Creating a National Network on Emotional Well-Being Research

Posted on by

A trio of UConn researchers are developing an interdisciplinary network to advance scientific understanding of emotional well-being.

Four girls silhouetted by sunset
“We are thrilled to partner with the other networks around the country, and for UConn to become a central hub in emotional well-being,” says the research team.

Editor’s Note: The following piece was originally published on UConn Today, the University’s news website.

A group of UConn researchers have received a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a network to address knowledge gaps on the topic of emotional well-being, an emerging public health concern. This project is one of six, totaling more than $3.13 million in year one funding from the NIH.

PIs on this project are Crystal Park, professor of psychological sciences and researcher at UConn’s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP); Sandra Chafouleas, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of educational psychology and director of the Collaboratory on School and Child Health; and Fumiko Hoeft, professor of psychological sciences and director of the Brain Imaging Research Center (BIRC).

The research team brings diverse strengths to the table. Park has extensive experience in measurement development and studying emotional well-being and mind-body interventions. Chafouleas is an expert in child development and intergenerational approaches to wel-lbeing. Hoeft brings her expertise in neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience.

Emotional well-being is a broad health category that encompasses measures such as life satisfaction, happiness, meaning and purpose, and positive emotions.

While scientists and healthcare professionals have become increasingly accepting of the critical role emotional well-being plays in promoting public health, research has been slowed by several challenges. Scientists currently lack a consensus on the essential components of emotional well-being, valid ways to measure these components, and mechanisms to inform interventions.

The group will address these research challenges through the creation of a multidisciplinary network. The network aims to identify and measure components of emotional well-being, study its biological mechanisms, and then focus on the potential role of mind-body interventions in promoting it.

The UConn researchers will create the “M3 Network of Emotional Wellbeing (M3EWB, pronounced “mube”). M3 stands for Measurement, Mechanisms, and Mind-Body Interventions – the three areas the researchers will focus on.

“We are thrilled to partner with the other networks around the country, and for UConn to become a central hub in emotional well-being.”

Specifically, this project will create an online conceptual and methodological resource for researchers to comprehensively assess emotional well-being. It will catalogue for example, not only self-report methods, but also objective indicators like brain imaging.

Second, this project will uniquely study how emotional well-being plays out across the lifespan. Children, caregivers, and adults with health challenges face substantially different burdens. Yet, to date, emotional well-being research has minimally addressed lifespan-wide questions. By focusing on children and caregivers, who are often excluded from this kind of work, the researchers at UConn will shed new light on populations whose experiences are critical to advancing the field’s understanding of emotional well-being and how experiences may transfer from caregiver to child.

“Growing evidence supports that these challenges and burdens can be passed intergenerationally,” Chafouleas says. “It is important to not only understand the relevance of different components to emotional well-being across the lifespan, but the potential for mind-body interventions to elicit synchronous effects, such as between caregiver and child.”

Third, the team will address the important but understudied issues of whether mind-body interventions like yoga, tai chi, or meditation may improve emotional well-being, and if so, how. Mind-body interventions have been proven to help reduce negative mental health states such as anxiety, depression, and stress. However, whether such interventions also promote emotional well-being remains to be explored. In a preliminary study, Park and colleagues found single sessions of yoga were associated with several aspects of emotional well-being.

Sandra Chafouleas, an expert in school mental health and emotional well-being.
Sandra Chafouleas, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of educational psychology and director of the Collaboratory on School and Child Health, is one of three PIs on the project.

Guided by Park, the team will study the relationship between mind-body interventions and emotional well-being. They will look at both mind-body interventions as a mechanism for improving emotional well-being and emotional well-being as an outcome itself. Further, the research from this network aims to identify the mechanisms through which mind-body interventions bring about these positive effects.

The work will also advance the field by capitalizing on Hoeft’s expertise and the resources at BIRC.

“This opportunity is particularly exciting for me as a neuroscientist, to charter into the understudied area of the biological mechanisms of emotional well-being,” Hoeft says.

The M3 Network of Emotional Wellbeing will be a champion for interdisciplinary collaboration in this field.

