel Hill; Kaelan Vazquez, Xavier University of Louisiana; Nicole Nunez, University of Albany, SUNY; Georgia Williams, Virginia State University; Erika Guedea, University of Texas at El Paso.

New Grants

Byeong-Young Cho received a research grant from the Spencer Foundation for "Promoting Disciplinary Literacy and Learning through Multisource Text Inquiries: An Instructional Study of Middle School Learners.

Diane Litman is a co-PI on the IES grant "Enhancing Undergraduate STEM Education by Integrating Mobline Learning Technologies with Natural Language Processing," with LRDC alum Muhsin Menekse (now at Purdue University).

In the News

The Tennessee Coaching project led by LRDC's Jennifer Russell and the IFL's Victoria Bill is the subject of Education Week's June 13, 2018, "Want to Improve Math Teaching? Try Coaching the Coaches."

The April 1, 2018, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured an op-ed by Lindsay Page and Jennifer Iriti related to recent changes to the Pittsburgh Promise and their research on its impact over its first several years. Lindsay Page's research on summer melt is highlighted in a What Works Clearinghouse review that examines research on summer counseling for college. Post-Gazette article here. Clearinghouse report here.

NPR quoted Lindsay Page on an NPR Ed All Things Considered piece, titled "College Decision Day Brings Relief, Excitement and Big Worries About Money," on May 1, 2018. Listen to the full show here. Page also participated in the TEDx talk series "Education Possible." The tile of her talk is "Proactively Supporing Students To and Through College."

Education Week cited a recent paper by Leanne Elliott, Emily Braham, and Melissa Libertus in the article "Does Higher-Level Number Talk Hold the Key to Better Math Scores for Young Children."

Publications

Amemiya, J., & Wang, M. T. (2018) Why effort praise can backfire in adolescence. Child Development Perspectives. Article here.

Cho, B-Y., Han, H., & Kucan, L. (2018) An exploratory study of middle-school-learners' historical reading in an internet environment. Reading and Writing. Article here.

Zheng, P., & Libertus, M. (2018). The role of parental education, household income, and race on parents' academic beliefs and he provision of home learning opportunities for 4- to 8-year-old children. Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology, 8(1), 118-132. Article here.

Liu, A. S., & Schunn, C. D. (2018). The effects of school-related and home-related optional science experiences on science attitudes and knowledge. Journal of Educational Psychology. Article here.

Liu, R., Schunn, C. D., Fiez, J. A., & Libertus, M. E. (2018). The integration between nonsymbolic and symbolic numbers: Evidence from an EEG study. Brain and Behavior. Article here.

Byrnes, J.P., Miller-Cotto, D., & Wang, A. (2018). Children as mediators of their own cognitive development: the case of learning science in kindergarten and first grade. Journal of Cognition and Development. Abstract here.

Richey, E. J., Nokes-Malach, T. J., & Cohen, K. (2018) Collaboration facilitates abstract category learning. Memory and Cognition. Article here.

Morris, P., Connors, M., Friedman-Krauss, A., McCoy, D., Weiland, C., Feller, A., Page, L., Bloom, H., & Yoshikawa, H. (2018). New findings on impact variation from the Head Start Impact Study: Informing the scale-up of early childhood programs. AERA Open, 4(2), 1–16. Article here.

Bray, L. E., & Russell, J. L. (2018). The dynamic interaction between institutional pressures and activity: An examination of the implementation of IEPs in secondary inclusive settings. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Article here.

Soo, K. W., & Rottman, B. M. (2018). Causal Strength Induction from Time Series Data. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(4), 485-513. Article here.