Impact In The World

Education for the twenty-first century.
The Department of Educational Psychology at Illinois is producing the kind of high quality scholarship that influences educational practice and advances the fields of educational research. Our researchers tackle complex social problems that are not solvable through the conceptual or methodological resources of a single discipline. Our broadly based and individually tailored programs of study encourage students to solve theoretical and practical problems in education.

Illinois Expert on Bullying in Schools Advises Japan and Korea

Dr. Dorothy Espelage will be a guest of the US Embassy and will visit Japan and South Korea from February 12-24, 2008 to help with bullying problems and what school guidance counselors can do to help. She will be speaking to government officials, journalists, and business people on the topic. Read More...

Helping Chinese Children Learn to Read

Dr. Richard Anderson has led a research project at Illinois since the early 1990s on the process and psychology of learning to read Chinese. He also is the director of the Center for the Study of Reading at Illinois.  read more...

Guidance for Israel's "City Without Violence" Program

Dr. Dorothy Espelage will consult with the Mayor, Mr. Meir Itshak Halevi, and the leading team of "Eilat: A City Without Violence" in Israel on December 27, 2007. She will also be presenting "Applying a Social-Ecological Perspective to Community- and School-Based Violence" at Ben-Gurion University of the Negav on December 28, 2007.

Promoting High Quality Social Science

Thomas A. Schwandt is a member of the Standing Committee on Social Science Evidence for Use for the National Academies, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. This interdisciplinary group is charged with identifying actions aimed at promoting high quality social science with an eye toward evidence-informed decision-making.

Shaping Higher Education in Sweden

Dr. Jennifer Greene is serving on the International Evaluation Advisory Panel for the Swedish Department of Higher Education.

Collaboration With Leading Chinese Testing Company

Signing of the contractEdPsych faculty and students have taken leading roles in work with the Tianjin Municipal Educational Admission and Examination Authority (TAEA), one of the best testing companies in China. A May 2006 visit by a TAEA delegation to Champaign, where they signed a contract for UIUC to provide certified training to testing professionals in China, was followed in December by a trip to China by a UIUC delegation led by Hua-Hua Chang (Queries faculty), Lizanne Destefano (Queries faculty) and Larry Hubert (Dept. of Psychology faculty), and including Hongling Sun (Queries). The UIUC group visited TAEA and successfully conducted a joint Psychometric and Evaluation workshop in Tianjin, attended by about 130 testing professionals. Dr. Chang notes that “clearly, there is a potential market for doing certified training in China.”

AEA is responsible for the development and administration of assessments designed for many educational purposes (e.g., entrance examinations for High School and Universities, achievement tests, language proficiency tests). The municipality served by TAEA has over 10 million residents and TAEA has the prospect of networking with similarly large municipalities in P.R. China.

Bully-prevention options for schools too narrow and untested

In the battle against drugs in the 1980s and ‘90s, schools overwhelmingly embraced the DARE program before research came to seriously question its effectiveness. Now schools looking for anti-bully programs risk following a similar trend.  Get the story here...