Shadi Roshandel of the Gevirtz School at UC Santa Barbara was presented a 2012 Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant from UC Santa Barbara's Graduate Division for her dissertation work "The Role of Teachers in Influencing the Development of Adolescents' Possible Selves."
During late childhood and early adolescence, there is a dramatic increase in cognitive skills (Keating, 1980) that influences how young people begin to think about their futures. The construct of possible selves has been used to help understand adolescents' views of their future plans and goals by exploring their social perceptions to gain insight as to how they think about the world and themselves. This study examined the role of perceived teacher support on adolescents' development of possible selves.
Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grants are given to assist talented graduate students in education, social sciences, fine arts, and humanities to pursue original research. Since these disciplines traditionally have limited access to extramural funds, this program's purpose is to help redress an imbalance in funding for graduate student research.
Shadi Roshandel is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education at Dominican University of California with an emphasis in Secondary Education. She received her Ph.D. in summer 2012 at the Gevirtz School Department of Education with an emphasis in Child and Adolescent Development under advisor Professor Cynthia Hudley. Roshandel's research interests focuses on adolescent motivation and achievement among middle and high school students and exploring the influences of teacher support on adolescent motivation and achievement. She plans on continuing to examine the transactional relationship between teachers and students and apply these findings to implement professional development programs in the schools for both pre-service as well as in-service teachers. She received her B.A. in psychology from the University of Michigan and M.S. in education at Brooklyn College.