Director of Research
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Short Biography – Education – Current Projects – Selected Publications
Short Biography
As the Director of Research, Dr. Gabrielle Rappolt-Schlichtmann is responsible for overseeing all research and development activities at CAST. She creates opportunities and provides resources across the organization to continuously develop and support CAST research staff in the areas of content knowledge, research methods, and data analysis; she also coordinates with senior leadership to strategically advance CAST's mission and vision.
Dr. Rappolt-Schlichtmann's research has focused on elucidating the dynamics of student cognition under support and scaffolding. Her area of expertise is in the relationship between emotion and cognition during learning, especially with regard to the impact of children’s experiences of stress on emotion and cognitive performance in the context of school. Through her work, Dr. Rappolt-Schlichtmann makes direct connections from research to practice, developing education technology based in Universal Design for Learning that leverage her research in the areas of developmental neuroscience, emotion, motivation, contextual support, and scaffolding.
Before joining CAST she worked on several national research projects including the national evaluation of Early Head Start, and served as the solicitations editor of the Harvard Educational Review. Dr. Rappolt-Schlichtmann holds a doctorate in Human Development and Psychology with a focus in Mind, Brain and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is currently serving a three year term on the Professional Advisory Board (PAB) of the National Center for Learning Disabilities and is an Adjunct Lecturer at Harvard University where she teaches the course, "Emotion in Development and Learning: Usable Knowledge, Variability and Context ." Dr. Rappolt-Schlichtmann has worked in her career to both advocate for the rights of students at-risk in schools and to understand the impact of stigmatization as related to poverty and learning disability on emotion and cognition in child development and learning.
Ed.D., Human Development and Psychology, Mind, Brain and Education; Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA
Ed.M., Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA
B.S., Behavioral Neuroscience, Trinity College, Hartford, CT
UDL Modules: Supporting Literacy in Physics – Over the past four years CAST, the University of Michigan and the Education Development Center have been working together under a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop the UDL Curriculum Toolkit. The team’s goal was to create an application to support curriculum developers in meeting the challenge of modern science education where diverse students are required to simultaneously read, observe, collect information, analyze, draw conclusions, and present findings while also integrating higher-order thinking skills with content-area knowledge in authentic problem-solving activities. Now CAST (with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and in collaboration with science curriculum developer Education Development Center) will take this work further to improve science and literacy learning outcomes for at-risk diverse learners at the high school level by creating a next generation learning module that addresses the urgent call for high-quality science content tied to the Common Core Standards. This learning module, created using the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, will address learner variability by incorporating UDL scaffolds and supports for learners, embedded formative assessment and learning analytics that will give students and teachers immediate feedback and just-in-time support to advance science literacy and science learning. We will use CAST’s newly created UDL Curriculum Toolkit Authoring Platform, enhanced with an innovative analytics assessment system to achieve this goal. The UDL Physics Learning Module will be based on EDC’s Foundation Science curriculum (totaling 8-12 weeks of instruction). The partners have expertise in science and literacy, motivation for reading, science curriculum development, learning technologies, and assessment
OPEN – With a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and in collaboration with Creative Commons (CC), Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative (OLI), and the Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges (SBCTC), CAST is providing Comprehensive Infrastructure Support and Capacity Building to all Department of Labor, Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College & Career Training Grant (C3T) grantees. Our consortium will support the grantees to meet the Open Education Resource (OER) requirements of the C3T, adopt best practices in OER and learning design, develop institutional skills in open licensing, and document successes critical to ensuring future rounds of funding. These services address a missing component of the C3T grant program, and create a true multiplier effect by developing systems that are adoptable and adaptable, and that enable the broadest possible benefit from this huge public investment. This project represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for building a community college curriculum based on best practices for teaching, learning and openness. The goal is to both raise the baseline for community college education based on best practices, and foster an exponential spread of the benefits by providing a models, design support, authoring platforms and OER guidance to support future efforts.
Rappolt-Schlichtmann, G., & Watamura, S. (2010). Inter- and transdisciplinary work: Connecting research on hormones with problems of educational practice. Mind, Brain and Education, 4(4), 156-158.
Rappolt-Schlichtmann, G., Ayoub, C., & Gravel, J. (2009). Examining the ‘‘Whole Child’’ to generate usable knowledge. Mind, Brain and Education, 3(4), 209-217.
Rappolt-Sclichtmann, G.,Willett, J. B., Ayoub, C., Lindsley, R., Hulette, A., & Fischer, K. W. (2009). Poverty, relationship conflict and the regulation of cortisol in small and large group contexts at child care. Mind, Brian and Education, 3(3), 131-142.
Ayoub, C., O’Connor, E., Rappolt-Schlichtmann, G., Valloton, C., Raikes, H., & Chazen-Cohen, R. (2009). Cognitive skill performance among young children living in poverty:Risk, change, and the promotive effects of early Head Start. Early Childhood Research Quarterly.
Rose, D., & Rappolt-Schlichtmann, G. (2008). Applying universal design for learning with children living in poverty. In S. Neumann (Ed.), Educating the other America: Top experts tackle poverty, literacy and achievement in our schools. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.
Rose, D., & Rappolt-Schlichtmann, G. (2008). Pathways to literacy achievement for children living in poverty: Anapplication of universal design for learning. In S. Neuman (Ed.), Educating the other America: Top experts tackle poverty, literacy and achievement in our schools. Baltimore, MD: P. H. Brookes Publishing Company.
Rappolt-Schlichtmann, G., Tenenbaum, H., Keopke, M. & Fischer, K. (2007). Transient and robust knowledge: Contextual support and the dynamics of children’s reasoning about density. Mind, Brain, and Education , 1(2), 98-108.
Rose, D. H., Rappolt-Schlichtmann, G.,Coyne, P., & Hall, T. (2007). Technology and the assessment of young children.
Paper commissioned by Committee on Developmental Outcomes and Assessments for Young Children, Board on Children, Youth, and Families, Board on Testing and Assessment, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council, Washington, DC.
Ayoub, C. & Rappolt-Schlichtmann, G. (2007). Child maltreatment and the development of alternate pathways in biology and behavior. In D. Coch, G. Dawson, & K. Fischer (Eds.), Human behavior, learning, and the developing brain: Atypical development . New York: The Guilford Press.
Ayoub, C., O'Connor, E., Rappolt-Schlichtmann, G., Fischer, K., Rogosch, F., Toth, S., & Cicchetti, D. (2006). Cognitive and emotional differences in young maltreated children: A translational application of dynamic skill theory. Development and Psychopathology , 18(3), 679-706.
Tenenbaum, H., Rappolt-Schlichtmann, G., & Zanger, V. (2004). Children’s learning about water in a museum and in the classroom. Early Childhood Research Quarterly , 19(1), 40-58.
Meyer, A., & Rose, D.; with Rappolt, G. & Strangman, N. (2002). Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal Design for Learning . Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
