People

Jennifer A. Schmidt is a professor of educational psychology. She is broadly interested in adolescent motivation and engagement in learning contexts, both inside and outside of school. She studies how multiple dimensions of student experience fluctuate with the changing features of learning environments. Her work informs, and is informed by scholarship on human motivational processes as well as work on adolescent development, teacher practice, educational intervention, and educational environments. Her current research examines diversity in the affective and motivational dimensions of student experience in middle school and high school science learning environments. Through four ongoing projects, she is examining the way science "feels" for male and female students, modifying these perceptions through both targeted classroom interventions and teacher education, and identifying features of formal and informal learning environments that foster STEM interest and engagement. Schmidt uses the Experience Sampling Method (or ESM) - a signal-contingent method of collecting data in which participants provide repeated reports of multiple dimensions of their subjective experience.