When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? Share any experiences that illustrate your emerging aspirations, passion, curiosity – and changes along the way.

As a kid I didn’t give the slightest thought to what I might want to do or be as an adult. My parents have an old VHS recording of my kindergarten graduation, which includes a brief one-on-one interview with each of the students. When it was my turn, one of the first questions they asked was, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” After several seconds of looking perplexed I mumbled “Police man”. Not because I had any grand aspirations for a career in law enforcement, but because I watched movies like Lethal Weapon and Die Hard with my older siblings and that seemed like a reasonable approximation of what adults did. I was initially an Archeology major in college because of Indiana Jones and then wanted to go into Forensics because of the X-Files but it wasn’t offered, so I figured Psychology was the next best thing. You could say I watch too much TV. But you’d be wrong.  

How does your work engage with ideas from Piaget (and colleagues of his era) as originally articulated or as have evolved over time? What drew you to the work that engages you most?

A friend once gifted me a sketch they made of Piaget for my birthday, which now sits on the bookshelf in my office and greets students when they walk in. I am a constructivist through and through and have found his ideas incredibly informative in my own work on the role of morality in the development of aggressive and antisocial conduct. The assertion that children actively construct their understanding of the social world through their experiences provides an alternative (and novel) framework for thinking about behaviors like aggression.

How do you characterize the understanding and processes of development What does it mean to you to be involved with development, its research, science, practice, education…?

As far as I’m concerned, everything that can be studied can be studied through a developmental lens. Everything has a past, present, and future. One point I try to drive home to my students is that developmental science is not the study of children, or adolescents, or aging; it is the study of stability and change. When you approach it from that perspective, the divisions between different disciplines start to feel less insurmountable. I feel like that’s a good thing.

Summarize and highlight one or more examples from your work and experience that you are excited to share. Why are you keen for others to learn from your efforts? 

I’ve drawn on the constructivist perspective of social domain theory as a guiding framework for exploring the relations between morality and aggression in early and middle childhood. If I had to convey one key take home message it’s that aggression is an incredibly complex social behavior and it would be a mistake to assume that harmful actions stem from deficits in moral cognitions or a dearth of emotions like sympathy or guilt. If you want to understand aggression (or any other behavior for that matter), get out there and talk to people to see the world from their point of view. If you go beyond surface level judgments of whether something is “good” or “bad” you’ll be amazed at how much you can learn.

What do you see as important changes/advances in the work or field that involves you? Consider how COVID, and post-COVID, conditions affect the work and community. 

The sea change we’ve seen in the aftermath of the “replicability crisis” has been incredibly positive on the whole. At the same time, it feels like many areas of developmental science are still struggling to figure out how to square the realities of doing good research with the demands of the system we find ourselves in. To offer one example that JPS members may recognize, it takes a lot of time, effort, and resources to interview young children. Even with simple experimental manipulations and/or cross-sectional data, you often need hundreds of participants to actually answer the questions you are asking. Despite the rise of online recruitment and Zoom as a data collection tool, it isn’t always appropriate and can still take years to complete a study from start to finish. Yet our timelines for developmental students, post-docs, and pre-tenured faculty members to produce and publish have, if anything, gotten shorter and more demanding. In the words of Donald Lynam, “statistical power does not care how hard it is to recruit your sample.”  So we need to think long and hard as a field about expectations and how to best train and support new developmental scholars in a manner that doesn’t sacrifice the integrity of our research.

How did you become involved in the Jean Piaget Society? Answer this question in a way that might encourage others to participate in JPS.

I joined JPS my first year in graduate school. But then I received my first paycheck as a grad student and realized I had to cut some costs if I was going to eat. As an assistant professor, I was delighted to finally have the opportunity to return to the family. The more trans-disciplinary societies are great, but there’s something uniquely comforting about being part of a community with a shared intellectual tradition. I don’t have to explain or justify why I think it’s important to study children’s social knowledge!

Please tell us about a hidden talent and/or a non-academic hobby that you enjoy.

Did I mention that I love TV?

When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? Share any experiences that illustrate your emerging aspirations, passion, curiosity – and changes along the way.

My earliest memories include wanting to be a writer, a ballerina, and a pianist. And indeed,during those early years I wrote, I danced, and I played the piano to my heart’s content. Eventually books and storytelling occupied most of my time and attention and I started dreaming about studying and living abroad (I was born and raised in Mexico) and being able to read and write in other languages (my first language is Spanish). I think it’s fair to say that curiosity and passion have been the constant thread in my long and unconventional academic trajectory: a BA in Literature gave way to an MA in Linguistics, which finally transformed into a PhD in Comparative Human Development with a focus on language socialization. In between all that, I was lucky to accomplish my dreams of living and studying abroad and of becoming a reader andwriter in other languages.

How does your work engage with ideas from Piaget (and colleagues of his era) as originally articulated or as have evolved over time? What drew you to the work that engages you most?

