Biography
Karlyn Adams-Wiggins is an Assistant Professor of Applied Development Psychology at Portland State University. They are currently the Communications Coordinator (formerly historian) of the Scholarly Consortium for Innovative Psychology in Education (SCIPIE) and the program chair of the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Adolescence & Youth Development SIG. Adams-Wiggins earned a PhD in Education (Concentration: Learning, Cognition, Instruction, & Development) from Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Education in 2015. Prior to joining Portland State’s Psychology Department in 2017, they were an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Tyler’s School of Education for 2 years.
Research
Dr. Adams-Wiggins’ research program focuses on the intersection of academic achievement motivation and adolescent development by attending to how early adolescents’ identities are negotiated in social interactions. Their work thus far has taken place in STEM education collaborative learning contexts. They employ a sociocultural psychology lens in service of addressing social inequality and social justice aims: marginal identities can be understood as reflective of power relations in the local social context as well as in broader social systems, thus Adams-Wiggins’ work places a high value on sociohistorical context for psychological phenomena and heavily employs qualitative methods, including video-recorded observations, field work, and interviews.
Dr. Adams-Wiggins’ current work addresses social interaction and identity construction through three research themes. The first area addresses social interactions and identities among adolescents in the U.S.’s African diaspora as they relate to participation in after-school programs; this work explores the role of positive youth development and sociopolitical context in adolescents’ experiences of marginality. The second area addresses achievement motivation in middle school by theorizing a situated framework for achievement goal theory and examining achievement goals within the context of inquiry science collaborative learning. The third area addresses motivation and inclusion for both underrepresented racial minorities (URM) and low-income first-generation (LIFG) students generally as well as in undergraduate engineering education specifically. The second strand, situated achievement goal theory, is represented a recently funded co-authored Spencer Foundation Small Research Grant with colleague, Dr. Toni Rogat (Purdue University).
Undergraduate Courses Taught
- PSY 431U Psychology of Adolescence and Early Maturity
Graduate Courses Taught
- PSY 510/610 Development and Education of African American Children and Youth