RESEARCH
_____
Foster scholarship, discovery and innovation
Active Grant Funding
Active Grants
National Science Foundation Grants
State of Illinois Agency Grants
Major Foundation Grants
U.S. Department of Education Grants
ITEL
Centering the Future of Educational Technology
A new campus-recognized center, the Center for Research and Innovation in Technology-Enhanced Learning (ITEL) within the College of Education will be the hub for interdisciplinary collaborations focused on the development and integration of digital technologies in the classroom and beyond.
BY TOM HANLON
Lindgren
Monda-Amaya
Whether you’re building a brick-and-mortar structure or a cloud-based enterprise, having a solid foundation, strong infrastructure, and capacity for growth are key components to its longevity and success.
Drawing upon the University of Illinois’ rich history of designing and developing technology for learning applications, Robb Lindgren, interim director of ITEL, began organizing the campus’ experts and resources around educational technology several years ago. He led the interdisciplinary TIER-ED (Technology Innovations in Educational Research and Design) initiative, an effort to bring together the array of innovative thinkers and projects at Illinois within the ed tech space. The evolution of this initiative, the new Center for Research and Innovation in Technology-Enhanced Learning looks to leverage, elevate, and amplify this connected, collaborative work as the campus’ hub for innovation at the intersection of technology and learning.
“ITEL will serve as an interdisciplinary hub for research related to the integration of digital technologies in a broad area of educational contexts,” says Lindgren. “So, everything from thinking about ways of using new technologies in classrooms to the ways that mobile devices get used for informal education in the Global South.”
“Through ITEL, we’ll be exploring everything from understanding the very mechanistic ways that people learn with those technologies to the impact of specific designs of educational technology on various contexts,” he says.
A Myriad of Collaboration Possibilities
Another carryover from TIER-ED to ITEL is the ongoing work among researchers from around campus.
“The great thing about ITEL is it will be able to capitalize on existing collaborations that have already proven themselves to be quite powerful,” Lindgren notes. He mentions investigators from The Grainger College of Engineering, the School of Information Sciences, the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, the Gies College of Business, the College of Fine and Applied Arts, and the College of Veterinary Medicine as past and current partners.
“I’m particularly excited about the new collaborations this is going to afford,” he continues. “Because of the visibility of the center, we can potentially reach faculty researchers in every academic unit at Illinois.
“Additionally, there are other interdisciplinary research centers on campus that are ripe for joining forces and partnering on seed funding programs to be able to cultivate the kinds of collaborations and research that are in the spirit of ITEL,” Lindgren adds.
Impact in Schools and Beyond
Lisa Monda-Amaya, visiting executive director of the College’s Centers & Strategic Initiatives, mentions the impact ITEL can have in settings beyond schools—really, in any setting that people are engaged in learning through technology.
“I envision this as something through which we can make a lot of connections with industry and draw people in who see the potential of innovation with technology in schools,” says Monda-Amaya. Lindgren agrees.
“What excites me most about ITEL is opening up possibilities for the great design work and research that we’ve been doing, to become visible to campus, to the state and local community, and to the nation,” says Lindgren. “As people learn about what ITEL researchers have done, I believe there will be a free flow of ideas about what we can do in the future together as we work with schools and community leaders and with researchers from all corners of the campus.
“We’re looking to make an impact not just on people’s academic careers, but on the real lives of citizens of the communities that we live in,” says Lindgren. “Our success will be measured by how much impact we are having in those communities. And I believe the potential there is quite high.”
Thinking Hands
How Gesturing Can Help Us Understand Difficult Concepts
BY TOM HANLON
Perry
Lindgren
Morphew
Flanagan
Beilstein
Whether you know it or not, you use statistical reasoning every day to make decisions. You consider the consequences of not using your seatbelt, of asking for a raise, of taking risks.
But studies show that many people have serious misconceptions about probability and statistics. Those misconceptions can lead to poor decisions or missed opportunities.
A team of researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Purdue University has just embarked on a three-year study to evaluate the impact on learning statistics in a video-learning environment that encourages students to produce hand gestures.
Michelle Perry, professor in Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois, is one of the core members of the team that is headed by College of Education alumnus Jason Morphew.
Morphew, principal investigator for the project and an assistant professor of Engineering Education at Purdue, earned his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois. Other core members include Karle Flanagan, Ph.D. ’22 C&I, a teaching associate professor in Illinois’ Department of Statistics, and Shereen Beilstein, Ph.D. ’19 EPSY, a research specialist for the Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative.
The project will evaluate an approach to designing video learning environments for teaching statistics concepts. Those environments will use gestures during instruction and cue learners to perform gestures.
Students in the study will include both undergraduates and high school students from Illinois and Indiana. Some of the undergraduates will be STEM-focused; others will not.