The UConn team will work with the other five networks to collectively advance the science of emotional well-being. Each network is working within their respective niches to tackle gaps in the field. This approach will lead to an overall greater understanding of how to study this topic.

“We hope our educational and training activities, as well as pilot grants we provide, will facilitate discoveries in emotional well-being research and help train the next generation of researchers,” the team says. “We are thrilled to partner with the other networks around the country, and for UConn to become a central hub in emotional well-being.”

For an issue as multifaceted as emotional well-being, this interdisciplinary approach is the most prudent and rewarding path to deepen our scientific understanding and promoting all of us, children, adults and caregivers alike, to live our full potential.

Those interested in learning more about the project can contact the research team at M3EWB@uconn.edu.

This work is supported by NIH Grant U24AT011281.

Follow UConn Research on Twitter & LinkedIn.

Developing Computational Thinking for High School Biology Classes

Posted on by

As computational thinking becomes an increasingly important part of STEM fields, a group of researchers is developing a program to prepare high school students with these skills.

Editor’s Note: The following story originally appeared on UConn Today, the University of Connecticut’s news website.

Brain graphic with gears.
“As computational thinking becomes an increasingly important part of STEM fields, a group of researchers is developing a program to prepare high school students with these skills,” says Ido Davidesco, assistant professor of learning sciences and lead researcher on the NSF grant.

As the world of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) becomes increasingly computational, promoting students’ computational thinking is essential to prepare them for future STEM careers.

Neag School of Education assistant professor of learning sciences, Ido Davidesco, has received a $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop a month-long computational thinking unit in high school biology classes.

Davidesco will work with Neag School colleagues Bianca Montrosse-Moorhead, Christopher Rhoads, and John Settlage, as well as Aaron Kyle from Columbia University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering.

The project will enhance students’ computational thinking through hands-on neural engineering experiences. Computational thinking involves strategies like using abstractions and pattern recognition to represent problems in new ways, organizing and analyzing data, breaking problems down into smaller pieces, thinking about a problem as a series of ordered steps or “algorithmic thinking,” and generalizing this process to a wider variety of problems.

“In K-12 education, computational thinking has largely been constrained to computer science and programming courses,” Davidesco, the project lead, says. “This project addresses a critical need to incorporate computational thinking into other STEM fields, in this case, biology and engineering, to introduce students to the computational nature of science nowadays.”

As part of the program students will measure their own muscle and brain activity using low-cost, wearable sensors. They will then analyze the data and design a brain-computer interface to turn neural activity into real-world output, like a mechanical claw, powered by brain activity. In addition to designing curriculum materials, the interdisciplinary project team will develop an interactive web-based app to guide students through the design process and a complimentary professional development program for teachers. Neuroscience and engineering Ph.D. students and postdocs will serve as STEM mentors for the high school students.

“This project addresses a critical need to incorporate computational thinking into other STEM fields … to introduce students to the computational nature of science nowadays.”

— Assistant Professor Ido Davidesco

The project will include approximately 500 students from 18 ninth and tenth grade biology classes. Incorporating this unit into regular biology courses rather than specialized electives will ensure more students have the benefit of participating.

The program will be implemented in a range of schools including an all-girls school and schools whose student body is primarily students from minoritized groups. This diversity will ensure this project reaches groups that are traditionally underrepresented in STEM. Through this project, the researchers hope to spark high school students’ interest in STEM and encourage them to pursue STEM in college and as careers.

The project team will evaluate the success of the program by looking at the students’ projects, interviews, classroom observations, and surveys.

This project is part of the NSF Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12). DRK-12’s mission is to enhance the learning and teaching of STEM subjects in preK-12 schools using innovative resources.

Davidesco holds a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. His research interests include studying how students learn science using portable EEG and eye tracking technologies and enhancing authentic research experiences in STEM education.

