Ph.D. Candidate| STEM Education | UC Berkeley
Educational researcher striving to connect students to the environment through engaging technology.
At Cal, I work with:
I also consult and write curriculum for garden-based education programs in public schools.
Hi!
I’m a doctoral student in my sixth year of study at UC Berkeley. I’m currently writing my dissertation on the hybridization of physical and virtual ecosystems for secondary science instruction.
For the past three summers, I have interned at Google (Google One and Kids and Family teams), developing my skills as a UX Researcher. I’m excited to put what I’ve learned to use on my ongoing projects.
Thanks for stopping by, and check back soon for more updates!
–Becca
An ongoing participatory design-based research project inviting adolescents to share in the construction of a virtual platform to experiment with their ideas about garden ecology.
Try the simulation by clicking here for a version with one type of crop, or here for a version with two types (will open a NetLogo Web browser)
As part of a longitudinal nation-wide project to detail the innovative education program, Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial (SAT), I spent four weeks in 2016 and two weeks in 2018 observing trainings, interviewing teachers, administrators and students, and visiting classroom sites in Honduras where STEM subjects are taught through authentically community-based units. Ongoing analysis posits the economic development, familial involvement, and rich content of the projects as supportive elements to SAT’s accounted for increased math and language scores, when compared to the Honduran standard secondary education program (CEB).
A semester-long course project exhibiting the trademarks of User Interface design, addressing a challenge by the Environmental Protection Agency to increase community involvement through a mobile platform to contribute and analyze data.
Exciting stuff! My work with Michelle and colleagues Vicki and Brian, looking at students’ animations and agent-based simulations and computational thinking, is now published online in Instructional Science. Check it out!
Honduras has a way of staying with me long after I’ve left. After a few months of review, we’ve published one write-up of our data that focuses on the unique teacher training that happens for SAT tutors in rural communities. You can check it out, along with many other exciting articles, in the Stanford Social …
…and we must go! Erin and I are taking off this week to meet with the other grant recipients from the Economic and Social Research Council. In addition to sharing about our work in Honduras, we’ll get to meet with other researchers to learn about their impacts, challenges, and future research goals. Perhaps we’ll leave with …
Here are quick links to my current CV and Resume (last updated March 2019)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
Wilkerson, M., Shareff, R., & Lanouette, K. (2019, July). Learning to transform data: A longitudinal interview study. Paper to be presented at the Eleventh International Research Forum on Statistical Reasoning, Thinking, and Literacy (SRTL-11).
Shareff, R. A network of development: A comparative study of agro-science units in a rural Honduran secondary curriculum. Presented as part of E. Murphy-Graham (Chair) & P. Blikstein (Discussant), Effective teaching in rural schools: examining local knowledge, sustainable development, and scientific agency within a multi-national curricular program. Paper session at the 2019 meeting of the Comparative & International Education Society (CIES), San Francisco, CA, USA. April 14-18. [PDF]
Durán-López, E. & Shareff, R. Training and teaching for inclusive development: Combining community knowledge and science content in rural Honduras. Presented as part of E. Murphy-Graham (Chair) & P. Blikstein (Discussant), Effective teaching in rural schools: examining local knowledge, sustainable development, and scientific agency within a multi-national curricular program. Paper session at the 2019 meeting of the Comparative & International Education Society (CIES), San Francisco, CA, USA. April 14-18.
Wilkerson, M., Laina, V., Lopez, L., Shareff, R. L., Dogruer, D., & McEachen, W. (2019, April). Collaborative modeling with complex public datasets in the middle school classroom. Presented as part of A. Pierson & D. Clark (Orgs.), Supporting modeling epistemologies in the science classroom. Structured poster session at the 2019 Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Toronto, Canada. April 5-9.
Wilkerson, M., Lanouette, K., Shareff, R. L., Erickson, T., Bulalacao, N., Heller, J., St. Clair, N., Finzer, W., & Reichsman, F. (2018, June). Data moves: Restructuring data for inquiry in a simulation and data analysis environment. Poster in Proceedings of the International Conference for the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2018). London, England: ISLS. [PDF]
Shareff, R., Wilkerson, M.H. (2018, April). Grounding computational modeling in fertile soil: A design project with middle school science teachers and students. In A. Wagh (Org.) & J. Kolodner (Discussant), Bridging computational modeling tools & practices into the existing structures of K-16 environments in science education. Symposium presented at the 2018 Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), New York, NY, USA. April 13-17.
Shareff, R. (2018, March). Culturally relevant science instruction in Latin America: Two cases of curricular reform. In A. Lewis (Org.) Cultural connections: Hispanic and Latin American teachers and students. Symposium presented at the 12th annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST 2018). Atlanta, GA, USA.
Shareff, R., Wilkerson, M.H. (2017, November). Designing across contexts: Interdisciplinary interpretations of an ecological modeling environment. Poster presented at the 13th annual conference of the International Society for Design and Development in Education (ISDDE 2017). Berkeley, CA, USA. [PDF]
Wilkerson, M., Shareff, B., Gravel, B., Shaban, Y., & Laina, V. (2017, June). Exploring computational modeling environments as tools to structure classroom knowledge building. Full paper in Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL 2017). Philadelphia, PA, USA. [PDF]
Shareff, R. (2017, June). Using school gardens as a physical and virtual modeling environment. Doctoral Consortium presentation at the 16th ACM SIGCHI Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC ’17). Stanford, CA, USA. [PDF]
Weltman, A., Fink, H., Shareff, R., Stone, E., & Abrahamson, D. (2017, April). Building bridges, deepening knowledge: Engaging novices, practicing teachers, and researchers in inquiry together. Poster presented at the UC Berkeley Education Research Day, Berkeley, CA, USA. [PDF]
Murphy-Graham, E., & Shareff, R. (2017, January). Examining effective teaching in rural Honduran schools. Presentation at ESRC DFIF Raising Learning Outcomes Grant- Holders Event, London, UK.
Shareff, R. (2016, October). Secondary STEM projects cultivate rural agricultural communities in Latin America. Roundtable presented at the 1st Annual Learning Sciences Graduate Student Conference, Chicago IL. [PDF]
Shareff, R. (2016, October). Bringing outside in: Transplanting experiential garden knowledge in computational models. Poster presented at the 13th Annual Research Symposium of the North American Association for Environmental Education, Madison, WI. [PDF]
Murata, A., Fabrega, J., Gillingham, D., Kim, H., Madkins, T. C., McGee, A., & Shareff, R. (2016, April). Preservice elementary mathematics lesson study: Visions and learning to teach. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, San Francisco, CA. [PDF]
Shareff, R. (2016, February). ‘Harvesting’ ecosystem dynamics through a computational model of a garden. Poster presented at the UC Berkeley Education Research Day, Berkeley, CA. [PDF]
PUBLICATIONS
Shareff, R. (2018). ‘Harvesting’ ecosystem dynamics through a computational model of a garden. In A. Bakker, Design research in education: A practical guide for early career researchers (pp. 172-175). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Wilkerson, M.H., Shareff, R., Laina, V., Gravel, B. (2018). Epistemic gameplay and discovery in computational model-based inquiry activities. Instructional Science, 46(1), 35-60. DOI: 10.1007/s11251-017-9430-4 [Springer]
Shareff, R., Murphy-Graham, E. (2017). Redefining teacher development to great effect in Honduras. Stanford Social Innovations Research Series: Preparing Today’s Youth for Tomorrow’s World. [hyperlink]
more to come!