Dr. Jin Sook Lee of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School named to prestigious research project conducted by the American Educational Research Association

Dr. Jin Sook Lee of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School has been chosen to be one of a handful of younger scholars to take part in a national four-year project by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) to explore the future of the Social Context of Education Research. The field of Social Context of Education examines how contextual factors including race, class, and gender influence students’ educational opportunities and achievements. Research in this field explores topics such as: how family income or parental level of education can affect a child’s education; how diversity in the student body can optimize or hinder the learning environment; and, how differences in resources such as the availability of well-trained teachers or school supplies can affect learning. AERA claims the project will (re)imagine and examine critically the concept of “social context of education” within a wide range of education and other scholarly discourses. Dr. Jin Sook Lee and those participating in the research project will conceptualize the scope of the undertaking, collect and analyze data, and write manuscripts for submission to journals and other scholarly venues.

Assistant Professor Lee’s research at the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education focuses on understanding how societal, cultural, and psychological variables influence the way people learn second/foreign languages. After completing her doctorate at Stanford University in 2000, she joined the faculty in the Department of Learning and Teaching in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University where she worked with pre-service and in-service ESL, foreign language, and bilingual education teachers and researchers before coming to UC Santa Barbara in 2003. Currently, she is working on three research projects. The first examines heritage language maintenance efforts among second generation Korean-American children and the role of parental involvement and technology in the process. The second focuses on understanding the social and academic trajectories of students learning to become bilingual in a 50/50 dual language immersion setting and the third project is a multiple case study that examines the personal, societal, and educational contexts that lead to additive bilingualism among ethnic minorities. Through her research, Dr. Jin Sook Lee hopes to work towards promoting an educational environment that values diversity and the learning and acceptance of many different languages and cultures.

[Interviews with Jin Sook Lee are available; contact George Yatchisin at 805 893 5789.]

School-wide Links
Courses Apply	Computing Contact