Vaishali Raval

My Approach to Teaching and Learning

Teaching and scholarship are two arms of higher education that come together to enable learning. As a social scientist and an educator, my goal is to help prepare our next generations to feel included and value inclusivity, to consider multiple perspectives, and to engage in critical evaluation, contextually sensitive communication, and collaborative problem-solving. Students in my courses learn to systematically research information from reliable sources, critically evaluate the information based on other sources or prior knowledge, integrate information across sources to develop a comprehensive understanding of a problem or phenomenon, and use this integrative understanding to develop further questions for inquiry. Students often work in teams to generate solutions to real-world problems by being attuned to relevant contexts and incorporating multiple viewpoints. My own research regularly trickles into classroom discussions as we consider what we know about human mind and behavior and the limited applicability of our science to diverse populations. Research ideas also originate in the classroom and we follow through these ideas via student-led independent research projects, which provide a fertile ground for hands-on-learning, and in some cases, have culminated in scientific publications. These projects also involve graduate students as junior mentors, affording opportunities for students at different levels of training to collaborate in scientific inquiry. In this way, research and teaching become mutually informative, enabling classrooms and research labs to become spaces for solving real-world problems.

My Teacher-Scholar Journey

Psychological science is an evolving discipline where our understanding of human mind and behavior is constantly being updated with new research. Thus, teaching needs to be closely intertwined with scholarship to ensure that students are learning the most contemporary information and approaches to psychological inquiry. Across my courses in psychology and global health, I incorporate social justice issues and health disparities that are experienced locally and globally so that students are aware of and concerned with global challenges, which helps to develop civic-mindedness and global citizenship. I involve students in collaborative problem-solving to address these challenges whereby they engage in critical evaluation at every step from identifying reliable sources of information, reviewing and synthesizing scientific literature, designing a research study, collecting and analyzing data, and disseminating, while revising ideas as needed. For example, students in my capstone course on global mental health work in teams to identify a mental health problem, along with a world region where they want to further research the problem, review scientific literature, and propose a solution for prevention or intervention that is culturally-sensitive, low-cost, sustainable, scalable, and innovative. Students in my research lab participate in a two-year curriculum to learn about diversity science and its methods and participate in all phases of research, with some initiating their own independent research. These opportunities provide students with hands-on experience of what it is like to be a social science researcher and afford me fresh perspectives to ensure my research is responsive to the changing world.

Knowledge is Power

“My psychology journey began as one of the over 900 students in the introductory psychology course at the University of Toronto where the instructor could only be seen on a video monitor, especially if you were sitting at the back. I deeply value that at Miami University, as a teacher-scholar, I am able to engage my students in critical evaluation of the information they consume, considering multiple perspectives, and collaborative problem-solving.”

Education

Postdoctoral Fellowship, Cultural Psychology, University of Chicago, IL, USA
Ph.D. Clinical Developmental Psychology, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada
M.A. Clinical Developmental Psychology, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada
B.Sc. (honors), Psychology, University of Toronto, Scarborough, ON, Canada

More About Me

I am a psychological scientist committed to promoting inclusivity, elevating marginalized voices, and improving lives globally through research, teaching, and service. Along with undergraduate and graduate students and international collaborators, our research on cultural foundations of parenting and youth mental health has been disseminated through over 60 publications and over 100 presentations.