Research Spotlight: Dr. Geetha Ramani

Dr. Geetha Ramani joined the Department as an assistant professor in January of 2008. She received her doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh in and then was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Cognitive Development (working with Dr. Robert Sigler) at Carnegie Mellon University. For more information about her work please see her faculty information page.

Dr. Ramani is beginning a new research project that is funded by the Institute for Educational Sciences. Dr. Ramani describes her project as follows:

My research focuses on how children's social world influences their cognitive growth. I am interested in how children learn new cognitive skills and practice existing abilities from their everyday interactions with adults and peers. Currently, we are investigating how playing board games can promote the numerical knowledge of preschool children from low-income backgrounds. Young children's experiences with informal numerical activities, such as board games, can play a critical role in their early numerical knowledge. In our previous research, we have found that playing a simple number board game with an experimenter results in dramatic and lasting improvements in the numerical knowledge of young children from low-income backgrounds. My upcoming project will focus on translating this number board game into a practical and beneficial preschool classroom activity for low-income children. This project will investigate the effectiveness of the number board game on improving children's numerical knowledge when played as a small group learning activity with a teacher. We also plan on examining the communication between the children and teachers when they are playing the game together to identify the types of social interactions that are associated with learning from the board game. Our goal is to help determine whether the number board game can be widely incorporated into preschool classrooms.

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