My mentoring philosophy is to attend to the individual’s needs to support students in working towards their intellectual and career goals. I aim to create an inclusive, caring, and supportive environment where each student feels empowered to explore new avenues in STEM education.

During the summer, hands-on activities will consist of the following: twice weekly in-person meetings with the research team, including students and faculty; Ongoing practice with data analysis in work sessions; Reading of relevant background literature to become familiar with the larger intellectual field; and consistent feedback on ongoing data analysis and writing. We are seeking a motivated and independent student interested in STEM education and curious to explore STEM education research.

Dr. Barth-Cohen’s research focuses on student learning in science and she works to translate that research in ways that can be useful to K-12 teachers. She studies student learning of the often-difficult concepts in science that are foundational to the scientific enterprise and central to science education. In her research, she designs and implements learning environments aiming to scaffold such conceptual learning, video tapes the instruction, and then conducts qualitative video analysis on changes to learners conceptual understanding over time. Her approach to learning focuses on characterizing learners’ knowledge system over time, and she concentrate on contexts where they are engaged in a variety of knowledge building practices that are similar to the practices of professional science and central to reform-based science education efforts (e.g. developing and using scientific modeling, analyzing and interpreting data, and engaging in argument from evidence). One ongoing project focuses on undergraduate students in reformed-based physics that are engaged in sensemaking about the process of collecting and analyzing data (National Science Foundation DUE-IUSE, #1938721). Another project examines how learners come to generate scientific observations that can function as evidence in a field geology setting (National Science Foundation, EHR Core Research, #2201764).