Research Labs

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 mission of the Womanism Empowering Black Women and Girls in Counseling Research Lab is to advance knowledge on the experiences, strengths, and wellbeing of black women and girls through womanist frameworks and community-engaged scholarship focused on counseling and counselor education.

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.

The Contemplative Teaching and Learning Lab applies the contemplative sciences to informing our understanding of life-span development and education.

The Engineering Design Initiative aims to foster advanced and innovative performance across a range of subjects by integrating engineering design into K-12 classrooms. 

The FOCAL Lab studies the cognitive processes that underpin learning throughout the school years. The cognitive foundations that are central to our studies include motivation, executive function and self-regulation, sensorimotor and visuospatial processing, phonological skills, and general knowledge of the world. 

The Reading and Academic Development Research Group examines reading and related areas of academic development across different groups of school-age children. Broadly, the research focuses on meeting the diverse instructional needs of students from specific backgrounds by identifying reading and writing difficulties and developing effective instructional approaches. 

The SERG lab explores how to support all students to understand and engage in practices of science, engineering, mathematics, and computational fields and how to help teachers to facilitate rich and equitable STEM+CS experiences in their classrooms. 

The Robert H. Tai Research Group is a research team based at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia.  This multi-institutional team conducts quantitative and qualitative research on major issues in Science Education.  The overarching goal is to produce robust empirical data that targets national policy, with the outcome of developing science students into productive and contributing scientists.

In 2016, the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development began a partnership with Mursion to utilize their mixed-reality simulation program that takes the form of virtual school spaces with student and adult avatars. The simulator is used to prepare students for work in K-12 settings and provides a unique opportunity for researchers to measure its effectiveness and impact.

The aim of the 21st Century Learning Project is to create a framework of a common language, theory, and operational plan for societies to promote citizens’ learning in the 21st century. This framework will organize an expanding global network of engaged partners collaborating in an iterative process of refinement, application, and expansion.

The goal of our research is to combine physiological, biochemical and behavioral approaches to understanding the role of exercise, diet and pharmacotherapies on health and athletic performance.

Our mission is to investigate the effect of diet on health and learning outcomes, especially in children. The lab consists of a metabolic kitchen and a feeding/dining area with a play space for our studies in children. 

The EASIL provides research opportunities for faculty and graduate students in the masters and doctoral degree programs in Sports Medicine & Athletic Training and consists of four distinct testing areas and includes state-of-the-art equipment for the measurement of numerous aspects of human motion and neuromuscular performance. The lab houses measurement systems to assess strength, muscle activation, balance, motion, gait, joint laxity, functional performance, and neurocognitive function.

The EPCL was established in 1990 as part of the National Institutes of Health sponsored General Clinical Research Center to promote the expansion and enhancement of clinical research that incorporates exercise physiology and body composition into either the research questions or the research design. 

The Imaging & Communication Outcomes Lab, under the direction of Kazlin Mason, PhD CCC-SLP, is dedicated to improving speech, resonance, and feeding outcomes for individuals born with craniofacial differences.  

Our methodologies integrate imaging technology (MRI and fNIRS), 3D computer visualization, machine learning, predictive analytics, and acoustic and aerodynamic data. These techniques allow us to examine the anatomy and physiology of the speech, swallowing, and velopharyngeal mechanisms which serve to inform clinical practice and support evidence-based interventions for this population. 

Scholars on the STORMED Team conduct research related to the design, implementation, and experimental testing of multimedia-based interventions to support pre- and in-service teachers' knowledge and implementation of evidence-based practices on behalf of students with disabilities and others who struggle.

CASPER’s mission is to advance open science in special education and related fields by (a) conducting meta-research, (b) providing recommendations and resources, and (c) conducting and disseminating open research. 

The mission of the KID Lab is to understand why children and adults with disabilities are or are not physically active, and then creating and studying ways to increase participation for greater health outcomes.