Dept of Ed Title Slide

Department of Education
Research Impact

Creating Equitable and Impactful Education for All

Learning and Development

Department of Education Research Impact

Learning and Development

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Equity and Community Engaged Research

Department of Education Research Impact

Equity and Community-Engaged Research

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Systems Policies and Evaluation

Department of Education Research Impact

Systems, Policies and Evaluation

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Digital Media Society and Education

Department of Education Research Impact

Digital Media, Society and Education

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Our Research Transforms Lives

The Department of Education advances rigorous, innovative, and interdisciplinary research that deepens understanding of learning, teaching, and human development across diverse contexts. Our faculty and students collaborate across areas of impact to generate knowledge that informs policy, transforms practice, and addresses the most pressing challenges in education. Through this work, we strive to contribute to a more just, inclusive, and impactful educational future locally, nationally, and globally.

Learn more about how we connect research to practice.

Where We Make A Difference

Through research, teaching, and community engagement, we work to reshape how classrooms and communities function and who they serve, empowering learners to grow, question, and lead transformative change.

Community-engaged research is a defining feature of UCLA Ed&IS. Our faculty and students collaborate directly with community organizations, cultural institutions, and advocacy groups to co-create knowledge that addresses urgent issues.

By combining rigorous research with real-world insight, this area illuminates the structures and decisions that shape learning experiences and outcomes, generating evidence that supports stronger systems, more informed policy, and more effective, equitable educational opportunities for all.

Digital media shapes education and society. Research into its impact helps improve learning digital literacy, address challenges like misinformation, and foster a more informed and connected world.

Department of Education Research Centers

Black Male Institute

Housed within the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools, BMI operates as an entity within CTS, maintaining a focus on equity and access for Black males.

CalKIDS Institute at UCLA

The CalKIDS Institute at UCLA amplifies, strengthens, and evaluates the new statewide children’s savings account program, the California Kids Investment & Development Savings Program (CalKIDS).

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Center for Critical Race Studies in Education (CCRSE)

The Centery exploresd cultural intuition, racial battle fatigue, racial microaggressions, critical race history methodology, and community cultural wealth.

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Center for International and Development Education (CIDE)

Working to enhance educational capacity, facilitate human and economic development, and promote cross-cultural exchanges related to international and development education.

Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, & Student Testing

CRESST sets the national research agenda by creating new methodologies for evaluating educational quality, student learning, and the use of assessment data.

Center X

Dedicated to dramatically changing education for the underserved students of Los Angeles by designing and conducting programs that produce K-12 teachers committed to social justice, instructional excellence, and caring in low-income urban schools.

Children’s Understanding of Economic and Social Inequality

CUESI Lab examines children’s experiences of social inequality and its influence on their academic and social outcomes. Their research examines the extent to which contextual factors such as poverty, immigration, and social policies, influence family dynamics and, in turn, children’s developmental outcomes.

The Choices Project

A research initiative which aims to improve the academic options, experiences, and outcomes of African American and Latino students in the California system of higher education.

Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles

The Project is creating a new generation of research in social science and law on the critical issues of civil rights and equal opportunity for all racial and ethnic groups in the United States.

CONNECT: Center for Research and Innovation

CONNECT links nationally recognized researchers with teachers and administrators at UCLA Lab School and public schools in Southern California to investigate central issues in education.

Higher Education Research Institute

HERI is an interdisciplinary research center for assessment, evaluation, information, and policy studies and hosts the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP), a national longitudinal study of the American higher education system. HERI is co-led in a partnership with ACE and UCLA Ed&IS.

Institute for Democracy, Education and Access

IDEA seeks to challenge pervasive inequalities in education by conducting research, analyzing policy, and working alongside communities to increase access to high-quality public schools and college.

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Momentum: Accelerating Equity in Computing and Technology

Employing mixed-methods approaches to conduct research on efforts to diversify computing and technology fields, with a particularinterest in efforts to recruit women and people of color into computing education pathways and retain them into technology fields.

Paulo Freire Institute

Focused on gathering scholars and critics of Freire’s work in permanent dialogue to foster the advancement of new theories and concrete interventions in the real world.

Sudikoff Family Institute

By identifying a connection between academic research and its application in the real world, the Sudikoff Institute aims to share the expertise of Ed&IS faculty by bringing “knowledge that matters” to a public audience.

UCLA Capacity Building Center

Housed within the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools, BMI operates as an entity within CTS, maintaining a focus on equity and access for Black males.

UCLA Center for Community Schooling

A campus-wide initiative to advance university-assisted community schools, ass stable anchor institutions, universities play a unique role as K-12 community school partners.

UC|CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning

The Collaborative believes that improving literacy is one of the great civil rights issues of this generation. Californians must work together to secure equal access to quality literacy instruction for all our children.

UCLA Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice

The Center’s aim is to provide local, state, national and global leadership in this field, leveraging groundbreaking advances in cognitive and neurosciences, linguistics, and education to inform and transform K-12 teaching and learning.

UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools

Dedicated to partnering with the education ecosystem to bring about systems change through humanizing research, validating practices, and transforming policies with key stakeholders to support equitable educational outcomes for historically underserved students.

The UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families

The Center unites a multidisciplinary network across campus and throughout LA County to identify prevention strategies that safely reduce the need for foster care, while supporting equitable reform to our child welfare system.