Ji Son

INTRODUCTION

I am a Professor of Psychology at Cal State LA, where I enjoy teaching statistics and cognitive psychology. My teaching goal is to equip students with modern skills and perspectives they can carry with them well beyond their time at Cal State LA. My research focuses on how to teach hard things to all students. To do this, I draw on an interdisciplinary blend of improvement science, technology development, and learning science theory. I also write and speak publicly about education and equity, pushing individuals and institutions to build inspiring futures for learning, rather than be caught off guard by how the world changes. At heart, my work brings together joyful communities of instructors, researchers, and developers committed to improving the educational experience for students. 

When I’m not teaching or conducting research with my excellent students and collaborators, you can find me parenting two tween boys, experimenting with vegetable-based muffins, trying (and failing) to go viral on LinkedIn, pushing for housing policies that give all kids access to high-quality public schools, and obsessively reading The New York Times and The Economist. I also inexplicably wrote a slow-burn romance novel, The Long Con, which is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BookShop, Apple Books, and even at some local libraries.

TEACHING INTERESTS

I teach courses in statistics, research methodology, developmental psychology, cognition and perception. My classes emphasize learning by doing: students pose questions, analyze data, and debate theories while making connections to core concepts in the field, useful representations (like algebraic notation and R coding), and real-world issues. My favorite moments are when students go beyond the assignment out of genuine curiosity, for example, extending a class discussion on homelessness by modeling their own hypotheses and exploring extra data!

Because many students arrive in statistics classes with math anxiety or limited prior exposure to coding, I emphasize building confidence, community, and removing unnecessary barriers to learning. In a study of 672 undergraduates published in the Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education (“Teaching Statistics and Data Analysis with R”), we found that this approach helped students who began with negative attitudes toward R develop more positive ones over the course, regardless of background or prior experience.

These commitments extend into my curriculum design work. Funded in part by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, I have co-authored an introductory statistics textbook (Statistics and Data Science: A Modeling Approach) with James Stigler (UCLA), available at CourseKata.org. The book is designed from the ground up with learning science principles and continuously improves through embedded assessments and usage data from tens of thousands of users across over 150 institutions. Additionally, I am also the director of the CalStateLA Statistics Teaching Collaboration and have created a General Statistics Online Course featured on Educator.com. 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

I study how people develop abstract, flexible ways of thinking--the kind of thinking that allows us to tackle the big problems of the modern world. Much of my research examines generalization: how learners take what they know and apply it to novel situations. In laboratory studies, I have investigated this process in young children learning about shapes, colors, and patterns, as well as in school-age children and adults learning statistics, mathematics, and data science.

Alongside this basic research, I work on the translation of learning science into educational practice at scale. Many instructors approach teaching with the same intuition and curiosity they bring to research but institutions rarely provide the infrastructure to test and continuously improve upon those designs with data. My work brings improvement science methods to teaching, helping schools, departments, and systems of universities build feedback loops that link design decisions to evidence. 

This translational focus has led to large-scale curriculum development projects, most notably CourseKata.org, a platform for the research and development of STEM learning materials (statistics, data science, algebra, physics) used at 150 institutions by over 34,000 students. Supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, CA Learning Lab, the Cal State, Valhalla Foundation, and the Gates Foundation, this work demonstrates how research, design, and data can come together to improve learning experiences across diverse contexts for a broad base of students.

Looking ahead, my research continues to delve into how students develop curiosity for learning hard things, how instructional design can reduce inequities in STEM, and how new forms of assessment can capture learning and growth in ways traditional tests cannot.

PUBLICATIONS

Find more papers and downloads here.

Essays, Commentaries, and Op-Eds

Peer-Reviewed Publications

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

Post-Doctoral Training, Psychology 2007-2009

• UCLA
  Los Angeles, CA

PhD, Cognitive Science and Psychology 2007

• Indiana University
  Bloomington, IN

BS, Cognitive Science 2002

• UCLA
  Los Angeles, CA