Teacher Education

1. BRILLANTE (Bilingual/Responsive Instruction for Language Learners And New Teachers/Educators) program aims to develop and implement a Grow Your Own (GYO) pre-service teacher preparation program that will recruit and support 80 undergraduate bilingual scholars and 135 future bilingual pre/in-service educators to teach English Learners (ELs) on the Central Coast of California. The BRILLANTE program aims to provide essential financial, academic, and social support for undergraduate scholars, pre-service teacher residents, and in-service educators pursuing a Bilingual Authorization in Spanish. Co-PI, $3.4M, 2024-2029. Project website: calpoly-brillante.org 

2. Teaching for Inclusivity and Equity Residency (TIER). Co-PI on a $2.1M Teacher Quality Partnership grant from the U.S. Department of Education (2019-2024).  Housed at the School of Education, we will recruit and train 44 new teachers in the areas of special education and bilingual education in our partnership districts.  Website LINK.

3. Fostering a mutual support network among aspiring and early career teachers of color. Funded by Spencer Foundation (2022-2027), $50K, co-PI with Dr. Amanda Frye (PI).  Our research question: How does participation in a mutual support network for teachers of color shape the experiences of aspiring teachers during their undergraduate years, teacher credentialing and/or master's degree programs, as they begin their careers as teachers?

4. Building an anti-racist community of practice among current and future elementary school teachers in San Luis Obispo. Funded by Research, Scholarly and Creative Activities (RSCA) Grant Program at Cal Poly (2022-2023), $18K, co-PI with Dr. Amanda Frye (PI). [Project completed in 2023]

Science Education / Data Sciences / Machine Learning

5. Raciolinguistic Innovations harness the creative power of language and literacies, and intersectional analysis for innovation and discovery within the field of data sciences, especially in the area of AI-enabled educational technologies used in K-16 settings.  Supported by AI CIRCLS Project Incubator 2022.

• Article: "Can AI be racist? Color-evasiveness in the application of machine learning to science assessments" in Science Education (2021). LINK

6. Data Sciences for Social Justice is part of a Cal Poly initiative that embraces the vision of 'Data for Good. Data for All." More about this work can be found here https://tinyurl.com/Data4SocialJustice or LINK 

• Presentation at American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), annual conference in Minneapolis, June 28, 2022.

7. Livestreaming Wildlife to Promote Coexistence with PI Dr. Emily Taylor (Biology). Funded by Cal Poly Center for Expressive Technologies (College of Liberal Arts) for $3900. (2022-2023). Co-PI/consultant.

Student Activism / Student Parents 

8. Multi-generational outcomes and returns on investments for student parents in public colleges and universities in California. I will serve as the PI for this research (Funding from the Center for California Studies, Sacramento State, $20,000

9.  Student Activism in Higher Education. Along with colleagues from University of Pennsylvania and Villanova University, our co-edited themed issue for the Peabody Journal of Education (volume 97, issue 5) in how student activists serve as political actors on campuses organize and fight for lasting institutional changes while promote social justice values. I served as a co-editor for this special issue.

10. #StudentParentJoy is a media and policy research program is redefining what it means to be a student parent. This work is part of a state-wide movement centering the expressions of joy, resilience, and persistence of student parents, paralleled with action research that fights for the resources and supports to help #CSUStudentParents succeed.  I am the PI of this project. Funded by Diversity Cluster Hire Funds & 20MM, and Cal Poly BEACoN, and a $55K gift fund from Imaginable Futures.

• The Invisible Women: Student parents and the COVID-19 pandemic (2021). LINK

• #StudentParent blog post for IWPR by student advisee: "Breaking barriers, increasing visibility for student with children" (2021). LINK

Prior Research (before 2019)

Opportunities for Disciplinary Literacy and Language Development in Science Classrooms

Stanford University, PI: Tina Cheuk. (2017 to 2019)

This cross-case study provides an in-depth examination of literacy and language development practices—ways teachers afford students opportunities to read, write, discuss, and make-meaning with written and symbolic representations of language and ideas as texts—across three science classrooms. These descriptions of how teachers are creating literacy and language-related learning opportunities in these science classrooms can serve as a baseline in our knowledge, practice, and theory building as to how teachers are approaching these practices in the current policy context.

