Jean Ryoo, director of research for the Computer Science Equity Project at UCLA Center X, has been honored with the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies by the American Educational Research Association, or AERA. Ryoo was recognized in a virtual awards ceremony on April 9, and she will deliver the Jan Hawkins Lecture at AERA in 2022.
This year at AERA, Ryoo moderated a panel discussion on “Who Has a ‘Seat at the Table’?: Equity in Decision Making About Computer Science Education,” which featured Black educator voices from her work with schools in Mississippi. She also presented her co-written paper “Student Agency in Computer Science: Teaching and Learning Socially Responsible Computing in High School Classrooms,” with Jane Margolis, senior researcher for the UCLA Computer Science Equity Project, and Los Angeles Unified School District’s Alicia Morris. Both events took place virtually on April 12.
Ryoo is currently leading a longitudinal study, titled “REAL-CS Student Voices,” working with Margolis, that highlights the experiences of high school students who have had little to no prior experience with computer science and who come from backgrounds that are historically underrepresented in computer science.
Prior to arriving at UCLA, Ryoo worked with the Tinkering Studio of the San Francisco Exploratorium — a museum of science, art and human perception — to direct research-practice partnerships focused on equity issues in afterschool science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs. Ryoo’s experiences as a museum docent, afterschool educator and public school teacher inform her research, which identifies and addresses the inequities that youth and teachers face in different educational contexts.
