The Education Collaboratory at Yale is proud to introduce our 2024 PSYC 493-495 Undergraduate Research Assistants, Adriana Abad Castro, Alyssa Erthum, Christian Thomas, Ava Van Straten, and Perri Hawkins. As a part of our staff spotlight series, we are highlighting their work and what brings them to our team's mission to advance the science of learning and social and emotional development.
Alyssa Erthum
First up is Alyssa Erthum. Alyssa’s role in the lab is two-fold. First, she is contributing to the SELOC Project (Social and Emotional Learning Observation Checklist). Through this research training, she will gain experience reviewing and coding qualitative data from elementary classroom observations based on a teacher’s use of social-emotional language, skills, and tasks. Secondly, she contributes to the living systematic review of universal school-based implementation of SEL in classrooms. She is excited to contribute to two projects that advance how social and emotional learning implementation in classrooms nationwide.
Alyssa’s interests lay in developmental psychology and the direct impact of intentional teaching and curriculum on cognitive and emotional growth. For her, observing how teachers shape the way students interact with their own emotions contributes to her drive to continue this research. Peripherally, she is also interested in SEL programs located in rural educational systems, where resources to support these programs may be sparse. Growing up in a small town in Nebraska, she feels called to be responsive to research that may benefit communities like the one she calls home.
What brought you to SEL, education and/or psychology?
I am amazed by the brain’s flexibility; both in how it is adaptive to the perceived world and how evidence-based practices can mend maladaptive behaviors stemming from the brain. I enjoy how my own educational journey at Yale has helped reflect on both topics within the practical application of education systems today. After completing a research presentation on SEL for my colloquium course in the intensive educational studies scholar program, I decided I wanted to investigate further in what SEL frameworks look like in a country where education is very decentralized yet front in center of American policy reform.
Alyssa
"Being in the northeast has allowed me incredible opportunities to explore nature (like the parts of the Appalachian Trail in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont!). I love spending time outdoors, especially when I can take a week to go backpacking with friends."
Perri Hawkins
Next up is Perri Hawkins. Perri is contributing to Project Flourish! Her primary tasks include coding school observations and adding correct descriptors to different entries from the observations of assessment implementation by SEL specialists. She looks forward to working with the team on assessing the hereby collected data and is excited to be a part of this project!
Perri is not only a psychology major but also a proud member of the Yale Education Studies program. While she has interests in psychology that are separate from her interests in education, she primarily likes to draw from the two disciplines in tandem because they compliment each other. SEL in schools is important to her in that regard because she believes emotional education is a big stepping stone to success that most schools do not tap into for a very wide variety of reasons. Perri thinks that we hold adolescents to impossible expectations when it comes to emotional intelligence, yet there are limited attempts to support adolescents to build skills meaningfully; SEL could be the way to help them out.
What line of research do you find the most interesting/intriguing in the field right now?
I personally am intrigued by the aspect of SEL research that investigates its impact across marginalized populations. As is the case with many programs, SEL as a field was first created within a model that centered on White, able-bodied individuals and experiences. Looking into how curriculum can be evolved and made more accessible to have the most positive impact on populations outside of that narrow definition is interesting and important to me.
Perri
Ava Van Straten
Ava has been with the lab since the fall of 2022. In her role, she has focused on the Social and Emotional Learning Observation Checklist for Elementary Schools (SELOC-E) project, specializing in reviewing and coding videos to identify effective SEL teaching pedagogies throughout the data compiled from classrooms nationwide. Additionally, she works on communicating the lab's work for educational decision-makers by designing materials that share the findings in ways accessible to teachers, students, and school leaders.
What brought you to SEL, education and/or psychology?
Throughout my academic journey, I have been drawn to psychology, particularly student learning. I strive to understand how children socialize and grow in their social and emotional intelligence. When I was in high school, I authored and published two children’s books and associated curricula on SEL topics. I have long felt that while schools traditionally offer science along with math, language arts, and the other U.S. educational standards called the “Common Core,” students will greatly benefit from the “Common More” -- important lessons in kindness, empathy, inclusion, goal setting, etc. This passion is what brought me to Yale, the birthplace of SEL, its famed Child Study Center, and now the Education Collaboratory.
Ava
What line of research do you find the most interesting/intriguing in the field right now?
"I am most interested in the work being accomplished by the SELOC-E project and the idea of isolating and analyzing specific teaching pedagogies in the classroom to enhance effective social and emotional development. It is interesting to observe how teachers can bring social and emotional learning implicitly into an educational environment in collaboration with traditional academic core subjects. I am also fascinated by the emotional health of children, in general, and feel drawn to the area in their advocacy, in the health arena, legally, or otherwise. Towards this end, I interned at the Department of Justice, Criminal Division in their Child Exploitation and Obscenity section to learn about the legal proceedings behind these cases and protecting children’s mental health and security."
Christian Thomas
Christian contributes to the Education Collaboratory by helping to review rigorous, relevant, and intellectually nuanced studies that support a more complete and comprehensive articulation of the science of learning and social and emotional development. As a start to his new position, he has been focused on reviewing the past literature of the lab and literature on SEL in general.
Christian is particularly intrigued by the diverse approaches to SEL across various educational institutions. He appreciates that all schools adopt their own unique framework, influenced by factors such as community values, administrative priorities, and the specific needs of their student populations.
For example, some schools integrate SEL into their curriculum through structured programs, while others adopt a more informal, holistic approach that weaves emotional intelligence into daily interactions and classroom management. This makes analyzing meta-analytic data so exciting!
Christian
What brought you to SEL, education and/or psychology?
"The culture wars. As a former public-school student who participated in SEL programming, I am deeply passionate about the impact SEL can have on transforming school environments and encouraging positive emotional development. School is not just about learning; it is also about changing and developing into a human being with complex emotions and learning how to navigate those. I think that SEL is the future of education and the way to build the best possible future for our students."