B.A. in Political Science & Sociology; Ph.D. in Education, 2013
School of Education
May 1, 2008
Ph.D. Student Tran Dang, 2008 Pedagogical Fellow, pursues 3rd degree at UC Irvine
Tran Dang is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Education at UC Irvine with interest in both the Learning, Cognition, and Development (LCD) and Educational Policy and Social Context (EPSC) specializations. Tran is a three-time Anteater, having also received her BA and MA degrees from UCI. Her BA degrees are in Sociology and Political Science and her MA degree is in Social Sciences.
Prior to the Ph.D. program, Tran’s professional experience included being an external evaluator of higher education, K-12, and community-based programs at WestEd: a research analyst for the Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD): and a program evaluator for the Orange County Department of Education (OCDE). She has conducted workshops to increase educators’ understanding of demographic and student achievement data, and the state and federal accountability systems. Most recently, her work at OCDE allowed her to provide research and evaluation services and support to county staff and school districts throughout Orange County. Her work at SAUSD in the Department of Research and Evaluation convinced her that she needed to obtain a doctorate in Education to be more effective in making educational change.
Tran’s current research interests are (1) teacher learning and cognition and (2) K-12 assessment and accountability issues. Her first year research project explores the fieldwork observations of elementary preservice teachers (PSTs). The university course under study was designed to teach important observation skills with an emphasis on student learning through the use of innovative research- and video-based teaching methods. This qualitative study involves examining PSTs written fieldwork observations to better understand the learning process that PSTs experience in a teacher credential program. For her second year doctoral project, Tran would like to investigate state and national datasets to study the effects of accountability on teacher quality and on student achievement and the achievement gap.
Along with being a doctoral student, Tran has been a Teaching Assistant (TA) for undergraduate Education courses such as Cognition & Learning in Educational Settings; Origins, Purposes, and Central Issues in K-12 Education; and Cognition and Pedagogy in Quantitative Literacy. She has also been a TA in the School of Social Sciences for Research Methods and Marriage & Families.
This coming academic year Tran will serve as the 2008-2009 Pedagogical Fellow for the Department of Education. In this capacity she will work with the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center (TLTC) at UCI to design and implement the 2008 Fall Teaching Assistant Professional Development Program (TAPDP) for new TAs in the Department of Education. Tran will work with other graduate students from a variety of disciplines across campus to enhance undergraduate teaching and learning at UC Irvine.