Interestingly, I think that my first Piagetian experiences happened when I attended a Montessori school as a child. Many years later after having taken a developmental psychology course as a graduate student I realized that I needed to revisit Montessori’s ideas (which I did as a side quest by completing a Montessori training) and from there I started exploring more in–depth the work of scholars like Piaget and Vygotsky. Since then, I have engaged the most with academic work that explores children’s developmental processes in socio–cultural contexts.

How do you characterize the understanding and processes of development What does it mean to you to be involved with development, its research, science, practice, education…?

To me, the study of human development needs to be done from an interdisciplinary perspective that considers the interrelation of individual and collective processes and that acknowledges the ideologically mediated nature of the questions that we ask, the concepts that we take for granted, and the extent to which we consider the diverse array of human experiences and developmental trajectories.

Summarize and highlight one or more examples from your work and experience that you are excited to share. Why are you keen for others to learn from your efforts? 

My work explores the inter relationship between language, culture, and the intergenerational creation, (re)production and transformation of knowledge with a focus on bilingual and multilingual families and communities. I am equally proud of my work on early language socialization in contexts of language shift as I am of my work with students in the classroom. I am motivated by the goal of contributing to dismantling prevalent deficit views that directly affect racialized and marginalized families and communities globally.

What do you see as important changes/advances in the work or field that involves you? Consider how COVID, and post-COVID, conditions affect the work and community. 

COVID and other ongoing global challenges are pushing us to be more flexible in our questions, our methodologies, and in the ways in which we disseminate our research. These challenges have also made more evident than ever that we need to (re)center communities and care in the work that we do.

How did you become involved in the Jean Piaget Society? Answer this question in a way that might encourage others to participate in JPS.

I learned about JPS through mentors and peers from my graduate program when I was still a student. The first conference I attended was in 2019 and I thoroughly enjoyed the diversity of presentations and the presence of scholars from different parts of the world. I attended a couple of conferences virtually after that and this year I am happy to be attending an in–person conference again.

Please tell us about a hidden talent and/or a non-academic hobby that you enjoy.

I enjoy listening to music and singing along. I memorize lyrics easily and they stay with me forever. Whenever I can, I follow a song that pops into my brain and start a listening/sing along session. I can do this on my own, but I also like sharing the music that I enjoy with other people. I am lucky that I have always found people who are willing to join me in these listening/signing sessions.

For a piece by Dr. Bustamante https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/aeq.12487

When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? Share any experiences that illustrate your emerging aspirations, passion, curiosity – and changes along the way.

The first career I entertained as a child was to be an actor. I enjoyed acting in school plays and admired actors in movies. The highlight of my acting career was playing the Pirate King in the Pirates of Penzance. In many ways, this idea (which I never pursued beyond the fifth grade) provided me with confidence to speak in front of other people in a way that engages the audience. One of the courses I have been teaching for the past few years has been an introductory biology class which has an enrollment of 300 students. I thoroughly enjoy teaching and interacting with this large group of students as I walk up and down the aisles of the lecture auditorium with my iPad to let the students know I am as invested in them and the material as they are.

How does your work engage with ideas from Piaget (and colleagues of his era) as originally articulated or as have evolved over time? What drew you to the work that engages you most?

I am sure many people feel this way, but I was drawn to Piaget and his work because my early career and academics mirrored his. I went to Stony Brook University in New York for my undergraduate degree where I studied biology. I spent the last two years of my undergraduate career working in an invertebrate zoology lab where I studied mollusk predation in Long Island’s Great South Bay. I did not begin my cognitive psychology education until I began my doctoral studies at Columbia University and was particularly drawn to the field by observing my own children. As I read Piaget’s works, I felt a connection to his thought process of development and in particular the development of spatial reasoning. Since my research focuses on adolescents and young adults, I am fascinated by Piaget’s developmental research to understand what has transpired in a person’s cognitive development and how we can engage their prior experiences to learn later in life.

How do you characterize the understanding and processes of development What does it mean to you to be involved with development, its research, science, practice, education…?

I would characterize the understanding and processes of development as perhaps one of the most important concepts we can understand as a society. Perhaps I am a little biased at this point in my life as I have two young sons (3.5 years old and 1.5 years old), but I often find myself in pediatrician offices and teacher meetings wishing more people understood Piaget’s research. I try to keep my research hat off while I have the privilege of playing with my sons and watching them develop. However, my observations of the different toys and books they interact with the most and talk about days later has provided the foundational ideas for my current research which focuses on initial learning experiences and how tactile kinesthetics with the learned material impacts long-term understanding. In particular, studying how adolescents learn through hands-on manipulatives, since it was such a large component of how they learned as young children, has become the focus of my research and teaching. I am hopeful that my research can inspire change in 7-12 grade classrooms (and even university courses) to encourage a greater focus on haptics to make the abstract more concrete.

Summarize and highlight one or more examples from your work and experience that you are excited to share. Why are you keen for others to learn from your efforts? 

