Justina Judy, a PhD candidate in the Educational Policy program at Michigan State University, has received a dissertation grant from the American Educational Research Association (AERA)
Judy is the second MSU doctoral student this year to earn the prestigious award, which amounts to $20,000 and exclusive professional development experiences with fellow scholars. Each year, hundreds of doctoral candidates conducting research using large-scale, national and international data sets apply for the AERA Grants Program, which is supported by the National Science Foundation.
Judy is studying high school students’ engagement in learning science using data from the national High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 and a NSF-funded study led by Hannah Distinguished Professor Barbara Schneider. That project, a partnership with researchers at University of Helsinki in Finland, used the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) via cell phones provided to students. The students receive regular prompts on their phones that ask them to explore whether they feel skilled, interested or challenged by their experiences in science classes, as well as throughout their day.
Through her dissertation, Judy hopes to uncover some of the contextual (in the moment) characteristics of positive science learning experiences with successful long-term outcomes, such as students choosing to take advances science courses.