B.A. in Psychology & Sociology; Lab Research Assistant
School of Education
May 1, 2012
Lab management experience instilled an appreciation for intellectual communities “where ideas can be carefully crafted and scrutinized.”
Janette Jovel was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, by parents who emigrated from El Salvador in the midst of the Salvadorean Civil War. Though neither of her parents completed grade school, they both emphasized education as the means to escape from poverty. Janette is now part of the first generation of college graduates in her family.
Janette received her undergraduate education from the University of California, Irvine, with a B.A. in Sociology: Psychology and a minor in Educational Studies. In her sophomore year she joined Professor Rossella Santagata’s Teacher Learning Lab as a research assistant. Her responsibilities included analyzing, digitizing, transcribing, and coding video and participating in field research.
Working with Professor Santagata, lecturers Joseph Jenkins and Claudia Pineda, and the amazing graduate students in the Department of Education, I came to appreciate the value of intellectual communities, where ideas can be carefully crafted and scrutinized.
After one year as research assistant, Janette was promoted to lab manager. Janette’s work in the Teacher Learning Lab has covered three projects: Mistakes as Tools for Learning, Learning to Learn from Mathematics Teaching, and the Theatre of Translation Project.
At the December 2011 California Educational Research Association (CERA) conference and the April 2012 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) research pre-session, Janette presented findings from research on pre-service teachers’ learning that she has been conducting in collaboration with Professor Santagata and Ph.D. student Cathery Yeh (NCTM photograph below).
This project investigated the learning process of two groups of pre-service teachers attending a teacher preparation course designed to develop specific dispositions, knowledge, and skills for learning from teaching.
While the impact of the course on individual pre-service teachers’ analysis abilities had already been documented through a pre and post-test study (Santagata & Guarino, 2011), Janette’s project investigated pre-service teachers’ group conversations while attending the course.
Janette will begin her first year of graduate school this fall at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education with a specialization in Education, Culture and Society.
Professor Santagata comments, “We expect that Janette will continue to excel in her chosen field of study; however, the UCI Teacher Learning Lab will miss her greatly!”
