How Do You Science | Meet an Educational Psychologist

Welcome back, young scientists. I’m Dr. Universe.  If you’re anything like me, you’ve got lots of big questions about our world.
 
Today we're talking about learning with Kira Carbonneau, an educational psychologist at Washington State University. 

• Find out what educational psychologist is and how Dr. Carbonneau became one
• Learn the difference between quantitative research and qualitative research
• Hear Dr. Carbonneau's advice for being a good learner—and what it has to do with the movie Sing

Resources You Can Use

• See the What Works Clearinghouse yourself
• Check out what Dr. Carbonneau taught me about having a growth mindset

 As always, submit burning questions at askdruniverse.wsu.edu.  Who knows where your questions will take us next.

Transcript

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Dr. Universe

Welcome back, young scientists. I'm Dr. Universe, and if you're anything like me, you've got lots of big questions about our world. 

In this episode, we're going to talk with Kira Carbonneau, an educational psychologist at Washington State University. That's someone who studies how humans learn. If you're heading into a new semester or just love learning, this might be the episode for you. Let's get started.

So, you are an educational psychologist? What does that mean? Can you tell me what educational psychology is?

Kira Carbonneau

Yeah, so in a nutshell, we study how people learn in both formal—meaning classroom settings, on the field, in a library and informal settings like at a museum. So, we study how people interact with objects, which is what I do specifically. But we also study how people interact with tests, how they acquire information and how they learn from multimedia information. 

So, educational psychology is actually a very broad field. And it doesn't really matter where the learning is taking place and how people are interacting with an environment. Educational Psychology has the skill set to research that and come to conclusions based off of questions that they might be asking.

Dr. Universe

Can you give me an example of what it means that you study how people interact with objects? 

Kira Carbonneau

Yeah, in my work specifically, I look at how young children learn from different objects in mathematics. Oftentimes, in mathematics, very formal learning environment, they have toy counters that are teddy bears or frogs, or little dots—blocks are a good example. And so I study how different types of objects help students learn different math concepts. So, how do they move them? How do they play a game with them? And does that actually help them understand the mathematics concept behind what the object is supposed to represent?

Dr. Universe

So, do you bring students do your lab? Do you go into classrooms? What is that like?

Kira Carbonneau

Both? The best thing to do for me is to go into a classroom, right? Because that's an authentic environment, and how people interact with objects, or what distracts them from objects, is more authentic in a classroom, in group settings in everyday life. So, I do go into classrooms. I haven't had a chance to do that since COVID, actually, but when I was going into classrooms, I might look at how teachers set up their morning math routine. And how did students interact with popsicle sticks to learn how to bundle and the concept of place value. 

But I also bring people into the lab. I tend not to bring young children into the lab. I actually increase the mathematics concept—for example, the quadratic formula—and I ask undergraduates to learn with manipulatives or concrete objects. And so I have them put together different shapes, and does that help them understand what a quadratic formula actually is—the square of things. So, we can kind of play with how people learn, right? 

Humans are humans. And so we tend to interact—not all of us in the same ways—but there is a common way that we interact with objects or what distracts us or what confuses us. And so I can change the developmental level and look at young children in the classroom and then see, does that hold up for older adults in the lab.

Dr. Universe

I really liked the idea of formal learning and like school or a class versus informal like at a museum. Are both of those things? Good for us? Like, is one way better? Are they both good for us? Do we need all kinds? 

Kira Carbonneau

Personal belief? I think we need all kinds. I think you need all kinds of opportunities. Because when you have those aha moments in the informal settings, I feel sometimes they stick with me longer, right? Maybe I've heard it five times—and I probably needed to hear it five times in a formal setting. But this informal one where I was kind of caught me off guard, that's the one that stuck. I think the more exposures—and maybe that's the word that we need—more exposures in a variety of different ways helps us learn.

Dr. Universe

Did you always know that you wanted to do this work? Like how did you get here?

Kira Carbonneau

My journey to here is probably different than a lot of my colleagues. So, I actually was a classroom teacher. So, I started my undergraduate career, and I really wanted to be in medicine. I thought I would maybe be a chemist or a pharmacist, but I really didn't like those classes all that much. And then I'm not very good with blood. So, cancel that. And so what else is out there? And I fell in love with education, got my undergraduate degree in elementary education with an endorsement in science and mathematics. So, when you go for elementary education, you have to carry certain credentials of being endorsed in a specific area. So, I have science and mathematics as my background. 

And then I went and taught for several years, and I did a really cool program where I took my students for all the way through first grade and then all the way through second grade. It was called the looping program. And in that program, as I was doing that, I had to turn to research. How do I help students get better? How do I help them learn? What happens when they're struggling? How do I change my instruction so that the students are getting the best educational experience that they can? And so, I kind of fell in love with research there. I didn't know it at that moment yet. I thought that I should go be a principal. 

And so, I got my master's in educational leadership and kind of figured out what it meant to be a principal. And I realized that maybe that wasn't for me. You actually step away from curriculum a lot. You step away from classroom. You step away from research. And so instead of being like a master teacher, right, you really are working on logistics and policy and budgets and, unfortunately, some disciplinary actions. 

So, I did my research, and I figured out that, "Oh, there's this thing called educational psychology." And being a teacher, I did not know what that was. I did have one or two classes that were titled educational psychology when I was getting credentialed, but I didn't really know what that meant. And so, I applied to the Ph. D. program, and I got accepted. And then a whole new world opened up to me—of what it means to be a researcher, skill sets that I had never even heard of like statistics, quantitative research and qualitative research. 

