Tara-Marie D
- Research Program Mentor

PhD at University of Southern California (USC)

Expertise

Education, Public Policy, Racial Inequality, Math

Bio

I recently earned my PhD in Urban Education Policy at the University of Southern California. My research areas of interest exist at the intersection of education equity, math education, and culturally relevant pedagogy. I view schooling through a lens of social justice, and my research uses qualitative and quantitative methods to study educational policies. I am most interested in racial inequities as well as the experiences teachers and students of color have in math classrooms. Before pursuing my doctorate, I studied psychology and education at Duke University. During my time there, I had opportunities to mentor high school students, volunteer in local classrooms, and was able to work and study abroad with students in Kenya and India. I also have served as a math teacher and after-school instructor for a non-profit organization. Following my time at Duke, I became an 8th grade math teacher in Brooklyn, NY.

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Education Experiences

Why do some students have positive school experiences while others face obstacles that make learning harder? In this project, we’ll explore the factors that shape students’ educational journeys, from classroom teaching styles to school resources to cultural and racial dynamics. Students will design interviews or surveys to gather perspectives from peers, teachers, or community members, then analyze the results to identify patterns. The final product could be a research paper, a presentation, or even a toolkit of recommendations to improve student experiences.

Predictors of Academic Success

Numerous data sets exist related to how students from different backgrounds (racial, gender, income etc.) perform on standard metrics of academic success (test scores, graduation rates etc.). Depending on the area of interest, we would work with the data set to determine how various student characteristics can predict certain outcomes as well as how different variables interact.

Coding skills

Stata, SPSS

Languages I know

Haitian Creole

Teaching experience

A majority of my teaching experience is as an 8th grade math teacher. I have taught 8th grade math through a nonprofit organization in Durham, NC and also at a charter school in Brooklyn New York. I now serve as an ajunct professor at Hofstra University, where I teach a course on inequities in K-12 education.