The proposed study is centered on exploring teachers’ assessment practices during this historic disruption of schooling in the United States. To this end, we adopt an equity lens to Xu & Brown’s (2016) Teacher Assessment Literacy in Practice (TALiP) framework to understand the individual and contextual factors surrounding the use of assessments. We will use a sequential mixed methods design to first examine how teachers’ assessment practices are related to their equity-oriented pedagogy to then explore how these relationships might help understand teachers’ equity and assessment experiences during the COVID-19 crisis. The project is consistent with the call to acknowledge and confront Whiteness, power, and privilege undergirding the theoretical and empirical work in the field of educational psychology. 

Research indicates that students struggle with academic, social, and emotional challenges during their transition from high school to college life. Due to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the traditional form of on-campus  education transitioned to online education. This caused college students to experience unprecedented challenges and exacerbated learning and academic success. Data from national agencies indicate that African Americans are facing disparities regarding COVID-19 related outcomes. The purpose of this project is to understand the impact of COVID-19 related transitionary issues experienced by HBCU students and its impact on the process of learning as they transitioned from the traditional  university setting to the online learning environment for academic success. Schlossberg’s Transition Theory helps understand transitionary issues, adjustment strategies, and student’s perceptions about COVID-19 and its impact on the process of learning. Quantitative data from online surveys and qualitative interview data will be transcribed and coded for data analysis. Q-Methodology will be used to understand student perceptions about COVID-19 and its impact on academics.

Recent events such as the murder of George Floyd underscore the race-based trauma many students of color experience. Teachers are well-positioned to recognize such distress, and empathy may be an important pathway toward supporting these students. However, it may be that empathy could result in less, not increased, altruistic behavior. Such encounters could produce personal distress along with empathic emotion. The former could result in dissociation from the student (e.g., blaming the victim) to alleviate such distress. Such reactions may be more likely when a teacher is experiencing burnout. The purpose of this mixed-methods study is to examine the relationships between burnout and self- and others-focused responses to student race-based trauma. Our inquiry is guided by the following: (a) Are teachers with high levels of burnout more likely to experience self-focused emotions in response to student trauma? (b) What are the behavioral strategies associated with teachers tending to respond to witnessing trauma with self-focused or others-focused emotions? and (c) What are the factors that inhibit them from supporting students experiencing race-related trauma?

The ongoing pandemic and continued racial injustices are critical contexts to consider in examining African American students’ school engagement and well-being as they pursue postsecondary education. The current study will employ a daily diary method and photo elicitation interviews to (a) understand the day-to-day challenges, resilience, and school engagement of African American college students and also to (b) qualitatively examine the newly emerged challenges and needs of these students. Guided by stage-environment fit theory and Critical Race Theory, our study contributes to knowledge about the intersections of engagement, resilience, the effect of racialized experiences, and mental health of African American students at a Predominantly White University over time. Methodologically, using multilevel structural equation modeling and photo elicitation interviews, we seek to provide novel information about the daily experiences and academic and mental health-related fluctuations of African American students. Few studies have examined African American students’ daily, micro-level academic and mental health perceptions, and none have done so during a pandemic and racial reckoning.

In existence from at least the 1890s, the field of educational psychology has not yet fully reckoned with its historical entanglements with white supremacy and racism. Some founders of the field were ardent eugenicists, white supremacists, and segregationists, using their educational psychology research to advance oppressive political projects. Their legacy remains legible in the field today. The purposes of the project are to 1) understand historical entanglements with racism and white supremacy, 2) evaluate how and when the educational psychology literature focuses on Black lives, and 3) understand the patterns of race research and researchers in educational psychology. We will conduct a systematic review of the literature to trace the influences of white supremacy and to understand published work that centers Black lives and anti-racism. We will then conduct a social network analysis to understand the positionings of those doing anti-racist work. The project will present a clear picture of the state of the field, offer a challenge for educational psychologists to ask whether Black lives have mattered in their work, and challenge the field to confront racism and white supremacy.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents millions of Americans with considerable physical, mental, and social challenges. Adolescents face particular challenges tied to their developmental trajectories. School—and the connected socialization, identity formation, intellectual growth, and milestones—is a significant factor in this dynamic. Given the unprecedented nature and diversity of experiences of COVID-19 and schooling changes, it is critical to study adolescents’ perspectives and processing to better understand how the pandemic is shaping their developmental trajectories. This project entails follow-up interviews with 30 adolescents, and their parents/guardians, who were surveyed in the spring and fall regarding their perspectives and experience of the pandemic. The semi-structured interviews will be used to investigate more deeply how adolescents are experiencing and responding to COVID-19, including changes in schooling. Ultimately, we aim to provide insights into the pandemic’s impact on adolescents’ learning, educational trajectories, and identity development, while supporting educators, families, and community organizations in working with young people during this time. 

Black children have disproportionately experienced the plight of adverse childhood experience such as physical abuse, hunger, homelessness, health disparities, and discrimination, which have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Families and communities struggle to address the known and unknown effects of this pandemic on the physical, mental, social, and educational functioning of their children.  Our phenomenological research study seeks to explore the meaning-making of multiply-marginalized youth during the pandemic, using PhotoVoice and visual ethnography. Our study is grounded in a Relational-Cultural theory approach which highlights positive interpersonal factors such as growth-fostering relationships, cultural validation, and empowerment for marginalized groups. We seek to understand how Black children who reside in under-resourced, marginalized neighborhoods are making meaning of COVID-19 and their perceptions of their current schooling arrangements. Our aim is to support educators in re-imagining an educational environment that is able to address the post-traumatic growth of students, as well as promote policies that enhances equitable practices among all K-12 students. 

Teacher motivation and well-being are important factors that impact student motivation, well-being, and achievement. However, they are particularly salient now as COVID-19 has thrust upon teachers new and unplanned circumstances in which they must teach. This burden has been exacerbated for Black and Latinx teachers whose communities have been more adversely impacted by COVID-19 than their white counterparts. Given the importance of motivation and well-being for teacher retention and student success, this project aims to explore the lived experience of Black and Latinx educators’ motivation and well-being in the COVID-19 era. Specifically, in this study we will use community-based participatory research, partnering with organizations that work with Black and Latinx educators to help us recruit and train teacher-researchers who will conduct interviews with our participants. The qualitative data will be integrated with the quantitative data from the larger project in which this study takes place for mixed methods analysis and interpretation. We will work with our partner organizations to analyze and interpret the data and create a plan for reflective action based on the findings.

The convergence of social justice and environmental justice should be at the heart of STEM learning to prepare students for the problems ahead, and center them as solution creators. Yet, science and math classrooms have not historically been a place where issues of racial and social justice are discussed, because teachers may or may not be comfortable and/or have the pedagogical skill to support these types of activities in the classroom context. Socioscientific data talks allow students’ to learn about science and math while also engaging with the histories of the places they live and the societal impacts of that history. They also provide an opportunity for science and math teachers to use data (e.g. maps, photos, data sets) as a way to help students make sense of larger issues related to racial and social justice. We are using funding from the APA Div 15 grant to conduct a convergent mixed methods exploratory study to examine how scaffolding teachers’ learning to create justice-centered socioscientific data talks may lead to increased motivation and engagement for both teachers and students during STEM learning.