Elaine Lin Wang is a senior policy researcher at RAND. Her primary research interest concerns equity and quality of K–12 instruction, especially with a focus on literacy/English language arts (ELA). She is currently the PI of a multi-million dollar, five-year Institute of Education Sciences (IES)/National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER)–funded effectiveness replication study of an early reading intervention. Wang was also a co-PI on a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation–funded study of characteristics of coherent instructional systems that support student success in ELA. She has also (co-)led projects that: identified and measured aspects of instruction and interactions that support personalized and student-centered learning; examined educators' perceptions of instructional materials; and employed natural language processing and AI techniques to develop an automated writing evaluation system to support student's writing development. Wang also researches the development of school leaders and students' social and emotional learning development. She specializes in using mixed methods to examine relationships between instruction and student learning outcomes, and to understand factors that facilitate or pose challenges for policy or program implementation. Wang received her Ph.D. in the learning sciences and policy program from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to pursuing her graduate studies, Wang taught high school English for nine years.
Ph.D. in learning sciences and policy, University of Pittsburgh; M.A. in curriculum, teaching, and learning, University of Toronto; B.Ed. in secondary English and French education, University of British Columbia; B.A. in English and French, University of British Columbia
French; Mandarin
