Daniela Alvarez-Vargas
Post Doctoral Research Fellow
What I do
I am a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the Marsico Institute for Early Learning and an EMERG (Equity in Math Education Research Grant) program scholar. I support the continued improvement and sustainability of the LearningTrajectories.org website – a free resource for teaching early math using the Clements and Sarama Learning Trajectories approach. Additionally, I support the development and evaluation of digital learning activities in projects funded by the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Science Foundation. Through the National Academy of Education, I am working with historically marginalized communities to design strengths-based mathematics learning opportunities.
Specializations
Culturally relevant pedagogy
Curricular co-design in community partnerships
Experimental methods
Statistics
Professional Biography
Dr. Daniela Alvarez-Vargas was born in Pereira, Colombia and moved to Miami, Florida right before entering Kindergarten. She later completed her bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in statistics at Florida International University. Dr. Alvarez-Vargas’ experiences helping raise her beloved younger siblings and her undergraduate research with Dr. Shannon Pruden motivated her to pursue a PhD in Education with a focus on Human Development in Context. Dr. Alvarez-Vargas earned a Doctorate degree in Education at the University of California, Irvine with the guidance of Dr. Drew Bailey. In her doctoral work, Dr. Alvarez-Vargas focused on determining how different research methods could be used to evaluate how well educational programs reduce academic disparities, with the goal of informing policy and practice.
She is passionate about developing research approaches and educational tools research to support children’s mathematical development from preschool to secondary education. Dr. Alvarez-Vargas focuses on evaluating, designing, and implementing strengths-based learning opportunities for students who have been historically marginalized in mathematics. She strives to balance participatory co-design approaches and causal inference methods to assess what works and for whom and to reimagine novel learning opportunities for children and their communities. Currently, Dr. Alvarez-Vargas is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Denver, Marsico Institute for Early Learning working with Drs. Doug Clements and Julie Sarama. In this work she engages directly with families and teachers to build math education equity from the community perspective, and to continuously improve and redesign educational tools that support children’s mathematical identity and knowledge work.
In her work she strives to balance causal inference methods and collaborative design approaches to assess what works and for whom and to reimagine novel learning opportunities for children and their communities. So far, my work has grown into a few strands of focus:
- Collaboratively design and implement culturally relevant math activities, routines, and tools with families and teachers to continuously improve instructional practice.
- Combining experimental and non-experimental methods to understand how different interventions impact children’s short and long-term development to better inform researcher and policymaker decision making.
Bridging research and practice through engagement with research practice partnerships to design research intended to serve the community.
Degree(s)
PhD, Education (focus on Human Development), University of California Irvine, 2023
Research
Early Math
Teaching and Learning
Family Engagement
Featured Publications
Silver, A.M., Alvarez-Vargas, D., Bailey, D.H., & Libertus, M. E. (2024) Assessing the association between parents’ math talk and children’s math performance: A preregistered meta-analysis. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 243. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105920.
Alvarez-Vargas, D., Braithwaite, D., Lortie-Forgues, H., Moore, M., Wan, S., Martin, E., & Bailey, D. H. (2023). Hedges, mottes, and baileys: Causally ambiguous statistical language can increase perceived study quality and policy relevance. Plos one, 18(10), e0286403.
Alvarez-Vargas, D., Begolli, K. N., Choc, M*., Acevedo-Farag, L. M., Bailey, D. H., Richland, L., & Bustamante, A. (2024). Fraction Ball impact on student and teacher math talk and behavior. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 239, 105777.
Hall, L. V., Rengel, M., Bowley, H., Alvarez-Vargas, D., Abad, C., Overton, D., & Pruden, S. M. (2023). “You did a great job building that!” Links between parent–child prosocial talk and spatial language. Developmental Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001574
Lee, H., Tang, X., Alvarez-Vargas, D., Yang, J., Bailey, D.H., Simpkins, S., Safavian, N., Gaspard, H., Salmela-Aro, K., Moeller, J., Eccles, J.S., & Wigfield, A. Examining The interplay of students’ expectancies and values with networks and directed acyclic graphs. Current Psychology, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04871-z
Alvarez-Vargas, D., Lopez Perez, J.P*., Bermudez, V., Beltrán-Grimm, S., Santana, E., Begolli, K., Bustamante, A. S. (2023) Evidence-Based Designs for Physically Active and Playful Math Learning. Theory Into Practice. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2023.2202131
Alvarez-Vargas, D., Wan, S., Fuchs, L.S., Klein, A., & Bailey, D.H. (2022). Design and Analytic Features for Reducing Biases in Skill-Building Intervention Forecasts. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2022.2093298.