And so, really, a world that I didn't know existed as I grew up, was opened up, and I found myself, and I found a place for me and the things that I wanted to do and the ways that I wanted to help education. And so, I became an educational psychologist trying to study the best approaches to help people learn. 

Dr. Universe

And so, the goal is to figure out what actually works to help people learn in a classroom or a museum? Then the people in charge of those things can use that information?

Kira Carbonneau

Absolutely. That is especially my ultimate goal. It's to make sure what I'm doing ends up in the classroom. And actually what you just said, "what works," right? we actually have a What Works Clearinghouse that's sponsored by the federal government, that a lot of people don't know exists, where a lot of this research is uploaded. And you can just Google it—What Works Clearinghouse for education—and it gives you lists of strategies and ways to work with students to help them learn, what's been shown to be really effective. And what doesn't have the evidence quite yet to be effective. 

Some things show great promise and great efficacy in a lab, right? So, when I'm working one-on-one with a student, I can show great gains by doing some strategies, but when I released that strategy into the classroom, it implodes on itself, and it's not as effective. And so, this clearinghouse of what works helps us decipher what would be the best strategies. So, definitely, the final goal of all of our research, I would say, in educational psychology is to have an impact on the educational environments around us.

Dr. Universe

I love that it's available for everybody to look at, too. Awesome. You mentioned quantitative research, qualitative research and statistics. Can we just really quickly talk about what each of those are?

Kira Carbonneau

Yeah, yeah. So, quantitative research and qualitative research are two different approaches to understanding questions. In quantitative, we often take a step back as an observer, and we use an instrument like an educational test or a survey or an observation tool to help us record things that are happening, right? So, sometimes participants fill out that information. Maybe they'll stare at a computer screen, and we track where their eyes are moving. Maybe they'll fill out the survey. Or it could be like a researcher doing an observation on this specific form. 

But we're really using a tool to collect data, and then use that data to translate those into numbers. And then we use statistics to try to find patterns in those numbers. And that can give us support for or against some of the questions that we have. 

And then on the qualitative side, you as the researcher really become the tool, right? You have a specific positionality and way you will look at the environment. Let's say you're doing a classroom observation or participant interview. And so, you're crafting questions—much like you're doing right now. You're crafting questions on the spot. You're asking probing questions. You're making observations of people's behaviors and the language that they use. And then you use a framework to analyze that data or look for commonalities in people's words or in people's actions or in artifacts like newspaper clippings. But you are the tool as a qualitative researcher, and then you write up your findings. 

And there are many different checks and balances that are put in place in both approaches, but they give you different information about the same question or different questions. They give you different perspectives on what's happening.

Dr. Universe

So, it's a new year, new semester, I'm wondering if you, as a learning expert, have any advice for kids and students who want to start the new semester out strong? What advice do you have for learning? 

Kira Carbonneau

Well, I think it's not necessarily what you do but how you approach what you're doing. You've got to have the right mindset, right? You have to have the willingness to fail. You have to have the willingness to say, "I'm not going to do it perfect all the time." And to set out with a goal of I'm going to get 100% on every single test that I take or I'm going to study for five hours every day—those aren't obtainable goals. So, you have to think about what can actually be done, know that you're gonna mess up on that, and then not give up. So, instead of saying, "For the whole semester, I'm going to do X or for all of third grade, I'm going to do X, take it a couple of weeks at a time. These two weeks I'm going to try to do whatever it is that you want to try to get better at. And set a small, measurable goal. 

But also know that if you mess up during those two weeks, it's okay. And that the best thing you can do is not give up but start again. And be an academic advocate for yourself or an academic risk taker—meaning asking good questions, speaking up when you don't know. It's okay not to understand. And it's okay to say I need to think about this in a different way. So, be an academic risk taker. Raise that hand and keep going. 

Dr. Universe

What about kids that it feels hard to fail? Or to take risks? How do you get over that? How do you teach yourself that it's okay?

Kira Carbonneau

Yeah, I don't know the answer to that question. I honestly don't. I don't know if we'd be able to design a study to even begin to think about it. But—this is for kids who have ever watched Sing. I was just watching Sing with my five year old daughter, right? And then the elephant—I don't remember her name—she has stage fright, right? And the little koala guy, Mr. Moon—I got that one—said, "All you have to do is start singing." And that's really all you have to do. The thing I think most people fail to recognize is that they think it's easier for other people. And that's just false. It's not easier. It's just that they started to sing. For those people who are doing it, they started to sing. They stood up there, and they just did it. So, you got to just tell yourself to do it. 

And it feels horrible. But I think we think that it doesn't feel as horrible for other people. We just have different people who have more confidence, but I don't think it feels any less worse to say, "I'm the person in the classroom that might not know what what's going on." The one thing you might be able to flip in your head is think, "I'm doing this for the five other people who aren't able to do it." And so, if you tell yourself you are being an advocate for other people, does that help? I'm not sure. It'd be a good little experiment to try out. If you're that person sitting out there that says, "This feels really hard, but I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna be brave for the other people out there, who—not that they're not willing—but they're scared of that failure."

Dr. Universe

Yeah, that makes total sense. It is easier, I think, to do things that you feel are helping other people versus helping yourself. Yeah.

Kira Carbonneau

That's how I would trick myself into doing it. So, that's a little strategy. One of the things that I always think about is oftentimes we think that there is one best way to learn. I don't necessarily think that's true. I think that you have to carve out a learning path. You're going to find yourself as a learner and what works best for you. Find yourself.

Dr. Universe

That's all for this episode, friends. Big thanks to Kira Carbonneau at Washington State University. As always, if you've got a science question for me, you can submit it at askdruniverse.wsu.edu. That's a s k d r u n i v e r s e dot w s u dot e d u. 

Who knows where your questions will take us next.