I am most excited about new technologies and how we interact with them and how they interact with us. Artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality are new frontiers in the technological revolution, and it is important to learn how they impact human thinking and development and how human thinking and development impact technology! While my team and I are in the early days of research with these technologies, we have spent a few years studying the cognitive impacts of drone operation over time. I was fortunate enough to present some of this research at JPS in Madrid and have an update for Toronto! It is so interesting to see how people come to new technologies with past experiences even if they have never used the technology before. For example, our drone research relies on prior experiences of videogame play since it is a tangential learning experience. We modeled our understanding of the cognitive impacts of drone operation through the theoretical framework of Piaget’s constructivism.

What do you see as important changes/advances in the work or field that involves you? Consider how COVID, and post-COVID, conditions affect the work and community. 

I think an important change in the field, in light of the pandemic, is the incredible importance of making science and facts understandable to the layman. I have always tried to make my writing as accessible and engaging to as many people as possible, but often find when we talk about theories in abstract ways, we lose people’s attention. I believe concrete and engaging facts and data that are presented in easily understood and digestible ways are the best path forward not just for the field but for society. Science literacy seems to be decreasing around the globe, and it is important we make our research as clear as possible to present the facts so individuals can make informed decisions.

How did you become involved in the Jean Piaget Society? Answer this question in a way that might encourage others to participate in JPS.

My first JPS conference meeting was in 2016 in Chicago. Two of my colleagues were working on their proposal submissions at the end of 2015 and were telling me about their research and JPS. I was intrigued by both and submitted a poster which got accepted and became my first academic conference presentation! The JPS conferences have always afforded an inviting and intimate setting to share research and ideas with colleagues around the world who have similar interests. I always look forward to meetings where I can meet new people and reconnect with my JPS friends. Even as a doctoral student, I always felt welcomed and that my voice was heard during the conferences. JPS’s devotion to “the study of the construction of knowledge and development” is evident during the conference meetings and through the journal, Human Development. These resources have supported my research which is closely aligned with this ideal. My entire research career, which I like to say started with that first poster in 2016, has been entrenched in the construction of knowledge and the prior experiences people use to build new knowledge and understanding. In addition to kickstarting my research, being a JPS member has influenced my work heavily through Piaget’s ideas which are usually my foundational theoretical frameworks. I feel so fortunate to have found JPS and that JPS has accepted me and provides an opportunity for me to showcase my work and to learn from like-minded colleagues.

Please tell us about a hidden talent and/or a non-academic hobby that you enjoy.

If I didn’t devote my time and studies to research, I would probably have spent the time becoming a sommelier. I love wine (and I know many do). At the risk of sounding like I overindulge, I mean to say I love to try new wines. The majority of my honeymoon was spent in small towns in France and Italy at different wineries learning about the wine making processes, the laws that regulate the wine, and the incredible range of flavor profiles. I am by no means close to being a somm, but I like to pretend I know a thing or two about wine when I am out to dinner with my wife and close friends. I even host an annual wine and cheese party for my friends from undergraduate who, despite my best efforts and painstaking selection of a wide range of varietals, still request “just give me a red.” I am always open to sharing a glass to enjoy the wine and more importantly the company regardless of their knowledge.

Thank you for the chance to get to know me through this interview. I hope to see you at a future JPS conference and am always available to make a new acquaintance and share a glass of wine.

When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? Share any experiences that illustrate your emerging aspirations, passion, curiosity – and changes along the way.

As a child, on a piece of paper, I made 12 blocks. In each block, I put one thing I wanted to do when I grew up. One was a scientist; one a ballet dancer; one a violinist; one a housewife with lots of committees – that’s my mother. I wanted to dance. When I was 13, the Halifax dance company I was in, went on tours. We did Swan Lake on Toes! I was a Little Swan! I love ballet; I loved the dance teacher; that time of my life! A little later, I had to choose between ballet and violin. My father was not happy with ballet as a career. I chose violin. 50 years later, I went back to dancing!!

How does your work engage with ideas from Piaget (and colleagues of his era) as originally articulated or as have evolved over time? What drew you to the work that engages you most?

I happened to study with Jean Piaget on a scholarship [from Canada]. I knew a little bit of French, they sent me to Paris, it was 1957. I got fascinated by Piaget’s work, more philosophically. Epistemologically. I was there for three years. I eventually did my doctorate there, but it wasn’t yet.

I was one of the only people in North America who ever worked with Piaget. I got a job at the Elementary Science Study, a wonderful organization, to develop curriculum for elementary school children. I was the only staff who didn’t know any science. There weren’t any children on staff. So I became the child that everybody tried their ideas on. And that was a terrific education for me. They never told me anything. They just asked me what I would do with this or how I would go about that. And it was terrific. I loved it, and I loved learning that way. And it was the first time really I learned in my own way.

