Research Highlights

More than 20 adjunct faculty from colleges and disciplines across the university—as well as an equally diverse group of facilitators—met on March 5 to talk, share their visions, practice as educators, and begin to design a self-study teacher research project. After brief introductions by the facilitators and warm welcoming remarks by College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) Dean Mark Ginsberg and Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning (SCTL) Director Shelley Reid (sponsors of the project along with Faculty Affairs and Development in the Office of the Provost), participants formed critical friend teams to create and share the initial sketching of a personal-situated teaching inquiry to improve their students’ learning. Read more...

Fred Bemak remembers all the hugs and tears. They inevitably come, he said, when his Counselors Without Borders team is on location helping hundreds—sometimes thousands—of people healing from the emotional scars of a disaster. “It’s the person who is grabbing and hugging you, thanking you for being there,” the George Mason University professor said. “That’s huge.” For 13 years Counselors Without Borders has traveled the world into areas devastated by floods, wildfires and storms, offering culturally responsive humanitarian counseling in post-disaster situations. Read more...

The 2018 Winter Olympics have officially begun in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and top athletes from around the world are currently competing in 15 events over more than two weeks. But there’s more than just sport at this worldwide mega event—there’s also diplomacy. Read more...

The Mason Arts Research Center does not have a physical structure at George Mason University. But its co-directors want to make it a highly visible hub of research into how arts participation affects child development. It will do so with a two-year, $150,000 renewable grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the vision of co-directors Thalia Goldstein, assistant professor of applied developmental psychology; Adam Winsler, professor of applied developmental psychology; and Kim Sheridan, associate professor of educational psychology. Read more...

Fred Bemak, a professor and academic program coordinator of George Mason University’s College of Education and Human Development counseling and development program, is a recipient of a 2018 Oustanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). Bemak, in the College of Education and Human Development, is one of 12 recipients selected from 83 nominees, and the 21st George Mason recipient since the award’s inception in 1987. Read more...

If you’re an enormous social media company looking to adapt some of your technology for younger children, you want to make sure you’re creating a fun user experience—but also a safe one. That’s what Facebook was recently looking to do. While preparing to put together what eventually became Messenger Kids, which launched in late 2017, the company consulted with experts on children and media. One of those experts was Kevin Clark, CEHD professor and director of the Center for Digital Media Innovation and Diversity. Read more...

As the scope of potential short- and long-term damage from brain injuries in football becomes clearer every day, the mad scramble is on to try to address the crisis, which threatens the very existence of the sport. And while the leading chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, research at Boston University has made the most headlines, two scientists at George Mason University have been working on a potentially groundbreaking diagnostic tool that could change the way we test for and treat brain injury across the sports world and beyond. Read more...

Panel discussion highlights new minor in Sport and Conflict Resolution and addresses the question of athletes as activists. The role that athletes play in conflict resolution was addressed during a two-hour forum earlier this month at Merten Hall on the Fairfax Campus. Read more...

When Seth Parsons arrived at Mason in 2008, he was curious about something. Teaching can obviously be a tough job. So what makes a teacher stick it out? “There has to be something that sustains excellent teachers who remain in the field,” says Parsons, an associate professor at CEHD. Read more...

How can research practices be more socially and culturally inclusive? Are the values of our participants being recognized and honored? Does our research perpetuate systems of inequality or oppression? These were just a few of the challenging questions that over 200 researchers, professors, leaders, and graduate students wrestled with at the second annual Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) symposium hosted by George Mason University at the Arlington Campus last month Read more...