Dr. Marion Goldstein leads R&D and evaluations that advance knowledge of strategies to strengthen STEM education for all students. Many of her studies examine how technology can be strategically employed to enhance preK–12 teaching and learning. To all of her research, she brings an extensive knowledge of developmental psychology, program evaluation, quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, and instructional design. Working in partnership with publishers, curriculum designers, game developers, programmers, teachers, students, parents, and administrators, she helps create tools that work in real-world settings and accommodate a variety of instructional needs.

Dr. Goldstein is a co-principal investigator on Next Generation Preschool Science, a four-year NSF-funded project to develop and evaluate a program to promote young children’s learning of key science practices and concepts. Additionally, she serves as project director for PLUM Rx, a mobile-accessible, digital media research-design project that will create opportunities to bring environmental science learning to hard-to-reach urban families. Dr. Goldstein also works internationally in partnership with Sesame Workshop and local research partners to develop assessments and evaluate the promise of Dream, Save, Do, a financial empowerment program for young children funded by MetLife. Additionally, she is a senior researcher on EDC’s Ready to Learn team, which has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education since 2006 to conduct research and evaluation studies to measure children’s learning from media-rich literacy, math, and science learning resources developed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS with the goal of improving school readiness among preschoolers in high-need communities.

Recently, Dr. Goldstein served as research director for Year of the Solar System, funded by NASA, in which she directed the evaluation of digital resources designed to address the curricular needs of grades 6–12 science teachers and students, and for Possible Worlds, an IES-funded project to develop and test a series of game-based activities to support science and literacy instruction. She presented findings from this latter work in a series of papers and reports, including “Using Students’ Naive Theories to Design Games for Middle-Grades Science” and “Does Gameplay Prepare Students to Learn? Lessons From a Field Test.” She also served as a lead researcher in an EDC initiative to identify and document lessons learned from New York City’s iSchool program and Cisco’s 21st Century Initiative in the Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, Public School System.

Dr. Goldstein has co-authored numerous articles based on her research, including “What Constitutes Skilled Argumentation and How Does it Develop?” (Informal Logic), “Designing for Diversity: How Educators Can Incorporate Cultural Competence in Programs for Urban Youth” (New Directions for Youth Development), and “A Collaborative Approach to Nutrition Education for College Students” (Journal of American College Health). Additionally, to support the translation of research to practice and policy-making, she regularly shares her findings at the annual conferences of such organizations as the International Society for Technology in Education, American Educational Research Association, Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education, National Association for Research in Science Teaching, Society for Research in Child Development, and Head Start.

Prior to joining EDC, Dr. Goldstein worked as a research consultant and coordinator for initiatives focused on health promotion and the evaluation and redesign of professional development. She holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from New York University, and an EdD in Educational Technology from Teachers College, Columbia University.