In developing the curriculum, when they took it into the classrooms, I went along to try to figure out what the kids were thinking about it. It was exactly what I did in Geneva as a research assistant. Talk to kids and find out what they’re thinking about something, keeping them thinking more and talking more. Then I started teaching teachers. I did exactly the same things in teaching as I did, in researching, asking questions, not saying yes or no to answers. It ended that I loved to work with teachers. And having them think about what it means to learn something. How did people learn things and what can anyone do to help you?

Summarize and highlight one or more examples from your work and experience that you are excited to share. Why are you keen for others to learn from your efforts? 

Piaget and Inhelder are at the heart of all of the work I’ve done in education. My question is how do people learn things? And what can anyone do to help?

The attitude that I had as a Genevan researcher was the best attitude to have with them, asking what they thought about this and that, and never giving any clues as to what I thought about it. I loved playing that. I loved that role and getting kids finding how interested kids got in their own thoughts and then puzzles and how hard they would think, and so on. And gradually I realized that was a pedagogical approach. What I think of as teaching now is: getting people thinking about interesting and important topics. Having them work out their own ideas, come to their own commitments of what they think about it. Not by somebody else telling them what they should think about it. That came straight from Piaget and Inhelder, and it’s the heart of my work.

I started teaching at Harvard Graduate School of Education in the 1980s. Like a bridge between Piaget and education, I gave graduate students cool stuff to study. For example, I’d come into the classroom, I had one student stand here, another student stand there. I’d ask them, where on the wall, should they put a little mirror, so that person can see that person? I never tell them anything that’s right or wrong.

How did you become involved in the Jean Piaget Society? Answer this question in a way that might encourage others to participate in JPS.

The first thing is that I translated Piaget’s lecture. That was at the second JPS meeting. So, that’s how I learned about JPS. I translated Piaget for the first time around 1964. Whenever he was invited, he said they had to invite me to translate. So that’s what happened with the JPS. I remember feeling very warmly towards the women who had created this society. Lois McCumber and Jeanette Gallagher and others. I just remember they’re doing this great job creating this great association. And, knowing that they were teachers, they came from education, which is where I came from, too, by that point. That seemed important to me. My sense is that the sessions were about education and its place in education. They weren’t very focused on psychology research of the day. They were more interested in educational practice of the day and how Piaget and Inhelder could help.

JPS seemed like a home base. For some time, I think the society was paying less attention to education, and I was hoping that our work could draw interest back to education in that society. I always felt at home at Piaget Society meetings and was happy to introduce students there. I have a sense that, there’s a good home for education again.

Please tell us about a hidden talent and/or a non-academic hobby that you enjoy.

I learned about a dance class for people over 55. I didn’t want to do it then, because I thought I would be too heartbroken (after not dancing since youth). I was 58 before I had the guts to dance again. First class was fantastic! There I was dancing! So I kept dancing. I am still dancing!! I performed last weekend.

1. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? Share any experiences that illustrate your emerging aspirations, passion, curiosity – and changes along the way.

I didn’t think about future jobs and careers very much at all when I was young – the messages I encountered were something like “do well in school…” but with a vague “because” associated with that expectation. My work recently is teaching me how common it was at that time to treat school achievement as a common-sense article of faith among people with backgrounds similar to mine. In any case, I wasn’t a great student in terms of motivation and focus in those years, and I had no idea why school seemed to click for some of my peers (as well as my identical twin brother) and I couldn’t get much traction on it psychologically.

Looking back, late high school was when my interests and activities began to point in the general direction of my current work as a developmental researcher. I had met a few teachers who were involved in experiential and outdoor education – “alternative” educational approaches that first exposed me to a critical perspective on conventional middle-class ways of organizing learning. Although I’m not involved in these fields today, I’ve been working to understand the developmental implications of different cultural ways of organizing learning in childhood ever since.

2. How do you characterize the understanding and processes of development?  What does it mean to you to be involved with development, its research, science, practice, education…?

To me, asking and addressing developmental questions involves finding connections between individual and cultural processes or, in other words, relations between the kinds of social and psychological work people do and how that work creates patterned and consequential situations for learning and development. I have very little interest in knowledge about development that is not built on thorough cultural, historical, and political contextualization.

3. How does your work engage with ideas from Piaget (and colleagues of his era) as originally articulated or as have evolved over time? What drew you to the work that engages you most?

One of the fundamental lessons I associate with Piaget, among others, is the importance of taking an “actor perspective” (versus an “observer perspective”) in developmental research (language I borrow from Steele, 2010). Piaget contributed immensely to this epistemological commitment in developmental science, and was systematically concerned with understanding how knowledge can be viewed as a process of personal sense-making among young children. As a cultural psychologist, I work at different timescales than those which were central to Piaget; however, he reminds me that agency is no less active in cultural and historical processes than it is in ontogenetic and microgenetic processes.