Wan, S., Alvarez-Vargas, D., & Bailey, D. H. (2022) Toward a Causally Informative Fit Index of Longitudinal Models: A Within-Study Design Approach. Developmental Psychology.
Goeke, M., Muller, A., Alvarez-Vargas, D., & Van Steenis, E.J. (2022) Using Mediating Artifacts to Push for Greater Equity in Research Practice Partnerships. The Assembly.
Bustamante, A. S., Begolli, K., Alvarez-Vargas, D., Bailey, D. H., & Richland, L. (2021). Fraction Ball: Playful and Physically Active Fraction and Decimal Learning. Journal of Educational Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000714
Bailey, D. H., Jenkins, J. M., & Alvarez-Vargas, D. (2020). Complementarities between early educational intervention and later educational quality? A systematic review of the sustaining environments hypothesis. Developmental Review, 56, 100910. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2020.100910
Alvarez-Vargas, D., Abad, C. & Pruden, S.M. Spatial anxiety mediates the sex difference in adult mental rotation test performance. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 5, 31 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-020-00231-8
Performances
Awards
2024-2026, National Academy of Education Equity in Math Education Research Grants (EMERG $113,000) The Equity in Math Education Research Grants (EMERG) Program supports individual research projects focused on reconceptualizing the foundations of equitable and ambitious mathematical experiences for K-12 learners, specifically for populations who have historically not had access to such opportunities.
2023, Michael E. Martinez Prize for Outstanding Research and ServiceThe prize honors a doctoral student who embodies the academic excellence and service to others that characterized Dr. Martinez’s life
2023, Latino Excellence and Achievement Dinner (LEAD $1,000) Celebrating graduate student excellence and achievement
2022, Division of Teaching Innovation and Excellence Summer Fellowship ($5,000)To dedicate 200 hours over the summer to improve applied regression course by incorporating hybrid virtual and in-person activities and lesson plans.
2022, Pedagogical Fellowship ($2,500) Competitively selected campus-wide award for demonstrating excellence and potential in pedagogical practice in higher education.
2019, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship ($101,988) National recognition as a promising scholar and three years of graduate funding
2018, Competitive Edge Summer Research Program ($5,000) Funding for advanced entry into graduate training and enrollment in an eight-week summer research and professional development program
2018, UC Irvine Diversity Recruitment Fellowship ($1,000) Financial award for academic record, accomplishments, and promise
2018, Nevin Graduate Endowment Fellowship ($1,000) Financial Award “based on proven grit, leadership, academic record, and promising potential”
Key Projects
Seeing Math Within: Co-Designing Mathematics Activities with Families and Teachers
There is power in the explicit representation of cultures that have been historically erased from mathematical spaces to honor the knowledge and practices of marginalized communities. I focus on building culturally relevant pedagogical activities made by and for ethnically diverse families to support children's transition from Pre-K to Kindergarten. I will conduct a two-year critical ethnographic study to understand 5 families’ cultural math practices and math identity-work and children’s math development in the home and the classroom. The aims of this project are to (1) understand the emerging funds of knowledge in families’ everyday practices (2) co-develop connections between mathematical practices in the home to the mathematical opportunities in school, and (3) interrogate how a collaboration between researchers, teachers, and caregivers influences the design of math opportunities and children math identity and knowledge formation. Together we will develop a cultural portrait of culturally sustaining mathematics activities and practices.
Learning and Teaching with Learning Trajectories
Learning and Teaching with Learning Trajectories [LT]2 is a web-based tool for early childhood educators to learn about how children think and learn about mathematics and how to teach mathematics to young children (birth to age 8). The website allows teachers to access information about children's development of math, view short video clips of classroom instruction, and explore a variety of resources including research-based instructional activities and teaching strategies. Funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supported the development of children’s software and other platform improvements. Additional funding from the Heising-Simons Foundation supported the initial development of the website, the addition of important standards, assessments, and infant/toddler content to the site. Work to improve accessibility features and activities focused on accommodations for children with disabilities is ongoing.