Hello, I’m Joseph
PhD Student
About Me
I am currently a PhD student at UC Irvine, advised by Dr. Young-Suk Kim. I have two different, but equally important, research interests: reading and writing processes & misinformation. I have always been interested in reading and writing processes considering their importance in learning and the cognitive demand that both of these tasks entail. I am primarily interested in higher order and metacognitive processes entailed with reading and writing. Specifically, I am interested in argumentative reading and writing and the myriad of skills, both cognitive and literacy, that are demanded of people while arguing. Concepts like Theory of Mind, meta-talk and evidence use are particularly interesting.
Misinformation is a topic I was exposed to while I was Lab Manager at the University of Minnesota’s Reading + Learning Lab. The importance and relevance of this topic was immediately obvious and is still something I fully embrace and am constantly asking questions about. Understanding the mechanisms by which misinformation works and the ways to slow the dissemination of misinformation are of interest. My recent work has been with media literacy practices in the classroom and how we can develop effective media literacy practices across a wide range of grade levels.
The intersection of these topics at critical reasoning skills, evidence and source evaluation and the demand these tasks entail are topics that I would plan to concurrently pursue as my academic career develops.
Conference Presentations
Awards and Honors
Grant Dollars Awarded
Research Interests
Misinformation
Misinformation currently poses a major threat to democracy and our information ecosystem. My interests in misinformation revolve around cognitive processes that may disrupt critical thinking and reasoning when people encounter misinformation and the different mechanisms by which it is effective.
Argumentation
Understanding argumentation and the different factors that contribute to effective and constructive argumentation can assist in our understanding of critical reading and thinking skills. Factors I’m interested in include epistemology, evidence use and perspective taking.
Media Literacy
Although media literacy practices are currently included in some History and English state standards, the ubiquity and fidelity in which it is implemented can be called into question. My interest in media literacy is centered on in-class implementation, educator led research questions and cirriculum development.
Skills
R Studio
Extensive experience with data analysis in R Studio including complex statistical and machine learning modeling
Stata
Extensive experience with Stata in both use of complex statistical analyses and teaching
Qualitative Analysis
Experience with qualitative analysis including coding of large amounts of text data, conducting interviews and creation of coding schemes.
Current Projects
Understanding and Improving Students' Critical Thinking in the Age of Fake News, Sensational Headlines and Seductive Information
Role: Principal Investigator
This project is centered around understanding different ways users interact with information in a variety of contexts including typical news websites, social media and different modes of media (visual, audio and video). Three different studies are planned from this grant, utilzing multiple quantitative and qualitative methods to work towards understanding phenomenon that have direct effects on users information ecosystem and information hygiene and the larger spread and detrimental effects of misinformation.
Developing Students' Media Literacy for Civic Engagement
Role: Co-Principal Investigator
These partnerships will leverage the expertise of classroom teachers and researchers to test, implement, and refine instruction that helps students 1) become critical consumers of information in diverse formats and 2) transfer historical thinking and critical reasoning skills to authentic social and civic issues in their worlds. The RPPs will also allow for the development and testing of instructional modules that 1) change students stances towards how knowledge is constructed, 2) can be adapted to a variety of classroom contexts, 3) show measurable growth in student’s epistemologies and reasoning skills related to adaptive media literacy practices