Biography

University of New Mexico - Psychology

Assistant Professor of Psychology, Grand Valley State University
Tessa
Margett Jordan
Greater Grand Rapids, Michigan Area
Teaching:
My role as a teacher is a collaborator, working alongside students and supporting them in the learning process. My responsibilities as a collaborator involve creating and maintaining a classroom atmosphere that fosters learning, both by presenting material in an organized, well structured and straightforward manner so that it is highly accessible to each student, and by setting up opportunities for each student to actively engage the course material. My goals as a collaborator are to increase students’ exposure to new ideas in a supportive, encouraging manner and to motivate students to fully engage not only the new ideas I present to them but also new ideas they will be exposed to in future classes as well as outside the classroom setting. When students were really engaged and were asking great questions, I feel that I was successful in my role as a collaborator in the learning process, and it makes me feel invigorated and amplifies my passion for teaching.

Research:
My research interests are in developmental psychology, particularly cognitive development with a specific focus on conceptual development in early childhood. My primary line of research examines the nature of developmental change in pre-school aged children’s understanding of living things (plants and animals) and nonliving things (tools and toys). I am also investigating the development of goal-directed visual attention processes and the development of the ability to automatize an extensively practiced task in order perform two tasks simultaneously (bypass the central bottleneck).