Department of
Educational Psychology
A Message From Our Chair
Thank you for your interest in the Department of Educational Psychology at UIC. We are internationally known for our rigorous degree programs, esteemed faculty, and commitment to urban education and test fairness. Our work focuses on understanding how children’s ethnicity, culture, class, and gender impact their development and learning, and we are dedicated to developing and applying fair approaches of measurement, statistics, and evaluation to support such efforts.
Our research is guided by our commitment to understand what it means to be both a teacher and a learner in an urban context such as Chicago. We research how children’s homes, schools, and communities along with media contribute to their learning in various collaborative instructional and play activities. We seek to understand how children construct notions of morality, fairness, and gender, and how they develop resilience in the face of enduring economical difficulties. As part of this endeavor, we seek to contribute to basic scientific understanding of cognition and cognitive development. We strive to advance knowledge in research methodology in order to address our research questions in a fair manner.
Our research and work in Chicago Public Schools and in Chicago communities inform our doctoral and Master’s programs. We prepare university professors, youth development practitioners and leaders, early childhood teachers, and quantitative and assessment specialists, all of whom contribute to our efforts in advancing and disseminating knowledge about how to improve the educational experiences of students of different ages.
I hope you will take a few minutes to explore our website to learn more about our department, faculty, and programs. Please don’t hesitate to contact us should you have any questions.
Kimberly Lawless, Chair, Department of Educational Psychology