My work positions me as a cultural psychologist just as much as a developmental psychologist, and I see both as deeply compatible with Piaget’s commitments. Candidly, I think too great a proportion of research on “culture” is focused on differences between social groups leaving cultural psychological questions about origin and history – where does this psychological or developmental pattern come from? What gives rise to it? – relatively under-emphasized. For this reason, Piaget’s interests in genetics resonates quite deeply in my work.

4. Summarize and highlight one or more examples from your work and experience that you are excited to share. Why are you keen for others to learn from your efforts? 

One line of my research is focused on the cultural values and practices that give rise to children’s collaborative initiative in everyday helping, as well as whether these differ between some communities and others. Indeed, there are striking cultural differences out there [e.g., Alcala et al., 2014; Coppens et al., 2016] but at least as interesting to me is how and why children’s prosocial development seems to diverge. In recent studies [Coppens & Rogoff, 2021; Coppens et al., 2020; Rogoff & Coppens, 2024/in press], parents’ proleptic expectations – like future-fulfilling cultural expectations – seemed very important. Parents who saw toddlers’ early attempts to get involved in household chores as an intention to help, structured children’s engagement in ways that seemed to give rise to more helping. Parents who saw toddlers’ attempts to get involved as play structured children’s day in ways that allowed for more play… and less prosocial helping.

This past-future dialectic is a central thread in my developmental research; I think it is always present and a primary way that “culture” works in relation to learning and development. A newer line of research looks at how archetypical identity stories work in relation with both educational and workforce trajectory decisions among young people from rural backgrounds [Seaman et al., 2023].

5. How did you become involved in the Jean Piaget Society? Answer this question in a way that might encourage others to participate in JPS.

I have found the Jean Piaget Society to be deeply inclusive. I’ve presented papers and research at JPS meetings that were never ostensibly about classical Piagetian concepts, but always felt welcome among a group of thinkers interested to see connections and relations. In this career, my work has benefitted most from conversations with people who were just far enough afield to show me a new way of thinking about or interpreting a problem, but not so far afield that my own work did not provoke them. JPS has often embodied this sweet spot.

     6. Please tell us about a hidden talent and/or a non-academic hobby that you enjoy.

 I am friends with anything involving two wheels and turns. Bicycles and motorcycles are favorites.

• When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?

As a young kid, my first known career aspiration was to be a ballerina. These days the closest I come to a stage is teaching my undergraduate Introduction to Human Development class.

• How do you characterize the understanding and processes of development? What does it mean to you to be involved with questions of development?

Among other things, studying the processes of development offers insights into why individuals and groups treat each other unfairly and what can be done to create a more just society from the ground up. In terms of personal meaning, my research is a way of making a positive contribution towards those goals.

• How does your work engage with ideas from Piaget (and colleagues of his era) as originally articulated or as have evolved over time? What drew you to the work that engages you most?

As a moral development researcher in the social domain theory tradition, my work is directly influenced by Piaget’s constructivist perspective on the origins of morality.

• Summarize and highlight one or more examples from your work and experience that you are excited to share. Why are you keen for others to learn from your efforts?

So far, I am most excited to share my research on children’s perceptions of social inequalities, including how children acknowledge, explain, evaluate, and respond to inequalities pertaining to race, social class, gender, and nationality. This work stretches current theories to consider how children think about the hierarchies of their social world and identifies the relational processes and social contexts that foster (or suppress) resistance to injustice early in development.

• What do you see as important changes/advances in the work or field? Consider how COVID, and post-COVID, conditions affect the work and community.

One recent change I’ve been happy to see is greater recognition of areas of research that have always had equity as a core focus as well as new generations of developmental scientists who intentionally claim this as central to their work.

• How did you become involved in the Jean Piaget Society?

I was introduced to JPS in grad school by my mentor, Melanie Killen. As a faculty member, I was encouraged to deepen my involvement by my colleague, Judi Smetana. As a society, JPS is unique in its strong theoretical focus and its genuinely international membership.

• Please tell us about a hidden talent and/or a non-academic hobby that you enjoy.

If I have a hidden talent, then it’s very well hidden because I haven’t found it yet. I do enjoy being in nature and love a good weekend hike.

• When you were little what did you want to be when you grew up? If your trajectory changed, what contributed to that?

When I was little, I wanted to be a clown. My trajectory has changed, though I think the joy that I associated with becoming a clown is something I strive for everyday in my professional work. As an education researcher who collaborates closely with teachers and students in local schools, finding joy and creating joy remain a north star for me. I came to this country from India when I was two years old and for a very long time, my parents said I could be anything I wanted to be–including a professional clown. Of course, as time went on, the pressures of neoliberalism, ideologies of gender, and the respectability politics of being the “right kind of immigrant girl,” took hold and I found myself becoming an electrical engineer. In the evenings, I gravitated toward community service–first, as a domestic violence counselor, and later as a tutor for incarcerated youth and adults seeking a high school diploma equivalency degree. They were the ones who influenced my later decision to leave engineering and become a fulltime mathematics teacher before going on to graduate school and eventually, finding my way into the study of mathematics teaching and learning as a researcher.

