This year, the UI College of Education Department of Teaching and Learning facilitated a competition to spotlight and celebrate its graduate students’ research. Two awardees and two runners-up were chosen for this year’s Department of Teach and Learning Student Research Award. 

The awardees are:

Bing Gao, a literacy, culture, and language education major, whose paper “Acculturation of International Graduate Students in U.S. Higher Education Institutions” focuses on the acculturation experiences of international graduate students enrolled in U.S. institutes of higher education. This paper was published in the Journal of International Students in 2024. 

Alison Warren, a science education major, whose paper “Understanding Critical Elements in Science Generative Learning Environments” reports on the development and validation of an observation protocol that can be used to study the dialogic environment of classrooms. This paper is currently under review.

The awards were presented in Spring 2025 and carry a stipend of $500.

The runners-up were:

Colleen Kollasch, a literacy, culture, and language education major, whose paper “A Critical Discourse Analysis of LGBTQ+ History in an A.P. U.S. History Textbook: Examining Othering and Empowerment” describes a close and critical analysis of LGBTQ+ representation in an A.P. U.S. History textbook. This paper is currently under review.

Li Zhu, a math education major, whose paper “Predictive Insights into U.S. Students’ Mathematics Performance on PISA 2022 Using Ensemble Tree-Based Machine Learning Models” describes the use of three separate machine learning models to identify important predictors of students’ math performance on the Program for International Student Assessment. This paper was published in the International Journal of Educational Research in 2025.