Educational psychology student, Kasey Michel, received honorable mention from the National Science Foundation for her proposed project. She is in the psychological foundations of education program, specifically in the learning and cognition track.

Kasey is interested in scaffolding knowledge formation, which requires an understanding of where learners are coming from and what support is needed to help improve learning. Kasey currently works with Dr. Sashank Varma exploring potential value of spatial representations of algebraic formulae in order to understand mathematical proofs. She also works with Dr. Panayiota (Pani) Kendeou analyzing mother’s arguments for and against vaccination.
The project that she proposed teaches neuroscience to young learners in an effort to provide them with an accessible introduction to scientific study that addresses what it biologically means to be a “learner” and provide early justification for adopting an adaptive growth mindset. This project is based on a proposed partnership between students in the cognitive and neural sciences and local elementary schools. However, this dynamic of the project is not yet in place. Dr. Sashank Varma and Kasey hope to begin work on this project in fall 2016.