• What drew you to do work in developmental science?

I rarely identify as a “developmental scientist,” but that is a matter of what the field might see me as more so than any reflection of my own thinking. I identify with work at the intersection of critical theory and Learning Sciences, where a developmental approach is fundamentally a cultural analysis of people in relation to their social worlds both immediate (family, school, neighborhood) and distant (nation, globe). The richness of thinking about learning and development as cultural ways of knowing, being and valuing–what some would call epistemology, ontology, and axiology–keeps me motivated in my work. So, I am a developmental scientist in so far as I care greatly about issues of power as they play out in who children are and are becoming in mathematics learning; of who they can be and become amidst the constraints of racially stratified societies.

• Can you please highlight a couple of findings from your work that you are particularly proud of and why?

My current work explores the role of imagination in teaching, learning, and development. I suppose I turn to imagination, in part, as a way to undo the constraints my prior work shows are at play for children in schools. For example, in a recent piece I follow the year long experiences of a Latina 9th grade student in a low–track math class, I found methodological ways of tracing the nested positioning that shaped her development. Specifically, how she positioned and was positioned by peers as an “undesirable” learner, how her class was positioned within the school as an “undesirable” track, and how her school was positioned as “undesirable” among district high schools based on its racial composition and academic achievement. In short, I trace how racial capitalism–neoliberal ideology–permeate the multiple levels of her social worlds (district, school, class) in ways that create her marginalization (undesirability) as the only student to fail the course that year. These findings, published in Anthropology & Education Quarterly, appear 30 years after an “anthropology of learning” first appeared in that journal. I find such accounts of children’s development–accounts that shift the unit of analysis from individual persons to interactions and contexts that afford and constrain what is possible–especially compelling. Certainly, how I position and have been positioned as a woman of color scholar has likely informed my capacity to understand these nested contexts of being and becoming, and the ideologies that govern them. That is, my journey in being made a “successful” scholar is not far removed from seeing that student’s journey in being made a “failure” in school.

• What do you see as important changes/advances in the field especially in light of both our COVID and post-COVID eras?

I am not sure I can speak to this issue as yet–we are not post–COVID and are likely never to be within my lifetime. The inequalities in schools and societies that the pandemic laid bare should move us as scholars but how it moves us–advances and changes us–is to be determined. I think that will depend a great deal on our courage to be changed and advanced by such a global humanitarian travesty.

• How did you become involved in the Jean Piaget Society?

I was introduced to the thinking and writing of Jean Piaget in graduate school and have since spent many a night grappling with the work as I became someone tasked with teaching him to others (as a professor). I feel that is where I likely first became involved, since JPS is but a collection of people who are taking seriously his legacy by extending, building, and elaborating it, but we all probably first got involved by first reading his work. I was invited to join the board soon after I met Dr. Larry Nucci, whom I would describe as one of the most gracious and thoughtful scholars I have ever met. As a new board member, I am still learning who we are and can be, as JPS. The pandemic has presented us great challenges–as a global organization, the separateness is real and meaningful as regards learning with and from one another. I am hopeful, however, that as my history with JPS lengthens, so too will my understanding of how we have been impactful and how we can continue being so in consequential ways to people the globe over.

• Please tell us about a hidden talent and/or a non-academic hobby that you enjoy.

I am not one to easily identify a talent–hidden or otherwise. My children, however, find it quite novel that I can clap with one hand. While some may ask what the sound of one hand clapping is, I can actually clap with one hand and listen in. I attribute this to years of my parents insisting I learn piano and in the process, developed quite a finger span!

• When you were little what did you want to be when you grew up? If your trajectory changed, what contributed to that?

For most of my high school years, I wanted to be a medical doctor. I always got good grades in the sciences, and it seemed to be a natural direction. However, when it came time to select a major in College (McGill University), the “typical” medical fields of Biology and Chemistry did not excite me. I ended up making the tough choice between Psychology and Mathematics, with math winning out – but I did complete a minor in Cognitive Science which covered Psychology, Linguistics, Philosophy, and Computer Science. As I graduated, I realized how much more I enjoyed my Cognitive Science minor than my major.

• What drew you to do work in developmental science?

Oddly, I did not take any developmental courses in college, although I was exposed to developmental theory in my Cognitive Science capstone class. When it came time to consider graduate school, I was excited by what little I knew about development (at the time, I still held the naïve view that developmental research was constrained to children) and wanted to explore it further. I expected to have to take an additional qualifying year given my lack of background, but my cognitive science mentor assured me that I would catch up quickly if I entered any program. I was fortunate enough to be accepted to University of Toronto to work with Phil Zelazo, and although I immediately took graduate level developmental classes, my first exposure to the undergraduate class was when I was the instructor 18 months later!