Neag School Grad Supports Literacy, Leadership at Local School

Posted on by
Isabella Gradante works with young student.
Isabella “Bella” Gradante ’20 (ED), ’21 MA works with a young student during her graduate internship at E.B. Kennelly School in Hartford, Connecticut. (Photo courtesy of Isabella Gradante)

Future Educator Poised to Help Her Students Take Action Toward Social Justice

Isabella “Bella” Gradante ’20 (ED), ’21 MA says she always knew she would pursue a career in education, having been raised by a family of educators and around schools her whole life. It wasn’t until she entered her master’s year in the Neag School’s Integrated Bachelor’s/Master’s (IB/M) program that she found what truly called her to the field: the practice of culturally relevant and sustaining teaching. This approach, which emphasizes the importance of holistically recognizing and including students’ cultural references in all aspects of learning, has inspired her, she says, to one day lead a classroom that is responsive to the diverse needs of her students.

As a biracial Asian American woman and an aspiring educator, Gradante recognizes the impact that representation in the classroom had on her own educational experience. While she only had one Asian teacher in her K-12 experience, having a role model that looked like her made her feel valued and accepted.

“I think being a person of color that will be a future educator is really important because it can have students of all backgrounds be able to see themselves as a teacher, too, or simply see the potential for them to be educated and successful individuals,” she says.

As part of her final year in the IB/M program, Gradante served as a graduate intern at E.B. Kennelly School in Hartford, Connecticut. The internship was multifaceted, ranging from literacy intervention to instructional collaboration. For her master’s internship, she worked on a team alongside fellow interns and staff to provide in-person and virtual small-group literacy intervention for K-5 students.

“I think being a person of color that will be a future educator is really important because it can have students of all backgrounds be able to see themselves as a teacher.”

— Isabella “Bella’ Gradante ’20 (ED), ’21 MA

“This allow[ed] us to see where our students are at with reading, monitoring the progress that we’re making, which is super informative for their classroom teachers,” says Gradante.

Leaving a Lasting Impact

Isabella Gradante holds graduation cap in front of UConn's Red Barn.
“It’s really my dream to be an educator that values and respects all cultures and helps my students take action towards social justice,” says Isabella Gradante. (Photo courtesy of Isabella Gradante)

Gradante found other ways to support Kennelly, too. Early on in the academic year, Kennelly’s staff had been brainstorming ideas for a token-based book vending machine to promote a love for literacy and reinforce positive behavior in its students. When it came to securing enough funding to implement the project, Gradante proved indispensable.

“We didn’t really know how far we could take it, but I wanted to put my effort towards it because I thought it was such an amazing idea,” she says.

Making sure students have access to books is something that Gradante says is very important to her. The pandemic has highlighted inequities in education; for example, some students may not have books at home and may not be able to access their school or community libraries.

About one-third of students at Kennelly are English Language Learners, so providing students with texts in different languages and representing different levels of literacy was also a driving factor behind the project.

“It’s really important to have this area for literacy where students can have choice and autonomy to what they want to read and just simply have access to books,” says Gradante.

She coordinated fundraising through DonorsChoose, a funding site used by educators to raise money for classroom projects, and within days, the book vending machine was fully funded. Gradante is now working with the administrative team at Kennelly to design and customize the vending machine.

“Bella embraced the idea and ran with it,” says June Cahill ’92 (CLAS), ’93 (ED), ’94 MA, principal of Kennelly School. “We never expected that it would be funded so quickly, but it was due to her leadership and her commitment to leaving a lasting artifact after her internship was over that we were able to see this project come to fruition.”

Identity and Representation

Gradante says the Neag School’s commitment to initiating and sustaining conversation around identity in education has been influential for her as she decided what kind of educator she wants to be. For her, Professor David Moss served as a role model in the way he engaged conversations around race and culture in his classes.

“He has made me feel like I’ve become a leader in a lot of my classes because of the work that we do and the conversations we have,” says Gradante.

“I want to teach my students to be problem solvers and critical thinkers,” she adds. “It’s an immense task to take on, especially as a first-year teacher, but it’s really my dream to be an educator that values and respects all cultures and helps my students take action towards social justice.”

Principal Cahill, who works with many Neag School interns in their fifth year of the IB/M program, she says she is thrilled to see the leadership traits they possess.

“Neag is giving students the content knowledge that they need to be successful in the classroom, as well as the empathetic lens to really focus on a population that is slowly emerging from a pandemic,” says Cahill. “This year, more than ever, students really needed connections to caring adults, and Bella fit that role for them.”

Related Stories: