蘑菇传媒

Research Studies

three young women doing an experiment

Research Studies

Welcome to Research with East!

Please note the use of the word听鈥渨ith,鈥� not听鈥渁t鈥澨齩r听鈥渇or鈥�.听Using听鈥渨ith鈥澨齭ignals our deep commitment to research that is collaborative, participatory, and emancipatory. Building on recent calls for engaged scholarship in the academy, CUES promotes researching alongside the school communities, in pursuit of authentic and useful accounts of school change.

To this end, we believe the 蘑菇传媒鈥檚 EPO partnership with East is an exciting opportunity to take what researchers know about education to a school that will benefit from it. In doing so, we conduct research, producing a collection of practitioner briefs, research articles, and conference presentations that support schools like East, located in urban districts, facing similar challenges and implementing innovative initiatives. We have not only conducted studies with East but also in other urban school locations; our findings support urban school transformation nationwide.

We are building a body of research about urban education transformation, organized in two large categories: Transformative Culture Research and Transformative School Culture Research and Transformative Teaching and Learning Research, to share freely and openly with anyone who is interested. Some publications will appeal to a research audience, others to a practitioner audience, and some to both. Check back periodically to see what new work is emerging!

East High mother standing in school hallway

Conducting Research at East

Researchers interested in working alongside East must submit an application to the East Research Committee.

Learn More
Two graduates in cap and gown with parents

Transformative School Culture Research

Improving School Attendance

Transforming School Culture

School-University Partnership

Reducing Bullying in School Communities

Reducing School Suspensions

  • 听(Rob Snyder) a decision-making dissertation, is designed to support the continuous growth of the East Upper School by studying alternative methods for addressing students who are repeatedly assigned to In-School Suspension (ISS). (Dissertation)

Increasing Parent Engagement

  • (Shalonda Garfield) seeks to inform a decision for determining an alternative that support the continuous improvement of increasing parent engagement at East Lower School. (Dissertation)

Confronting Race, Racism and Privilege in Schools

Other

  • Broken bridges: The role of brokers in connecting educational leaders around research evidence. (Finnigan, K.S., Daly, A. J., Caduff, A., & Leal, C. C., 2021). In M. Weber & I. Yanovitzky (Eds.), Networks, Knowledge Brokers, and the Public Policymaking Process (pp. 129-154). New York, NY: Palgrave- MacMillan.
  • The Question of Incorporating 6th Grade into Middle and High School Configurations. (Marsh, V.L., Larson, J.L, Kawakyu-O鈥機onnor, N.K., Greenwich, J.C. (May, 2017). 听CUES practitioner Brief.
  • Promoting a Culture of Resilience at East: A Multimodal Approach (Susan Yussman) explores how a school-based, multi-component intervention improve student outcomes in the domains of nutrition, mental health and sexual health. (Dissertation).
  • Title 1 Study (American Institutes for Research) provides a detailed analysis of the types of strategies and activities implemented in Title I schoolwide program (SWP) and targeted assistance program (TAP) schools, how different configurations of resources are used to support these strategies, and how local officials make decisions about the use of these varied resources
  • Assessing the Feasibility of Implementing the Center for Human Athleticism Musculoskeletal Performance and Prevention (CHAMPP) Intervention on East High School Adolescent Athletes (Calvin L. Cole, PhD Department of Orthopaedics, Center for Musculoskeletal Research) assesses the feasibility of enrolling and studying adolescent athletes from East High School into a program that will provide injury and academic performance monitoring, athletic performance training (for injury prevention), and academic assistance.
East teachers and board members welcoming students on the first day of schooll

Transformative Teaching and Learning Research

Literacy

  • UR East High: Transforming an urban high school through a unique University partnership (Joanne Larson and colleagues) uses ethnography to explore how this partnership impacts culture. This research was initially supported by a research grant from the Spencer Foundation.
    • Larson, J., Atkins, G., & Duret, E. (2022, October). New York: Teacher鈥檚 College Press. This book explores how how urban youth and their teachers (Larson as co-teacher) design and implement a student led class on Hip Hop
    • Larson, J., Pies, S., & Bethmann, C. (2021, April). More than managing inequities: Exploring the role critical literacy might play in English education. AERA Annual Meeting (Virtual).
    • Larson, J., Duret, E., Rees, J., & Anderson, J. (2021). 听Journal of Literacy Research.
    • Larson, J., Morris, T., and Shaw, K. (2019).听 Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.
    • Kinloch, V.,听Larson, J., Orellanna, M.J., & Lewis, C. (2016).听Literacy, equity, and imagination: Researching With/In Communities. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 1-19.
  • READ 180 Universal East High School Efficacy Study (Consortium for Policy Research Education) investigates the link between enrollment in READ 180 Universal and student reading performance at East High School, Rochester, NY.
  • Identity Negotiation and Development Through Creative Writing at East (Eleni Duret) explores how high school students engage creatively with their own identity and then communicate such engagement through creative writing. (Dissertation)
    • Eleni Duret & Shana Pies听(2022)听,听New Writing
  • Powerful Literacies in a High School Journalism Class (Valerie Marsh, Jayne Lammers, Elizabeth Conroy) explores how best to support English teachers in amplifying youth voices in historically marginalized student populations via powerful literacies.
  • YPAR: Exploring New Literacies and Critical Literacy Pedagogy in a Virtual Teaching and Learning Environment (Alexa E. Basile) illuminates a particular kind of school-embedded Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project that adds to the collective understanding of what facilitates and challenges YPAR work in urban school settings.