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I have a clearer view of what excited me about the developmental program at Toronto and the field in general. What began as a curiosity about children and their behavior, has now blossomed into a full blown appreciation of mechanisms in context changing over time. I now find myself puzzled at my colleagues’ research presentations as they seem only to be interested in how adults are performing at one point of time, ignoring the layered information we get from understanding how we got to that stage and where we are going.

• Can you please highlight a couple of findings from your work that you are particularly proud of and why?

In a pair of publications (Marcovitch, Boseovski, & Knapp, 2007; Marcovitch, Boseovski, Kanpp, & Kane, 2010), my co-authors and I demonstrated how errors in task switching can be framed as goal neglect errors, and how these errors are magnified in context where maintenance of the goal is not strictly necessary to perform the task. What I particularly liked about this project was that it was the first time (but not the last) that I was involved in translating a task used with adults into one that was appropriate for 5- and 6-year-old children – this is not uncommon in experimental developmental research, but has a host of unexpected challenges associated with it. It was also the first time in my research career (and maybe the last) that the predictions matched the actual behavior of the children.

Although the academic influences of working on a variation of the Dimensional Change Card Sort task is unsurprising given my graduate training (thanks Phil!), I drew upon a personal child experience in conceptualizing the processes involved. Our bathroom light experienced a short so that when it was turned on, the entire house lost power. My father told us repeatedly not to turn the light on. And, of course, my siblings and I would invariably turn on the light every time we entered the bathroom causing my father to utter words that are not said on network television. I finally came up with the idea (I was a promising 12-year-old problem solver) of putting a piece of tape on the light switch – that tactile sensation served as a cue to reflect upon the new goal of not turning the light on.

• What do you see as important changes/advances in the field especially in light of both our COVID and post-COVID eras?

For many developmental scientists, COVID slowed down or stopped research activity, forced unwanted changes to ongoing and upcoming work, and compromised data collection. Others found new creative ways to conduct research studies and seemed to benefit from the larger reach remote testing can offer. So, the big changes to the field are dealing with over two years of inactivity or compromised research (and that direct effect on the careers of graduate students and emerging scholars), while at the same time opening up the possibility of larger research projects on grander scales where geography no longer serves as a major constraint. Both of these issues have to be thought about seriously, and it is organizations such as JPS that can suggest guidance on how to best navigate our way through this time and into the future.

I will point out what I have been saying for a few decades now – techniques may change with time, focal interests wax and wane, technology advances some of us while leaving others behind, but the one constant has been the importance of careful, experimental research. It is still the only way to ask direct questions about causality (and no, longitudinal designs do not completely resolve this issue). Experimental child psychology may look different over time, but it will always have a place in developmental science.

• How did you become involved in the Jean Piaget Society?

My graduate mentor encouraged my involvement in the society, and I had the opportunity to attend my first JPS meeting in Chicago in 1998. My future spouse (and former JPS board member Janet Boseovski) and I stayed with a friend (thanks Jessica!!!) and had the conference fee waived in return for volunteer hours. It was a terrific event – I had the opportunity to meet senior scholars in the field, to attend talks in related areas, and to watch the Bulls win a playoff game in a bar with U Chicago grad students and faculty.

Since then, I attended as many meetings as I could, preferring the intimacy of JPS to the meetings of more generalized societies. JPS members have a way of making you feel valued as a researcher without sacrificing scientific rigor, and this is precisely the way most science is conducted (yes, the Big Bang Theory is just a TV show). It is an organization simultaneously dedicated to the investment of emerging scholars while still honoring the career wisdom of veterans. You can email any JPS member and receive a courteous, enthusiastic response in return.

As an experimental cognitive developmentalist, I have been trained that research ideas are generated from strong theoretical perspectives. Piaget’s theoretical perspective and large corpus of work remains relevant to all research today, even when researchers are seemingly disproving some of his ideas (and yes, disproving ideas is the prominent tenet in science which even strengthens Piaget’s ongoing influence) or claiming that our modern techniques were beyond his reach. To study any element of knowledge and development means that you have been influenced by Piaget, even if that influence is after several degrees of separation. Ironically, as my colleagues are trying to get credit for unique, ingenious ideas, I think that they would be better served tracing the development of these ideas from its theoretical roots to their current state. Similar to people, the development of ideas gives us a stronger understanding of the rich contextualization that arises from our contemporary studies.

The influence has been strong on my own work – I still take a theory driven approach to my research, and every student who works with me or who has taken a class with me, knows that I’m not simply satisfied with “cool ideas” unless they are theoretically bound. And I am equally excited about research that challenges theories (even my own) as I am about research that is consistent with theories.

• Please tell us about a hidden talent and/or a non-academic hobby that you enjoy.

In my younger days, I would have impressed many by the sheer amount of food that I was able to consume (JPS 2019 in Portland – I promise I had more donuts in the 15 minute break than anyone). But now the appreciation of quality food has become a passion. And a slice of Brooklyn pizza can excite me as much as a 5 course Michelin star meal.

