Education Studies

Assistant Professor of Education Studies Alisha Butler will launch a new study exploring the ways that families and young people can (and don’t) influence school and citywide education-related decision-making processes. “How is it that non-system policy actors are attempting to include the decisions that affect what happens day-to-day in school?” Butler said. Butler’s study, a collaborative effort with Kristin Sinclair, Assistant Teaching Professor of Education Advocacy and Policy in the Education Transformation Program at Georgetown University, is funded through a Spencer Foundation Small Grant, a program that supports “rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research that is relevant to the…

Before Ben Levin ’23 was a Wesleyan student, he visited a friend on campus. They ventured into a classroom together to find a student working through a math problem on a chalkboard while blasting punk rock through his headphones. The student then took off his headphones and passionately explained what he was working on. “It felt like I was in a movie scene,” Levin, chosen to speak at Commencement on May 28, said. “I was excited because it was really the first time where I thought ‘this is the kind of person I really want to surround myself with,’ even…

During the 2015-16 school year nearly 10 percent of Connecticut public school children met the criteria for being chronically absent. The disruption COVID-19 wrought on education only exacerbated the problem. The Connecticut State Department of Education launched the Learner Engagement and Attendance Program (LEAP) in April 2021 to help address these issues. In 15 school districts throughout the state, school officials and representatives from local non-profit agencies conducted home visits with almost 9,000 students who were considered chronically absent. School officials often assisted families with food, job placement, or just general support to remove any external barriers to school attendance.…

The first time Anna Shusterman walked into a classroom of Wesleyan undergraduates teaching math games to preschoolers a decade ago, she was surprised by what she saw – happy and deep engagement all around. The students – all of them – were on to something. “They were incredible. I had no idea how good they were,” said Shusterman, professor of psychology and co-chair of the College of Education Studies. Between the joyful (and productive) little ones and the thoughtful efforts of the Wesleyan students, Shusterman realized that there was a need that could be filled. “It turned out to be…

A recent paper co-authored by Anna Shusterman, professor of psychology, shows that for deaf and hard of hearing children, immediate access to language is needed to develop abstract concepts, like numeracy. “Language is important in its own right, but it also serves as the foundation for many other domains, including social and cognitive development,” Shusterman wrote. Shusterman’s study was published in the June issue of the journal Child Development. Shusterman and her colleagues, Rebecca Peretz-Lange ’13 of SUNY Purchase (who wrote her senior thesis on the project), Talia Berkowitz of University of Chicago, and Emily Carrigan of University of North…

While teaching in New York City public and charter schools that served low-income, students of color, Roseann Liu and her fellow educators would frequently purchase basic resources such as paper, books, and classroom manipulatives for their students out of their own pockets. Students learned from outdated textbooks and teachers hungered for professional development opportunities. Teachers and parents alike understood these conditions as the norm. "Having less became natural," said Liu, assistant professor of education studies. "Most students, parents, and teachers were unaware of how sharp the disparities were between underfunded and well-funded schools." As a newly-selected National Academy of Education…

Wesleyan has announced the establishment of a College of Education Studies, along with a new linked major in Education Studies. Rooted in a liberal arts framework, the new College will foster interdisciplinary scholarship of education studies that is connected to practice and policy. It is an opportunity for Wesleyan to integrate serious scholarship with the University’s social justice mission, according to Associate Professors of Psychology Anna Shusterman and Steve Stemler, the co-chairs of the newly formed College. A proposal to establish the College was unanimously endorsed by the Educational Policy Committee (EPC) earlier this year, and was approved by a…

Steve Stemler, associate professor of psychology and co-coordinator of education studies, has spent two decades systematically studying the purposes of school. He is the co-author, together with Dr. Damian Bebell, of The School Mission Statement and maintains the web resource purposeofschool.com. He is the author of an op-ed recently published in The Hartford Courant that provides advice for parents who are now educating their children at home due to coronavirus-related school closures. You’ve done a good deal of research on the purpose of school, a topic on the minds of many parents these days as they’re getting an up-close look at…

Grant to Fund Study on School Decision Making Processes

Student Speaker Levin ’23 Will Miss People at Wesleyan

Research Shows New Program Helps Prevent Chronic Absenteeism

New Program to Improve Preschool Numeracy

New Research Shows Immediate Access to Language Helps Numeracy

Liu Explores Racial Equity in School Funding as NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow

Wesleyan Establishes College of Education Studies

Stemler: Schools’ Mission Statements Can Guide Educators, Homeschooling Parents Amid Social Distancing