Mathematics

Creating a Model for Sustainable Ambitious Mathematics Programs (MSAMP) in High Needs Settings: A Researcher-Practitioner Collaboration

Learn more about the MSAMP visual model and MSAMP website on our Equitable Curriculum page.

    • Zahner, W., Tenney, K., Pelaez, K., & Choppin, J. (2025, November). What is Ambitious (Mathematics) Teaching? Clarifying a Key Concept in Education Research and Practice.听Journal of Education.

    • Choppin, J., Al, S., Li, J., Wilkes, C. E., & Calleros, E. D. (2025, May). Developing a visual model to represent the implementation of an ambitious mathematics program. Frontiers in Education, 10.
    • Saliha, A., Li, J., Van Alstyne, J. H., Amr, Z., & Hands, L. (2025, April) Cultivating connections: The impact of community and school partnerships on students in an ecological system [Conference presentation]. American Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Denver, CO, United States.
    • Choppin, J., & Green, C. (2024). Tensions and alignment between simultaneous implementation of an ambitious mathematics program and understanding by design. Journal of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, 8(2).
    • Choppin, J., Green, C., & Zahner, W. (2024). Demands, tensions, and resources when implementing ambitious mathematics.听Education Policy Analysis Archives, 32(17).
    • Choppin, J., & Merliss, G. (2022).听Exploring the impact of COVID on an ambitious mathematics program in a high poverty context.听Paper presented at the 2022 American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA.
    • Zahner, W., Green, C., Tenney, K., Pelaez, K., Choppin, J., & Al, S. (2021).听What is ambitious mathematics teaching? A literature synthesis. Forty-third annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education Philadelphia, PA.

English Language Learners

  • ELL Learning (Lia Festenstein) attempted to determine whether or not the Support Room model assisted English Language Learners (ELLs) in attaining core credits or improved their Regents exam pass rates in the 2016 June Regents administration. (Dissertation)
  • Educating English Language Learners (ELLs) (Valerie L. Marsh and colleagues). This brief pieces apart the challenges, history, theory, research, and instructional best practices in ELLs education through a review of literature.听A resource guide for researchers and practitioners is included.

Social Studies

  • Ethical and Cultural Commitments in Adolescents鈥� Political Thinking: A Design Study (Kevin Meuwissen) serves two core purposes:
    • to generate and utilize new tools and methods for investigating ethical and cultural commitments that underlie adolescents鈥� political thinking relative to public policy problems; and
    • to draw from that investigation鈥檚 outcomes to develop, implement, and study the results of a secondary-level curricular and instructional intervention designed to promote political discourse where students鈥� policy positions and their ethical and cultural underpinnings are explicitly linked.

Science

  • Veteran Urban Science Teacher Identity in the Midst of University Governance: A Case Study (Michael Occhino) explores teacher identity development. (Dissertation)
  • Covid Connects Us听is multiyear project funded by the National Science Foundation鈥檚 Division for Research K-12 (with earlier funding from the Greater Rochester Health Foundation) committed to examining the role of culture-setting units and professional learning communities in fostering justice-centered educators and classrooms
    • Luehmann A., Zhang, Y., Merliss, G., Sullivan K., Scipio, D., & Pugh, P., (April 2023).听. NARST, Chicago,2023.
    • Luehmann, A.,听& Zhang, Y. (May, 2021

Athletics

  • The Relations of Perceived Autonomy-supportive Physical Education Teaching to Students鈥� Motivation, Performance, and Skill Learning (Edward Deci)听 examines the relations of interpersonal teaching styles to the promotion of students鈥� engagement, motor learning, and performance in physical education (PE) classes.
  • Assessing the Feasibility of Implementing the Center for Human Athleticism Musculoskeletal Performance and Prevention (CHAMPP) Intervention on East High School Adolescent Athletes (Calvin Cole and colleagues) assesses the feasibility of enrolling and studying adolescent athletes from East High School into a program that will provide injury and academic performance monitoring, athletic performance training (for injury prevention), and academic assistance.

Assessment