Features

Two ongoing partnerships between Puget Sound area school districts and University of Washington College of Education researchers are being extended with support from two new grants from the Spencer Foundation.

As a high school student in South Korea, University of Washington College of Education PhD student Soo-Yean Shim was already imagining alternative approaches to make science classes engaging for all students.

Her inspiration came during a transformative experience in which she joined a genetics research team at a local university. In helping the team collect data, Shim found herself making sense of the world using resources and experimental data that she had gathered herself.

A few weeks into her new job training teen volunteers at Pacific Science Center how to take up issues of equity and social justice in their work, Pilar Letrondo noticed something concerning mid-way through a session she was leading on identity.

"All the white kids sat on one side of the table and all of the non-white kids sat on the other," she said. "[I] realized that I needed to address the seating situation.”

It was a striking example of how physical spaces can impact teaching and learning, and even more so, the challenge of overcoming bias in educational spaces.

A new study being conducted at the University of Washington's Haring Center for Research and Training in Inclusive Education is examining the relationships between children with special needs and their grandparents—and how to enhance those relations. Xueyan Yang, a doctoral student is special education at the UW College of Education, is using photographs as a social aid to strength the bonds between generations.