Jodi Davenport

Overview

As Vice President of Learning, Technology, and Innovation at WestEd and Deputy Director of the Regional Educational Laboratory, Northwest, Jodi Davenport leads strategic efforts to integrate research with practice and ideate novel solutions to improve student educational outcomes.  

Davenport develops and directs large-scale research and development centers and projects by securing funding through federal grants; managing teams of senior-level researchers; and disseminating findings to researchers, practitioners, funders, and policymakers. Davenport has been widely recognized for her work at the intersection of cognitive science and education and has served on federal technical working groups and grant panels. Davenport publishes in the areas of educational effectiveness, educational technology, learning science, and cognitive psychology, and her work has been cited more than 1,500 times. 

As Director of Research for the IES-funded National Center on Cognition and Mathematics Instruction, Davenport managed teams of senior researchers across six institutions, educators, and production staff to modify the existing curriculum and carry out efficacy studies for the $10 million center, aiming to (a) revise a middle school math curriculum using research-based cognitive principles shown to improve learning and (b) evaluate the effectiveness of the revised materials. 

Education

• PhD in cognitive science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
• BS in cognitive science, University of California, Los Angeles

Select Publications

Davenport, J. L., Kao, Y. S., Johannes, K. N., Hornburg, C. B., & McNeil, N. M. (2023). Improving children’s understanding of mathematical equivalence: An efficacy study. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 16(4), 615–642. 

McCormick, S., Davenport, J. L., Rafferty, A. N., Raysor, S., Yani, J., & Yaron, D. (2023). ChemVLab+: Integrating Next Generation Science Standards practices with chemistry. Journal of Chemical Education, 100(6), 2116–2131.  

Davenport, J. L., Kao, Y. S., Matlen, B. J., & Schneider, S. A. (2020). Cognition research in practice: Engineering and evaluating a middle school math curriculum. The Journal of Experimental Education, 88(4), 516–535. 

Davenport, J. L., Rafferty, A. N., & Yaron, D. J. (2018). Whether and how authentic contexts using a virtual chemistry lab support learning. Journal of Chemical Education, 95(8), 1250–1259. *Selected as American Chemical Society’s Editors’ Choice 

Davenport, J. L., & Quellmalz, E. S. (2017). Assessing science inquiry and reasoning using dynamic visualizations and interactive simulations. In R. Lowe & R. Ploetzner (Eds.), Learning from dynamic visualizations: Innovations in research and application (pp. 203–232). Springer. 

Honors and Awards

Grant review chair and panelist—Chair of Basic Processes Scientific Review Panel for the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, serving second 5-year term as Principal Reviewer; grant panelist for multiple NSF programs 

Invited expert for National Center for Education Research’s technical working groups on Neuroeducation: Neuromyths, Neurotruths, Student Learning, and Teachers’ Understanding and NAEP Mathematics Data for Students With Disabilities 

Program Co-Chair of the Annual Principal Investigators Meeting of the Institute of Education Sciences, with the theme “Relevance & Rigor: Creating the Future of Educational Research,” held January 9–10, 2018, in Arlington, VA