Teaching
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My teaching philosophy aims to foster a learning environment that maximizes the potential of diverse learners. The core elements in my teaching include designing curricula that are inclusive of diverse perspectives, creating opportunities to apply knowledge to lived experiences, and building mentorships that are empowering, collaborative, and beneficial to rising scholars.
First, I design curricula with diversity and inclusivity in mind, with thoughtful consideration of the cultural and developmental needs of diverse learners. Reflecting my own research, I am committed to incorporating discussions of culture within classrooms to broaden students’ understanding of the diversity in human development. This entails creating assignments, activities, and materials that reinforce and challenge the learning of students with diverse skills. This also includes leveraging students’ funds of knowledge and inquiry-based teaching strategies to get a sense of what learners need and want to know.
A second key element of my teaching is to create opportunities for students to apply new knowledge and concepts to their lived experiences. Through generative activities and small and large group discussions, I encourage students to use their own funds of knowledge and envision how they may put the developmental and psychological concepts they are learning into their own lived experiences and concretize their understanding of psychological phenomena.
Finally, going beyond the classroom setting, an essential element of my teaching is to mentor rising scholars in ways that are empowering, collaborative, and beneficial for their careers. In the lab, I help my mentees cultivate competence and autonomy in research methods by systematically scaffolding their research skills and individualizing their learning through one-on-one, hands-on demonstrations and exemplars of research tasks. I also consistently position my mentees as important cultural assets and collaborators to my research and outreach work, encouraging mentees to use their cultural knowledge to inform the content of data collection materials and the interpretations of our data findings.
My overall goal is to ensure scholars have the fundamental theoretical knowledge and research skills that can benefit them in their careers.
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Courses I teach/have taught at U of R
ED 504: Quantitative Research Methods (doctoral)
This course provides an introduction to the quantitative methods commonly used in education research. It covers basic concepts underlying statistical and quantitative reasoning, including descriptive statistics, probability, statistical inference, analysis of variance, correlation, and bivariate and multivariate regression analysis. Students engage in computer-based analyses of education-related problems using SPSS. This course will include conducting a quantitative analysis as a research report.
PSYC 573: Culture & Diversity in Psychological Science (doctoral)
This course examines how the history, theories, and methods of psychological science have considered the diversity of human experiences and the cultural factors that play a role in this diversity. As scholars of psychology, students will think through their positionality, privileges, and power and how these factors may modify interactions and relationships they build with people and communities they research, outreach, and work with. Students will also interrogate the universality of commonly utilized theories and examine how cultural and diversity theories may call into question the implicit assumptions in these theories. Finally, students will examine how culture and diversity play a role in different dimensions of individual functioning and social relationships.
ED 510: Research in Adolescent and Emerging Adult Development (doctoral)
What is adolescence and emerging adulthood? How are these periods distinct from each other and other developmental periods? How do contemporary theories conceptualize these developmental periods? What processes are implicated in these periods? How do adolescents and emerging adults navigate their identities and social locations and at what point do they fulfill their understanding of themselves? And how do social, ecological, and cultural contexts play a role in the flourishing of adolescents and emerging adults? In this course, students will identify major aspects of development during adolescence and emerging adulthood, evaluate research findings related to adolescent and emerging adult development, and understand individual and societal factors affecting developmental milestones in these periods.
EDE 509: Proseminar on Human Development: Foundational Concepts, Theories, Methods, and Practices (doctoral)
The purpose of this class is to gain an understanding of theories of human development and how they relate to empirical research and practice. Taking a life-span perspective, we integrate traditional and contemporary developmental theories, beginning with foundational concepts and considering theoretical advances and critical perspectives. We explore how theory informs the choice of methods for research and practice with infants, children, adolescents, and young, middle-aged, and older adults, understanding that development involves biopsychosocial processes that change over time and are embedded in multiple contexts. We also take an interdisciplinary lens, considering genetic, psychophysiological, intrapsychic, psychosocial, family, community, sociological, and sociocultural contexts.
ED 415: Adolescent Development & Youth Culture (master’s)
What is adolescence? What factors are involved in adolescent development? What is youth culture? What are the concerns of youth in today’s world? What dispositions, assets, and abilities do youth bring into their lives? These are the core developmental questions and issues we will explore in this graduate seminar. By engaging in the course materials together, students will be able to (a) integrate knowledge about the adolescent period from multiple theoretical and disciplinary perspectives; (b) develop their own “working theory” about relevant dimensions of adolescent development and the contextual, social, and cultural factors that shape it; (c) connect and apply the developmental concepts and phenomena to their own planned classroom practices and/or work with youth; and (d) acquire skills about and critically evaluate empirical methods for studying and interpreting evidence gathered from youth and adolescents in their everyday life experiences.
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