“
In normal face-to-face interaction, we use our hands to communicate. The hands provide the observer with crucial information. A teacher can glean what a student is understanding if they’re paying attention to what’s coming out of the hands, because it can provide different information from what is conveyed in speech.”
– Perry
Bridging the Gap Between Divergent Special Education Fields
BY TOM HANLON
Mason
This proposed framework can benefit all involved: special education researchers, teachers, teacher educators, and students with disabilities.
If Erica Mason hadn’t chosen to go into the field of special education, she likely could have carved out a solid career as a mediator, negotiator, or diplomat.
That’s what Mason, an assistant professor in the Department of Special Education, is aiming to do by bringing together two divergent views in special education.
“Traditional Special Education was formalized in 1975, when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act became law,” Mason says. “Disability Studies in Education broke off from Traditional Special Education, and there’s always been this divide between these two entities,” she explains. “Traditional Special Education almost always houses the teacher licensure side of things, whereas Disability Studies in Education deals with the more conceptual or theoretical landscape.”
But Mason and her coauthor, Katherine Lewis from the University of Washington, are trying to bridge the gap. They recently published a paper, “Critical Special Education: Navigating Special Education Realities and Working Toward the Ideals of Disability Studies in Education,” in the journal Exceptional Children. They explore the two perspectives and propose an alternative Critical Special Education framework that leverages the best of both existing special education structures to reduce harm, creating more just and humanizing education for students with disabilities.
Mason and Lewis didn’t invent the term “Critical Special Education,” but they are reviving it, Mason says. “We have given it a little different meaning, because before it was on a more personal or individual level,” she says.
“We’re saying that as a teacher educator or a person in a department, if you’re looking for a way to coexist both in the institutional space you’re in and as an institutional change agent, then Critical Special Education gives you a language to do that.”
It’s important, Mason says, to examine the structures that can harm students and teachers. She points out that to qualify for services in special education, a student needs to be given a disability label, which can be stigmatizing. Yet, without the label, they don’t get the services.
Despite the differences, Mason says, the two fields have the same ultimate goals and concerns about educating children with disabilities. “We’re hoping our framework can start more dialogue on the path to finding creative solutions,” she says.
Computer Science Teachers May Be Better Qualified Than Their Peers
BY SHARITA FORREST, ILLINOIS NEWS BUREAU
Bruno
Educators and researchers have had longstanding concerns about the quality of computer science instruction in U.S. schools.
Paul Bruno, assistant professor in Education Policy, Organization & Leadership, analyzed North Carolina’s statewide data on computer science teachers and assessed student learning in terms of their scores on advanced placement tests for the school years from 2006-07 to 2017-18. The data suggested that student learning, in terms of the ratio of pupils taking advanced placement exams in computer science and their exam scores, was not significantly affected if teachers were not licensed in computer science specifically. However, teachers’ experience in the classroom and their experience teaching computer science each had a positive impact.
“The policy conversation has focused heavily on having schools teach ever-growing numbers of computer science courses,” Bruno says. “We haven’t focused nearly as much on how to staff those courses with qualified teachers.”
The findings―published in the journal Computer Science Education―could help allay concerns about student learning and computer science teachers’ credentials. Bruno says the research provides some of the most detailed information to date about computer science teachers’ qualifications and the factors that appear to matter most in ensuring high-quality learning experiences for students.
Across the study, Bruno found that 67% of the computer science courses in North Carolina high schools were taught by individuals who were licensed in business and information technology education, suggesting that computer science courses rely heavily on career technical/vocational education teachers. When computer science instructors had an additional year of experience teaching that subject, their students were more likely to take the advanced placement exam, and they also scored slightly higher. Computer science courses are also more likely than all other subjects to be taught by teachers with graduate degrees and to be led by those with national board certification, according to the study.
“Given how important we know teachers are for student success, I hope policymakers and school leaders are thinking carefully about how to get great teachers into computer science classrooms,” says Bruno. “There could be potential guidance for them from these results.”
Valdiviejas Cohn
Ruedas-Garcia
Xia
How Do Racial Aggressions Impact Academic Coping?
When Black and Latine students at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) encounter negative intellectual stereotypes and racial aggressions, what does the “Twice-As” academic coping phenomenon look like—and should it persist? Hannah Valdiviejas Cohn, Ph.D. ’23 EPSY, Nidia Ruedas-Garcia and Yan Xia, Educational Psychology, recently published the findings of their quantitative research on this topic in a special issue of Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines.
