• About
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • Seminar

Education and learning are embodied experiences that unfold in time.

This is the anchoring insight of Pathways Lab.

We aim to understand how identities, aspirations and learning opportunities coevolve to shape lives and life chances.

Learning is complex. Context, emotions, prior experiences, and relational systems like race, class, gender, and nationality influence how academic progress unfolds. We try to keep it all in sight.
more

We use many data sources, methods and frameworks to understand how people navigate academic progress.

more

sequences and forecasts

Using computational, qualitative and archival techniques to understand how learning paths unfold.

Projects

  1. undergraduate cohort study
  2. course consideration
  3. observing major selection
  4. course evaluations and peer review
  5. STEM pathways

View projects

Learn more about this project

student narratives

Utilizing a cache of hundreds of thousands of essays submitted with applications to a large public university system, the student narratives team is exploring how young people make sense of their life experiences and represent their accomplishments to others.

Projects

  1. the production of merit
  2. fairness and ethics in computational assessment

View projects

Learn more about this project

paths to work

The relationship between schools and workplaces is complex and changing rapidly. Our work informs public discourse on how best to scaffold education and learning opportunities over the entire life course.

Projects

  1. an applied science to support working learners
  2. universities and the future of work
  3. pandemic response

View projects

Learn more about this project

platforms and toolkits

Powerful, user-friendly tools to aid in course search and path discovery.

Projects

  1. Via sequence visualization tool
  2. Carta platform

View projects

Learn more about this project

online learning

What works, what doesn't, and what the future of online learning might be.

Projects

  1. ambiguous credentials
  2. learning from MOOCs

View projects

Learn more about this project

responsible use

The ubiquity, detail and fidelity of data describing learning interactions brings extraordinary opportunity to improve education -- but also obliges educators to share and deploy data responsibly. Pathways Lab takes these responsibilities seriously and continuously.

Project

  1. responsible use

View projects

Learn more about this project

We share our work.

We publish research results in a variety of peer-reviewed venues. Team members also write opinion pieces and policy briefs. Have a look.
more

Should I start at MATH 101? Content repetition as an academic strategy in elective curriculums

Read more

Drawing on serial interviews (N = 200) of 53 students at an admissions-selective university, we show that incoming students with disparate precollege experiences differ in their orientations toward and strategies for considering first college math courses. Content repeaters opt for courses that repeat material covered in prior coursework, whereas novices opt for courses covering material new to them. Content repeaters receive high grades and…

Sociology of Education, 2022

Read this paper

From bat mitzvah to the bar: Religious habitus, self-concept, and women’s educational outcomes

Read more

This study considers the role of religious habitus and self-concept in educational stratification. The authors follow 3,238 adolescents for 13 years by linking the National Study of Youth and Religion to the National Student Clearinghouse. Survey data reveal that girls with a Jewish upbringing have two distinct postsecondary patterns compared to girls with a non-Jewish upbringing, even after controlling for…

American Sociological Review, 2022

Read this paper

Application essays and the ritual production of merit in US selective admissions

Read more

US colleges and universities are defined by their exclusivity, and the most prestigious schools reject most of those who apply. Yet these same schools also widely advertise their inclusiveness, encouraging students from all backgrounds to submit applications and highlighting evaluation protocols that identify many characteristics worthy of consideration for admission. We surface this paradox and use it as motivation to…

Poetics, 2022

Read this paper

Signaled or suppressed? How gender informs women’s undergraduate applications in biology and engineering

Read more

Analyzing 60,000 undergraduate applications to the University of California, the authors find that extant gender segregation of academic disciplines also manifests in intended major choice. Gender and SAT Math scores together strongly predict intent to major in biology and engineering, the most popular and gender-segregated majors. Using natural language processing, the authors also find that author gender is more predictive…

Socius, 2022

Read this paper

Forecasting undergraduate majors: A natural language approach

Read more

Elective curriculums require undergraduates to choose from a large roster of courses for enrollment each term. It has proven difficult to characterize this fateful choice process because it remains largely unobserved. Using digital trace data to observe this process at scale at a private research university, together with qualitative student interviews, we provide a novel empirical study of course consideration…

AERA Open, 2022

Read this paper

Supporting interviews with technology: How software integration can benefit participants and interviewers

Read more

Drawing on their own design for a longitudinal cohort study of undergraduate students, Harrison and Hernandez share techniques for smoothing research relationships and logistics through widely available digital media.

Contemporary Social Science, 2022

Read this paper

We are a diverse team.

Since our inception in 2016 we have benefitted from the contributions of scores of students, faculty and staff researchers from every unit of Stanford. Pathways Lab is truly interdisciplinary, with special depth of expertise in computer science, economics, gender theory, machine learning, market design, social psychology and sociology.
more

The Pathways Seminar assembles researchers to share work and build community.

Our common thread is that we all seek to model academic progress as a longitudinal, sequential and interactive phenomenon.

Winter 2023 schedule

Join us.

We're always on the lookout for collaborators, critics and fellow travelers.

Contact

Copyright © Pathways Lab 2023
Website by GSE IT