Dr. Sara Rimm-Kaufman conducts research on classroom social processes and their influence on children’s social and academic growth in the early years of school. Her research is interdisciplinary, drawing from the fields of psychology and education. Sara trained as a developmental psychologist and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1996. She has been at the University of Virginia since that point, first in the role of post-doctoral fellow and now as an Associate Professor. Currently, she is the Director of the Educational Psychology-Applied Developmental Science Program She teaches courses on Learning and Development, Classroom Social Issues, and Social Development. For fun, Sara enjoys spending time with her family and running.

Dr. Xitao Fan (a.k.a. Fan) is the Curry Memorial Professor of Education in the Curry School of Education, University of Virginia, where he teaches graduate level quantitative methods courses (http://people.virginia.edu/~xf8d/). Fan holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology (specialization: research, measurement, & statistics) from Texas A&M University. As a quantitative methodologist in education, his methodological research interests in structural equation modeling, model fit assessment and power estimation in modeling analysis, reliability and validity issues in measurement, meta-analytic studies, etc. He has conducted numerous methodological and substantive studies involving large-scale longitudinal databases, studies about reliability and validity issues in measurement, studies on multivariate statistical techniques in general, and structural equation modeling and growth modeling in particular. He has been involved in numerous federal grants. He currently serves as the editor of Educational and Psychological Measurement.

Dr. Robert Berry is an Assistant Professor at the Curry School of Education with an appointment in Curriculum Instruction and Special Education. A former mathematics teacher, he teaches elementary and special education mathematics methods courses in the teacher education program at the University of Virginia. Additionally, he teaches graduate level mathematics education course and courses for in-service teachers seeking a mathematics specialist endorsement. His research focuses on equity issues in mathematics education and pre-and in-service teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching. Berry has extensive experience in classroom observation and has collaborated with other researchers to revise observations instruments to examine mathematics teaching quality. He has authored and co-authored 28 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and refereed proceeding. His articles have appeared in the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Mathematics Educator, Journal of African American Studies, Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, and others. Berry serves as chair of Teaching Children Mathematics journal editorial panel and serves on the editorial board of Journal of Educational Foundations and Urban Review.

Photo of Sara Rimm-Kaufman courtesy of Dan Addison, UVa Public Affairs.