Learning and Development Research Group

05/05/2026

So proud of Hannah for presenting her incredible honors thesis and UCARE project on parenting behaviors across different contexts and their associations with children’s classroom behaviors at the Student Research Days!

05/03/2026

The lab is very delinquent on posting, but first up… we had a wonderful social to celebrate another fantastic year at Paint Yourself Silly! We are going to dearly miss our seniors, Hannah and Naomi!

11/14/2025

We escaped with 14 minutes to spare! It took every single one of us to put together the clues (and maybe a few hints) to make it out of the locked house!

08/20/2025

Third grade is a pivotal time for student learning and development, with rising expectations for behavior, standardized testing and brand-new learning concepts in both reading and math. Jenna Finch, assistant professor of psychology, has received a five-year, $928,922 National Science Foundation (NSF) Early Career Development Program award to investigate this critical year of education and how to best support young learners.

Finch said, "If you talk to teachers and administrators, they know that this transition is a big one. But there has been almost no research trying to understand what is changing in these classrooms from second to third grade. And there is a group of students who need additional support who aren’t getting it."

Lincoln Public Schools is a crucial partner in this first-of-its-kind research project.

Read more >> https://go.unl.edu/3juq

08/19/2025

We are excited to announce that Dr. Jenna Finch has received an NSF CAREER Award to support her research on studying executive functions, math achievement, and math attitudes during the transition from second grade to third grade. We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to pursue this work in partnership with Lincoln Public Schools!

Jenna Finch, assistant professor of psychology, has earned a five-year, $928,922 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development program to develop the first clear snapshot of the forces shaping students’ transition to third grade.

05/17/2025

Congratulations to Saba who graduates from UNL this weekend! Saba has been with the LADR lab since her freshman year and is heading to UNMC’s College of Dentistry in the fall. We are so grateful for all Saba contributed over the years and excited to see her pursue her dream of attending dentistry school!

05/06/2025

We wrapped up our last lab meeting of the semester, taking time to reflect on and celebrate our many accomplishments! From video coding, to creating documentation, to publishing our first papers using data collected in the lab- it’s been an incredible year!

05/03/2025

The LADR lab had two great back-to-back conference experiences at AERA and SRCD. So grateful for a reunion with some of our alumni in Minneapolis and to share our latest research!

04/16/2025

We are so very proud of our UCARE students, Tracy Nguyen and Naomi Chamberlain, for their fantastic poster presentations at UNL’s Student Research Days. They have been working hard all year on these projects and it is exciting that they were able to share their work with the broader UNL community.

04/13/2025

We had a blast painting our own pottery pieces together! The lab has had an incredibly productive year and it was wonderful to get off campus to unwind and do something creative together!