In their paper, they explore how stereotypes about intellectual inferiority may provoke a response characterized by resilience—where students are compelled to work harder and achieve even greater success to disprove these stereotypes—and the measurement of that specific form of academic coping to racial aggressions. The team studied 100 STEM graduate students who identify as Black and/or Latine and explain the process of validating a scale using a QuantCrit paradigm to measure the academic coping that these students engaged in to manage or ameliorate stereotypes about their intellectual inferiority.
The team’s identification of their coined “Twice-As” phenomenon could be an important piece to genuinely understanding all that Black and Latine students must sift through at PWIs and the real and potentially devastating impacts of subtle, discrete, and often overlooked forms of modern racism.
Ratner
Young Adults Juggle Conflicting Pressures to Hurry Up and Wait
Some of the angst felt by today’s young adults may be caused by conflicting pressures that rush their maturation while hindering their independence, along with eroding beliefs that the great jobs and trappings of adult success are attainable, says Kaylin Ratner, assistant professor in Educational Psychology.
“Historically, we’ve done a really good job isolating issues related to youth distress,” she says.
“But how has the world that we’ve built both expedited, supported, and sometimes thwarted young people’s developmental pace?” The Center for Social and Behavioral Sciences at Illinois awarded funding to Ratner to continue the work, which will identify unknown sources of hurries and waits, capture lived experiences and create a scale for quantifying developmental anxiety.
Connor
3K+
participants in EITP training events in 2024
Ensuring High Quality Supports for Early Intervention Families in Illinois
Every day, thousands of early intervention professionals across Illinois visit families to offer services for children from birth through age three. The Early Intervention Training Program (EITP) provides the training, support, and resources that early intervention professionals need to excel.
“We also collect data and conduct research and publish articles. We have team members who have authored books. So, we not only use evidence-based information to inform our work; we also create that evidence,” says EITP Director Susan Connor. “We provide ongoing technical assistance and expertise, mentorship for folks in the field, and more. We don’t have a huge team, but we push each other to grow and change as the field grows and changes.”
SELECT FUNDING BRIEFS
Toliver
Martinez Negrette
Driscoll
Filkins
Developing the Illinois Comprehensive Literacy Plan
Faculty members in C&I Stephanie Toliver (PI), Giselle Martinez Negrette, Kristen Driscoll, and Scott Filkins have been awarded $1M over FY25 and FY26 from the Illinois State Board of Education for work on the Illinois Comprehensive Literacy Plan. The team is developing a mircocredential series aligned with the ICLP, creating an in-person literacy academy, curating instructional resources and more.
Pak
Baber
Hood
Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards
EPOL faculty members Yoon Pak (PI), Lorenzo Baber, and Denice Hood have been awarded $600K from the Illinois State Board of Education to develop and provide deep-dive professional development for Illinois K-12 administrators on Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards. The group envisions their PD work involving a “community of practice” approach where continuous improvement learning opportunities are provided.
Connor
Ostrosky
Early Intervention Training Program (EITP) Investment Renewed
Susan Connor (PI), SPED, and her EITP team have received a $2.27M grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services to continue providing early intervention personnel development to practitioners that is regionalized, responsive, and reflective of evidence-based practices. EITP training serves to strengthen and sustain Illinois’ early intervention workforce to provide meaningful outcomes for children and families.
D'Angelo
STEM Learning Challenges of Adults with Type 1 Diabetes
Cynthia D’Angelo (PI), C&I, EPSY, was recently awarded $1.2M from the National Science Foundation for Understanding and Addressing the Complex STEM Learning Challenges of Adults with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D). Her work will investigate the myriad learning variables and develop analytical tools for improved decision making for people with T1D during exercise and physical activity.
Wilson
Strengthening Inclusive, Inquiry-Based Social Studies Standards
The Illinois State Board of Education has renewed funding in the amount of $250K for FY26 for Asif Wilson (PI) C&I to continue improving professional learning and preparation for Illinois K-12 social studies teachers to achieve revised state standards and inclusive American history mandates.
Allen
Sentence Writing Intervention for Young Struggling Writers
Abigail Allen (PI) SPED, is currently working on a project with $190K funding from the U.S. Department of Education (IES project type development and innovation) to directly address the long-term outcome of developing effective tools and strategies to improve writing outcomes for students with or at risk for learning disabilities in writing in the early elementary grades.
Hood
Harnessing Community, Software, and AI in STEM
Former CREA Director Denice Hood was awarded $102K from the Argonne National Laboratory to assess the current state of team-based software in scientific computing, with emphasis on emerging AI technologies and the needs of transdisciplinary research. The project will characterize key roles and factors that contribute to the success of scientific software development teams and user communities.
Bertrand Jones
Cultivating Evaluation Leadership Through Times of Urgency
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded $246K to the Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA), Director Tamara Bertrand Jones (PI). The center seeks to strengthen collective capacity for equity-driven evaluation through convenings, network weaving, and field-facing products.