SOE in the News
Each year, our School of Education faculty provide important expertise on topics across education. Here are some highlights from the past year.
Youngkin establishes task force to combat negative effects of social media on youth mental health
“It’s kind of hard to distinguish the COVID mental health impacts from the cell phone use mental health impacts, because they’re overlapping. When schools were closed, our world just moved online.”
- David Naff, Ph.D., director of the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC) and associate professor
Youngkin proposes $50 million for private-school vouchers in Virginia
“[The program] weaponizes the discontent with regular public schools and offers [a] solution that would further drain needed resources from a system that is chronically underfunded, particularly for our most disadvantaged students.”
- Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Ph.D., professor of educational leadership
Virginia plans to create cell phone-free education guidelines. Developing them will be complex.
“There’s reasons we should be concerned about cell phones as distractions to learning, but they’re also very powerful learning tools potentially, you know, their access to information.”
- Jesse Senechal, Ph.D., executive director of the Institute for Collaborative Research and Evaluation and assistant professor
‘A slippery slope’: Experts weigh in on educational AI following federal guidance letter
“
We have to be learners alongside our students. One of the things we’re doing here in the School of Education is next year, we’ll be having kind of a year of AI where faculty can have a learning community.”
- Jon Becker, Ph.D., J.D., associate professor of educational leadership
VCU professor weighs in on Trump’s executive order to implement AI in classrooms
“It’s important for schools to help students think about what technologies like artificial intelligence mean for our society moving forward.”
- Jon Becker, Ph.D., J.D., associate professor of educational leadership
Hanover among five other Central Virginia school systems seeking superintendents
“It's a highly complex, demanding job, but it does make a difference for student achievement and student learning,"
- Kimberly Bridges, Ed.L.D., associate professor of educational leadership