Research

2022-2023 College of Education Monthly Research Seminar Series:

Join your colleagues across campus and beyond to hear from our own College of Education researchers. Join us via Zoom or enjoy a warm drink and dessert in-person as you hear about and engage in discussion around groundbreaking scholarship and implications for leaders, educators, counselors and learners.

June 1, 2023, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m.: Dr. Tenisha Tevis presents Criticality and Praxis: Disrupting Dominant Ideologies and Biased Institutional Practices.

Click to join by Zoom. 

Oregon State to lead National Science Foundation-funded Center for Oldest Ice Exploration

Oregon State University will lead a National Science Foundation-funded effort to discover Antarctica’s oldest ice and learn more about how the Earth’s climate has changed over the past several million years. Oregon State faculty affiliated with the project include Erin Pettit, an associate professor and glaciologist, and Christo Buizert, an assistant professor and climate change specialist, both in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, and Jana Bouwma-Gearhart, an associate professor of science education and associate dean in the College of Education. COLDEX will work with the American Meteorological Society’s Education Program to develop a summer professional development program on ice cores for K-12 teachers, especially those who work with students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Full press release

Opposing effects of impulsivity and mindset on sources of science self-efficacy and STEM interest in adolescents

Parents and educators might know the challenges of gaining and holding the interest of children with diagnosed impulsivity conditions (e.g. ADHD). An OSU College of Education researcher has published research in PLOS ONE that shows that impulsivity actually affects more students than just those officially diagnosed with it, and that impulsivity across secondary students is associated with lower interest and self-efficacy in STEM subjects. Dr. Jana Bouwma-Gearhart, working as part of an interdisciplinary team of researchers from OHSU and PSU, found that this effect can be counteracted with mindset interventions through which students learn the importance of effort when learning is difficult. Overall, the data suggests that impulsivity and mindset are interconnected in terms of influence on students’ STEM success.

 

 

Understanding racial literacy through acts of (un)masking: Latinx teachers in a new Latinx diaspora community

Dr. Soria Colomer, Assistant Professor in Cultural & Linguistic Diversity in the College of Education, has a new article published in the Journal of Race Ethnicity and Education.  This study analyzes the storytelling of six Latinx teachers to reveal the challenges and tensions that arise when Latinx teachers try to define their identity in social spaces. It also encourages the use of storytelling as a pedagogical tool to develop racial literacy skills.

Why Mentoring Matters: Gloria Crisp’s Award-Winning Research Helps Develop the Best in Others

Gloria Crisp's struggle to navigate through college lead her to develop a focus on mentoring for undergraduate college students.  This focus lead to the development of the College Student Mentoring Scale, which is used at institutions worldwide to evaluate the effectiveness of mentoring programs. Using this scale, Gloria's research has shown the importance of mentoring on student success and that students need more than one mentor. “It’s a mentoring network, really, that students need,” she says. “It’s messy and complicated, but that’s why I like studying mentoring.”