Applying Automated Analysis to a Learning Progression for Argumentation (ArguLex)

Stanford University (Jonathan Osborne), Michigan State University (Mark Urban-Lurain), and BSCS (PI Chris Wilson), (2018-2021). Role: research assistant (Stanford), consultant (Cal Poly)

This project applies lexical analysis and machine learning technologies to develop an efficient, valid, reliable and automated measure of middle school students' abilities to engage in scientific argumentation.

My responsibilities:

• Develop argumentation items and rubrics in science argumentation.

• Minimize language bias in item development and student responses.

• Recruit middle school science teachers for pilot testing and ensure quality data collection processes in the field.

Exploratory Investigation of Language and Literacy Demands in San Francisco Unified Middle School Science Curriculum

Stanford University, PI: Guillermo Solano-Flores, (2017, spring). Role: research assistant (Stanford)

This research aimed to identify aspects of socialization and communication that are critical for curriculum developers and teachers to address in order to ensure ELs’ access to science. Through classroom observations and an analysis of instructional artifacts, we found that ELs can be better supported to learn both science content and language through increased social participation in the classroom.

My responsibilities:

• Developed an analysis protocol used to process classroom observation notes and artifacts collected.

• Developed consensus mechanisms for norming analysis processes.

• Contributed to final report-writing.

Early Implementation of New Science Standards in San Francisco Unified School District

Stanford University, PIs: Tina Cheuk (2015-2017). Co-advised by Janet Carlson and Jonathan Osborne. Funded by San Francisco Unified-Stanford GSE Partnership Fund.

This study examined elementary and high schools' science teachers' perceptions of the new standards and how they made sense of the instructional changes and supports available during the transition to new science standards.

My responsibilities:

• Two years of field notes, interviews, and observations with elementary and high school science teacher (leaders) as they transitioned toward NGSS.

Professional Learning Communities to Support English Language Learners' Achievement

Oakland Unified School District and Stanford University, PI: Kenji Hakuta. (2016-2017), Role: research assistant (Stanford)

This research partnership with Oakland Unified supported capacity building efforts to a cohort of elementary school leaders with high ELL student populations.

Secondary Schools Accelerating Achievement for English Language Learners in Alignment to College, Career, and Community Readiness Standards

Stanford University, PIs: Kenji Hakuta and Maria Santos, (2013-2015). Role: project manager (Understanding Language) and research assistant (Stanford)

Tools for Sense-making in Mathematics

SERP Institute (Phil Daro), University of California, Berkeley (Alan Schoenfeld), & San Francisco Unified School District, (2008-2011), Role: assistant director (SERP Institute) 

Reading to Learn in Science

SERP Institute (Suzanne Donovan) & Stanford University (Jonathan Osborne), (2009-2011). Role: assistant director (SERP Institute) 

Learning Progressions and Argumentation in Middle School Science Classrooms

SERP Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University & San Francisco Unified School District, & SERP Institute, PIs: Mark Wilson and Jonathan Osborne, (2008-2011). Role: assistant director (SERP Institute) 

Word Generation Randomized Control Trial 

SERP Institute, Harvard University, & San Francisco Unified School District, PIs: Suzanne Donovan and Catherine Snow, (2009-2011). Role: assistant director (SERP Institute) 

WordSift Beta Trials

SERP Institute, Stanford University & San Francisco Unified School District, PI: Kenji Hakuta, (2008-2010). Role: assistant director (SERP Institute) 

Adolescent Literacy Development and Online Learning Communities

University of Chicago, Ohio State University, & University of Illinois at Chicago, PIs: Anthony Bryk and Louis Gomez, (2005-2006). Role: research assistant (University of Chicago)