Thanks to the food passion, I have also developed a hobby of exercise which has me running or strength training every day. For those of you who do not exercise at meetings, may I suggest you reconsider. It is invigorating to attend those early morning sessions having just experienced a workout, you will fell less guilty about eating the delicious snacks, you will look forward to the special dinners, and you can meet interesting people with similar hobbies. JPS running club, perhaps?

• When you were little what did you want to be when you grew up? If your trajectory changed, what contributed to that?

One of my earliest memories involves lining up all of my stuffed animals for weekday lessons. Apparently the very young Dr. McKenzie was quite the taskmaster! Though my interest in teaching has been long-lasting, my research interests developed somewhat more recently. My experience studying abroad in Italy as an undergraduate ignited my curiosity about how culture structures the life course. Living in Italy, and then in Thailand post-graduation, sparked some very legitimate questions about how globalization affects youth development and family relationships.

• What drew you to do work in developmental science?

When I returned from 14 months in Thailand and applied to graduate programs, I was convinced that I was a social psychologist-in-the-making. I trained in a social psychology research lab, spoke with potential social psychology mentors across the U.S., and applied to social psychology PhD programs. One afternoon, I received an email from Dr. Lene Jensen (who would later become my graduate mentor at Clark University), which was along the lines of, “I noticed that you applied to our social psychology PhD program, but you sound like more of a developmentalist…”

Lene was right. I am a developmental scientist because I study how the self comes into being, and how that coming into being is shaped by culture. I am especially interested in how cultural change (via globalization, and immigration) influences young people’s beliefs, behaviors, and relationships.

• Can you please highlight a couple of findings from your work that you are particularly proud of and why?

I am especially proud of my work that contributes to the theoretical base of the psychology of globalization. For example, alongside students in my Human Development & Culture Research Lab, I have written about globalization-based cultural brokerage. This work highlights how adolescents in northern Thailand broker their parents’ participation into media-driven culture, in turn shifting power dynamics in a nation that has traditionally been characterized by age-based hierarchy.

In another recent study, I trace how local and global values are negotiated among remotely bicultural youth in northern Thailand. This piece, which I shared at a recent Jean Piaget Society meeting, unveils psychological strategies that adolescents employ to integrate local and global values (e.g., by reshaping local values to encompass global values, and by dividing up the life course such that global and local values take turns directing one’s life). This study also highlights integration-related challenges, whereby some adolescents experience local and global values as antithetical, and are therefore forced to endorse one value system over the other.

Both studies speak to how young people in the rapidly globalizing Thai context internalize global values, and how local values are at once transformed and maintained in the face of sociocultural change.

• What do you see as important changes/advances in the field especially in light of both our COVID and post-COVID eras?

I’d like to offer an exclusively optimistic answer here, but I see both challenges and opportunities. I believe that cultural developmental research is fundamentally relational. In my experience, people invite you to understand their lived realities if you offer your presence—psychological and physical.

In this COVID/post-COVID era, universities are understandably wary of sending faculty abroad to conduct research. Administrators at some U.S. universities, for instance, have curtailed their support for research-related travel, with the justification that COVID has taught us that much of our work can be conducted virtually. I worry that this mantra may stymie fieldwork that is central to obtaining high-quality cultural developmental data. How do we establish relationship and presence when we are not present? In the future, we will need to insist upon physical presence as the backbone of our work.

On the other hand, COVID has inspired creative research methodologies (e.g., digital ethnography, social media analysis, Google Trends analysis) that will most certainly broaden the scope of developmental science, and push us to reconsider the meaning of “data” in years to come.

• How did you become involved in the Jean Piaget Society?

I was introduced to JPS by Drs. Maricela Correa-Chávez and Allison DiBianca Fasoli (thanks, you two!) several years ago. Both suggested that I would appreciate JPS because its members tended to think about developmental science rather deeply, and because JPS meetings are far more intimate than larger developmental conferences.

When I attended my first JPS meeting in Portland, both promises were fulfilled. During that meeting, I reconnected with colleagues I hadn’t seen in years and forged new professional relationships. I was especially grateful to JPS for the dynamic set of invited speakers, the careful integration of academics at various points in their careers, and the many opportunities to socialize in hallways before and after meetings. One of the things I have missed most during the height of COVID was the opportunity for naturally unfolding conference conversations over coffee and croissants (which JPS also does quite well).

• Please tell us about a hidden talent and/or a non-academic hobby that you enjoy.

Though I’m fortunate to have had a number of powerful teachers over the years, my two most influential non-academic teachers are just as important: nature and my two-year-old son. When I’m not working, I’m generally “at school” (that is, spending time outside, or with my son – and ideally, both). I have always been most fulfilled when completely unplugged during multi-day backpacking and camping trips. Pre-baby and pre-COVID, these trips spanned Asia, Latin America, Europe, and North America. More recently, I have concentrated on exploring locally alongside my son and husband, and have fallen in love with the natural beauty—so many memorable teachers—of California.