Dr. Xiaodong Lin, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, studies the impact of different learning environments, instructional activities, and new media on students’ motivation to learn and solve challenging problems, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related classes. Dr. Lin’s research uses biographical information, or “people knowledge,” to change students’ beliefs about achievement and to help them understand their own feelings about hard work and frustration encountered in school (metacognition). This places her work at the intersection of motivation, metacognition, technology, and STEM education. Dr. Lin has found through her research that learning about the struggles scientists experienced prior to success enhances students’ ability to deal with challenging STEM learning tasks. However, optimum learning benefits from these stories requires students to feel emotionally connected to the scientists and to recognize their own talents and potential to succeed through effort. This research, published in the Journal of Educational Psychology last month, was press released by the American Psychological Association. Since then, stories about Dr. Lin’s work have appeared in over 30 news media globally, including CBS.com News, PBS Kids, Science, New York Times, Quartz magazine, BBC News, Australia Network News, News India, and China’s People’s Daily. Dr. Lin’s work also earned her several awards, including being selected as the Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and receiving the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Early Career and Outstanding Research awards. This year, she was named the Yellow River Scholar by the Chinese government, and she is serving on the expert advisory board of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for the EDUCATION 2030 Initiative from 2015-2020.
