Dana Miller-Cotto, Ph.D.
Pronunciation: DAY-nuh mil-er k-OH-t-oh
I am currently an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Berkeley School of Education (BSE) at University of California, Berkeley. My research aims to improve instruction and learning environments for children to learn and thrive, regardless of where they come from. My research and scholarly work have focused on understanding underlying cognitive processes that explain individual differences in early mathematics learning. My primary line of research focuses on the role of executive functions - a set of core cognitive processes that regulate our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions - in how children learn mathematics, to use this information to design effective learning materials based on cognitive science. Within this topic, my work 1) tests prominent theories of working memory, a component of executive functions, within the context of early math learning and 2) designs learning materials that support students’ working memory skills. A significant portion of my research focuses on individual differences in math performance for minoritized students, particularly Black and Latinx students living in poverty, who generally demonstrate lower performance in mathematics in the U.S. Embedded in this work is the goal of ensuring that minoritized students' cultural traditions, values, and perspectives are valued in their educational opportunities. |
More recently, I've began examining the potential role of varying cultural values across groups of children, and the limitations of common executive function tasks when assessing children from minoritized communities. For example, many executive function assessments are conducted by an (unfamiliar) adult with a child, an interaction that is uncommon and unlikely in cultures where children and adults don’t interact in these ways, which may affect performance on executive function asks. This is one of several assumptions of assessment this line of research seeks to examine.
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Please note: I am not currently accepting PhD students to work with me. Please contact me directly if you have questions about current and ongoing projects for future (i.e., 2025 - 2026) admission cycles. Relatedly, I strongly advocate for undergraduate research experiences and welcome opportunities to work with undergraduates in my research. If you are an undergraduate student who hopes to gain research experiences in my lab, please send me an email indicating your interest at [email protected].
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops".
- Stephen Jay Gould, Historian of Science