8 minute read
UCLA Ed&IS Student and Alumni Research Highlights from AERA 2023
By Joanie Harmon and John McDonald
Undergraduate and graduate students participated in the 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) where they highlighted research and work that shows the commitment to the development of new ideas, knowledge and practices that strengthen public education and the school’s commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion and justice. In addition, UCLA Education alumni in prestigious and innovative faculty and leadership positions across the nation also showcased their work, echoing their preparation at UCLA for improving education and increasing opportunity for all.
Highlights
First-year graduate student Lauren Arzaga Daus presented, “Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies: A High School Case Study,” in which she argues that while California has established an Ethnic Studies requirement, the needs of AAPI students may go unseen and unmet. Her study showed the need to ensure teachers are provided the support they need to create and sustain spaces where they and their students can reimagine and cultivate equity, social justice, and liberation in education, while building their sense of identity and strengthening their understanding of community.
In a poster session, doctoral candidate Gabriela Corona Valencia shared, “Resisting Carceral State Memory Production: Tracing the Life of Concepcion Ruiz,” the story of a sixteen-year-old Mexican girl sterilized at Sonoma State Home of the Feebleminded in California in 1930, in a study highlighting the impact of eugenic thought and practice in contemporary K–16 public learning environments in East Los Angeles.
“I tried to understand the role of eugenics and the ways in which eugenics plays a very violent role in containing, surveilling and controlling the bodies of Chicana Latina girls. I argue that in sex education and health education discourse, this eugenic violence, the same violence that affected Concepcion, continues to impact Chicana/Latina girls,” Valencia said.
Another poster session featured the work of doctoral candidate Jeffrey Yo, who shared his examination of “The Influence of Teacher-Child Closeness and Kindergarten Children’s Internalizing Behavior on Academic Outcomes.”
“We noticed that teacher-child closeness is positively associated with their academic outcomes,” Yo said in his presentation. “But the variance differs by school. And while teacher-child closeness varies by school, the internalizing behavior did not, which may suggest that internalizing behavior may be more fixed within the child, like more (part) of a personality.”
Gabriela Corona Valencia shared, “Resisting Carceral State Memory Production: Tracing the Life of Concepcion Ruiz,” in a poster session of “Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research.” Her study highlighted the impact of eugenic thought and practice in historic and contemporary K–16 public learning environments in East Los Angeles.
Graduate student Alice Xu presented her work on “Early Identification of Underperforming Students via Reading Patterns.” Her findings showed that while reading is an important learning process that contributes to academic success, it is difficult to track. By collecting detailed user activity logs, online textbook platforms provided insights into students’ authentic reading behaviors. Xu’s study of college students’ reading patterns of an online textbook showed that students that read more often and maintained a stable reading time performed better in their course.
Kayla Teng, a UCLA undergraduate at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) at UCLA, made the case for the education community to study computational thinking and problem-solving with her poster presentation on, “Development and Validation of Game-Based Indicators of Computational Thinking in a BlockBased Programming Game.” Her study used existing data on elementary students who played a programming game called codeSpark Academy. The study revealed the development of the students’ computational thinking skills, including algorithmic thinking, evaluation, and decomposition, during a six-week period of playing the game.
Doctoral student Demontea Thompson discussed “Educational Journeys of Foster Youth in California: Preliminary Findings of a Statewide Study,” in a roundtable session. His presentation highlighted the experiences of his research subjects, who navigated their educational journey with limited or no help. Even though they were confronted by low expectations, many spoke of higher aspirations for educational success and an intent to give back to their communities.
Doctoral student Lindsey Kunisaki explored unequal access to postsecondary arts education in her poster presentation, “From High School to Art School: Socioeconomic Inequalities in Creative Arts Opportunities to Learn.” Her study examined the relationship between socioeconomic status, access to out-of-school time creative arts opportunities-to-learn, and the likelihood of declaring a postsecondary arts major. Implications included a call for increased access to affordable creative arts opportunities-to-learn, for a more socioeconomically diverse body of aspiring postsecondary arts students.
In a session on “Preservice Instructional Teaching Practices,” graduate students Olivia Obeso and Andrea Nicole Kern joined with Professor Marjorie Faulstich Orellana to present their paper, “Moving Critique Into Action: Teacher Candidates’ Imagination of Their Future Practice.” Their study highlighted the role of teacher education programs as an important site for future teachers to learn to identify and critique harmful language ideologies, and the researchers’ concerns around how teachers will (or will not) be able to translate these critiques of the construct of academic language into linguistically equitable practice.
Graduate student Melanie Seyarto presented her work on “Linking Professional Development to Classroom Quality: Differences by Early Childhood Education Sector,” in a paper session. She posited that while high-quality early education can be a powerful way to support children’s development, preparation for early educators is inconsistent, leaving many teachers without the skills needed to provide young children with enriching learning experiences. Her study used data from a community sample of early educators working in state Pre-K and child care sites to provide new evidence about teachers’ professional development experiences and the links between professional development and classroom practice.
Kai Monet Mathews, director of the California Educator Diversity Project in the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools (CTS), presented findings on, “The Six Barriers to Racial Equity in Teacher Education Programs,” a study she conducted with Cathy Balfe, CTS research analyst, CTS doctoral student researcher Erika Yagi, and UCLA alumni Earl Edwards and Christopher Mauerman. Using the Kohli healthy racial climate model as a theoretical framework, the team identified six barriers to racial equity including compositional diversity, financial burden, capitalistic values, community and culture, curriculum and pedagogy, and testing requirements.
Associate Professor Ananda Marin and Brenda Lopez, research associate and media coordinator at the UCLA Center for Critical Race Studies in Education, presented their study on “Freedom Dreams Nested Within the Small Stories of Improvisational Jazz Artists,” in an AERA Vice-Presidential Session on “Consequential Futures: The Contested Pursuit of Truth in Freedom Dreaming.” Their study, conducted with doctoral student researcher Lindsay Lindberg, explored where and with whom creative artists develop their expertise, how the arts serve as a nexus for social, political, and ethical discourses, particularly in regard to education, and how freedom dreams often germinate in collaborative and improvisational contexts.
UCLA alumnus Mike Hoa Nguyen, now an assistant professor at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, chaired the symposium, “Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions: Honoring the Past, Examining the Present, and Imagining the Future,” which featured the perspectives of fellow Bruins, Cynthia Alcantar, now an associate professor and director of Higher Education Administration at Loyola Marymount University, and doctoral student Rikka Venturanza.
UCLA alumna Tunette Powell, an assistant research professor and director of the K–12 Education of the Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University, and graduate student researcher Brande Otis, presented “Methods Toward Black Freedom Dreaming: Intergenerational Work with Black Families,” in a paper session on “Strengthening the Voice of Black Families in Family, School, Community Partnerships.”
“We cannot ignore the legacy of exploitation and extraction in research for Black folks … and the deficit-based narratives that sort of circulate [around] Black families in research,” said Otis in their presentation. “We want to dream and to imagine new ways of doing research … in ways that honor and resonate with our communities and us.”
Cover photo: Gabriela Corona Valencia shared, “Resisting Carceral State Memory Production: Tracing the Life of Concepcion Ruiz,” in a poster session of “Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research.” Her study highlighted the impact of eugenic thought and practice in historic and contemporary K–16 public learning environments in East Los Angeles.
