research overview
- Dr. Otero designs and investigates learning environments that involve learners in negotiation and risk-taking as a means for meeting multiple goals: (1) participation, belonging, and leadership; (2) articulating, revising, and implementing ideas; and (3) establishing agency through evidence and consensus. The populations of interest include university and high school students learning physics, high school teachers learning how to do research and teach physics inductively, and university faculty who seek to make modifications to their teaching practices or to cultural practices of their departments or universities. Relational leadership models together with structure/agency theory is used to address three types of learning: learning physics, learning about teaching physics, and institutional learning--social change. Through qualitative and quantitative approaches, Otero measures outcomes and create explanatory models for what factors are most influential in instigating desired change.
