Tara-Marie D
- Research Program Mentor
PhD at University of Southern California (USC)
Expertise
Education, Public Policy, Racial Inequality
Bio
I recently earned my PhD in Urban Education Policy at the University of Southern California. My research areas of interest exist at the intersection of education equity, math education, and culturally relevant pedagogy. I view schooling through a lens of social justice, and my research uses qualitative and quantitative methods to study educational policies. I am most interested in racial inequities as well as the experiences teachers and students of color have in math classrooms. Before pursuing my doctorate, I studied psychology and education at Duke University. During my time there, I had opportunities to mentor high school students, volunteer in local classrooms, and was able to work and study abroad with students in Kenya and India. I also have served as a math teacher and after-school instructor for a non-profit organization. Following my time at Duke, I became an 8th grade math teacher in Brooklyn, NY.Project ideas
Unsatisfactory Education Experiences
In this project, we would learn more about the factors that lead to students having unsatisfactory educational experiences and/or academic outcomes. We would work together to create interview and/or survey questions on what aspects of their educational experiences led to these outcomes. We would also seek to understand what interventions or tools could be put in place to create more favorable experiences and/or academic outcomes.
Predictors of Academic Success
Numerous data sets exist related to how students from different backgrounds (racial, gender, income etc.) perform on standard metrics of academic success (test scores, graduation rates etc.). Depending on the area of interest, we would work with the data set to determine how various student characteristics can predict certain outcomes as well as how different variables interact.