The SLI Team
Mesmin Destin
Faculty Director of Student Access and Enrichment Professor, Human Development and Social Policy Professor, Department of Psychology
m-destin@northwestern.eduMesmin Destin directs a multidisciplinary lab group and investigates social psychological mechanisms underlying socioeconomic disparities in educational outcomes during adolescence and young adulthood. Using laboratory and field experiments, Destin studies factors that influence how young people perceive themselves and pursue their futures. At the university level, Destin examines how social experiences and institutional structures shape the motivation, well-being, and educational trajectories of lower socioeconomic status and first-generation college students.
Education
- PhD, Social Psychology, University of Michigan, 2010
- BA, Psychology and Sociology, Northwestern University, 2005
As a learning scientist and ethnographer of education, Shirin Vossoughi is concerned with understanding the social, cultural, political and ethical dimensions of human learning in ways that contribute to projects of educational justice. To this end, she studies the forms of pedagogical mediation, thinking, relationality and development that take shape within settings that cultivate transformative learning, particularly with migrant, immigrant, diasporic and other non-dominant youth. Her work seeks to understand micro-interactional processes of human learning as tied to broader forms of social change, and the potentials of learning environments as lived arguments for the possible.
This program of research requires conceptual, methodological and artistic tools that treat educational inequity as a social and historical problem, illuminate the empirical texture of expansive pedagogies, and construct a wider view of learning as tied to students’ life-worlds and cultural ways of knowing. She draws on ethnographic and interactional approaches to examine the specific qualities of learning environments that support young people to develop complex forms of disciplinary practice while questioning and expanding disciplinary boundaries, often through learning interactions that embrace their full personhood. Her current projects look closely at student and teacher learning in the context of reading, writing and STEAM domains, with a particular focus on the possibilities and complexities of political education. She has taught in a range of educational settings and take a collaborative approach to research and design, partnering with teachers, families, and students to study the conditions that foster educational dignity and change.
Education
- Post-doctoral Fellowship, Stanford University & Exploratorium, 2014
- PhD, Education, University of California, Los Angeles, 2011
- EdM, Education, University of California, Los Angeles, 2006
- BA, History and International Development, University of California, Los Angeles, 2002
I support students, faculty, and partners of SESP Leadership Institute. In my role, I coordinate programming, recruitment, training, and student support. Please contact me with any questions, whether you're a student interested in joining SLI, or a local organization interested in becoming a SLI partner. I look forward to connecting with you.
Education
- MA, Latin American and Latino Studies, University Illinois Chicago – In Progress
- BA, History and Gender Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
I am a longtime educator currently working on a PhD at Northwestern University in Learning Sciences. My research interest is in the intersections of music, learning, and identity development.
Education
- PhD Learning Sciences, Northwestern University – in progress
- Masters in Sound Arts and Industries, Northwestern University
- Master of Arts in Teaching, National Louis University
- Bachelor of Arts University of Chicago
I am a PhD Candidate at Northwestern University studying Human Development and Social Policy. My research focuses on the social, emotional, and identity development of students from marginalized communities as they transition from high school to university. My current work examines higher education policies and initiatives that support first-generation, low-income, and students of color in pursuing their academic and professional goals.
Education
- PhD, Human Development and Social Policy, Northwestern University – In Progress
- BA, Health, Behavior, & Society, University of Rochester
- BA, Brain & Cognitive Science, University of Rochester
- Minor, Abnormal Psychology, University of Rochester
