Spring 2024: Beliefs, Emotions, and Attitudes about Mathematics throughout Development

Affiliations:	STEM EDUCATION Research Leadership
Project Leader:	Connie Barroso Garcia, Faculty Member cbarroso@tamu.edu Educational Psychology

Meeting Times:	TBD
Team Size:	3
Open Spots:	3
Special Opportunities:	Potential to present research at university research conference
Team Needs:	For the spring semester, we are looking specifically for a Mandarin Chinese speaking student with availability to run online data collection with participants living in China (Monday-Friday morning 4-6am and/or Friday-Saturday 7-10pm). Our research assistants also need to have: • Reliable access to a laptop or desktop computer with internet connection, headphones, video/audio and capabilities, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams • Commitment and accountability to a regular weekly schedule of 3-9 hours each week • Motivation and interest in developmental psychology and education research. Preferred: • Availability between 5-7:30pm for after-school online data collection; • Undergraduate students majoring in Psychology or Education with related career goals; • Available to do hours for at least two semesters in the lab.
Description:	In this lab, we conduct research projects investigating the emotions, beliefs, and attitudes that children, adolescents, and young adults have about mathematics. Most of our main lab activities and tasks occur online through Microsoft Teams and Zoom, but there are also some in-person components. Research assistants work on ongoing research studies in the lab. Our current and upcoming studies and projects consist of: • Online study to understand the link between 4th-8th grade U.S. student’s math anxiety and their inclination to process ambiguous mathematics stimuli as threatening; • Meta-analysis project coding data from research articles that aims to understand how beliefs about the malleability of intelligence are measured; • Online study to investigate Chinese elementary school student’s nonsymbolic ratio processing; • In-person study to investigate the link between U.S. college students’ nonsymbolic ratio processing and math anxiety; • Development of and recruitment for a Child & Adolescent Research Registry through the School of Education and Human Development; • All lab members complete CITI program certification to collect data from human research subjects. Overall, undergraduate students will have the opportunity to: • collect data for research studies (online and in person) • recruit participants for research studies at local events and businesses (in person); • use a research database to search for research articles; • read research articles on math-related learning and affect; • learn about educational and developmental psychology research; • translate research results and create infographics to disseminate findings; • attend meetings to discuss project updates and other related topics (mostly virtual, a few in person on campus in Harrington Tower). • get research credit (EPSY designation), volunteer hours, or work study.