Lab Alumni

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Past Doctoral Student Collaborators

Aneysha (AJ) de Coteau

Dr. Aneysha de Coteau was a PhD student in the Sociocultural and Community-Based Approaches to Research and Education (SCA) specialization in the School of Education. She is from the twin island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. She received her Bachelor’s degree with honors in Musical Arts from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine campus. She went on to earn her Master of Music in Teaching in 2018 from the University of Delaware, where her thesis explored the influence of past music making experiences on LGBTQ+ students’ identity construction. Her current research interests include race and diversity in education, queer theory in education, equity in education, and teacher preparation for diversity.

AJ’s work with Dr. Barbieri focused on examining the effects of various instructional materials on Preservice Teachers’ metacognitive monitoring processes when explaining how to solve fraction magnitude comparison tasks. AJ is also examining the relationship between mathematics and music education.

Brianna Devlin

Dr. Brianna Devlin is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oregon. Previously she was a PhD student in the Learning Sciences specialization in the School of Education. Her research interests include the development of mathematical cognition in children and factors that affect young children’s acquisition of early numerical concepts and skills, especially in children at-risk for later mathematics learning difficulties.

Bri’s work with Dr. Barbieri focused on examining the various forms of children’s magnitude reasoning evoked by number line representations of fractions and how this relates to their learning of fraction concepts.

Kelly-Ann Gesuelli

Dr. Kelly-Ann Gesuelli is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Notre Dame. Previously she was a Ph.D. student in School Psychology at the University of Delaware. She has long been interested in investigating the aspects of learning disabilities, which she initially studied from a molecular standpoint while completing her M.S. in Physiology with a specialization in neuroscience at SUNY Upstate Medical University. Her transition from science to the fields of psychology and education was fueled by her desire to help advocate for special education students, as well as her personal experiences mentoring special needs students and as an intern at the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro’s Eating Disorder Care. Her current research interests include the development of math RtI programs for students with disabilities and the use of student error reflection in such programs.

Kelly-Ann’s work with Dr. Barbieri focused on preservice teachers’ ability to successfully detect and address students’ mathematical errors and how that varies by student strategy use.

Casey Griffin

Casey Griffin is a Ph.D. in Education student specializing in Mathematics Education in the School of Education at the University of Delaware. After graduating from UD with a B.A. in Secondary Mathematics Education, Casey taught high school math in New Jersey for two years, and earned her M.A. in Mathematics from Villanova University with a graduate assistantship.

She began the Ph.D. in Education program in 2019 with plans of teaching math and postsecondary math instructor education at the college level. She is interested in implementing teaching practices that enable active learning into college math courses as a way to support students’ sense of belonging in STEM, and in turn, perhaps retain more STEM majors (especially women). Casey’s work with Dr. Barbieri involves investigating relationships between students’ sense of belonging to mathematics and their mathematical identities.

Ye Shen

Dr. Ye Shen is a Dean’s Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow in the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University. Prior to this position, Ye Shen was a Ph.D. student in the School of Education at the University of Delaware. Her research uses a multifaceted approach to studying bilingual language and literacy development. She is particularly interested in how reading, writing, and the reading-writing relation develop in bilinguals’ first and second languages. Previously, Ye was a classroom teacher in a Chinese immersion program in Delaware, where she taught English-speaking children Chinese Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies.

Gerilyn Slicker

Dr. Gerilyn Slicker is currently an Assistant Professor in Early Childhood, Multilingual, and Special Education at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Prior to this position she was a Ph.D Student in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences (HDFS) at the University of Delaware and a Research Assistant at the Delaware Institute for Excellence in Early Childhood. Gerilyn’s research interests include school readiness, the transition to kindergarten, and young children’s access to culturally diverse, high-quality early care and education, with an emphasis on the evaluation and development of state- and federal-level early childhood policies. Gerilyn comes to the University of Delaware with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, San Diego in both Sociology and History, a Master of Arts degree in Sociology from the George Washington University, and a Master of Education degree in Early Childhood from The University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Previously, Gerilyn taught pre-kindergarten in the Head Start and charter school setting and served as a Head Start center director, instructional coach, and education leader.

Gerilyn was working with Dr. Barbieri using a secondary dataset (ECLS-K) and mixture modeling to examine the role that parent expectations about kindergarten readiness and parent-child home activities have on children’s early mathematics and reading skills. Gerilyn’s work is now published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly.