Child and Adolescent Development

The Motivate Lab is driven to improve people’s lives through rigorous motivation research and to understand the mindsets that promote learning, growth, and well-being.

We are a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research lab with a focus on prevention interventions that optimize implementation of evidence-based practices to improve behavior, classroom, and school experiences for youth and school personnel, and/or reduce risk for behavioral and mental health problems. 

We are interested in how settings and interactions can be optimized to best meet adolescents’ developmental needs. In particular, we are focused on the role that relationships (with peers, mentors, non-familial adults) and activities play in adolescent development.

Remaking Middle School is a multi-phase initiative, elevating the innovation that is present in middle schools across the country and soliciting national input on how we ensure all students thrive in, and grow from, their experience in the middle grades. 
 

The Research in Education and Learning Lab at UVA, directed by Jamie Jirout, focuses on questions related to STEM learning and motivation from a cognitive developmental perspective. 

Visit the Full REAL Lab website.

The UVA Social Development Lab, directed by Sara Rimm-Kaufman, addresses pressing questions in education science from an interdisciplinary perspective. Learn more at our full website.

UVA Social Development Lab

The Virginia Youth Violence Project is a research group composed of faculty and graduate students in the UVA School of Education and Human Development. We conduct research on youth violence prevention and school safety and provide training and consultation on topics such as threat assessment, bullying prevention, and forensic psychology. Through our work, we have developed strong evidence in support of school threat assessment as a school violence prevention strategy and alternative to zero tolerance discipline.