What factors are most important for student learning and academic success? Are individual differences in cognitive ability more important than non-cognitive and socio-emotional skills? What roles do environmental and/or contextual factors play when considering differences in student learning and academic success? Having worked with experts in intelligence and cognitive ability as well as experts in prejudice and the impacts of stigma on individual and group cognition shaped the perspective that I bring to approaching these particular research questions. I've felt like the answers to my questions lie somewhere between the work of Charles Spearman and W.E.B. Du Bois.
Spearman (1904)
Du Bois (1906)
Research Program & Future Directions
In my research program I seek to better understand: How (process), When (context), and Why (internal vs. external factors) different individuals achieve academic and career success in spite of threats to their identity, well-being, and belonging (see Steele & Aronson, 1995).
With social psychological interventions having been presented as effective and scalable (Walton & Cohen, 2011; Paunesku et al., 2015), I hope to further explore individual differences in cognitive and non-cognitive abilities both pre and post interventions. Although there have been concerted efforts to mitigate race and gender identity threat effects slightly less attention has been paid to the topic of intersectionality and whether it may interact with identity threat across a range of situations (c.f., Tine & Gotlieb, 2013).
Additionally, my work aligns with the recent call from the Educational Testing Servicefor increased emphasis on assessing "the whole child," looking more at both the social and emotional factors of learning and achievement.
My goal is to look at the group and individual levels in order to understand mechanisms and moderators of identity threat effects in order to (even better) tailor forms of intervention to different needs. I aim to employ a variety of behavioral methods, simulation studies, and neural approaches to investigate these questions.
Taking an individual differences approach has important implications for the current movements in cognitive and education sciences (see Duckworth & Yeager, 2015; Pauneseku et al., 2015; Dweck, 2006)—by focusing on both the cognitive abilities of students as well as their non-cognitive abilities, traits and character, we can use evidence from cognitive and social psychology to inform education policy. Ultimately, I hope to explore these ideas in my program of research:
First, to improve our understanding of how the complexity of who students are can impact their abilities to perform and achieve.
And second, to use social and cognitive psychological approaches to develop both wise (Yeager & Walton 2011; Walton & Cohen, 2011) and effective interventions aimed at improving educational attainment and achievement for all students.