Ximena Domínguez, PhD, is Director of Early STEM Research at Digital Promise. Her research examines factors and processes that influence young children’s STEM learning and school readiness, with the goal of informing early childhood education practices at home and school. Her work involves close partnerships with public school educators and families from culturally and linguistically diverse communities. To conduct her work, she draws on her expertise in early childhood education, STEM readiness, design-based research, assessment development, and mixed method research design. Her portfolio of work includes research and development projects that aim to co-design resources in collaboration with preschool teachers and families; evaluation efforts to examine how innovations are implemented and under what conditions they lead to expected outcomes; and assessment development initiatives with a focus on STEM and Dual Language Learners. In all projects she explores the unique affordances of developmentally appropriate technology and media for early teaching, learning and assessment. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), and local foundations. Ximena earned an M.S.Ed. in education from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. in applied developmental psychology from the University of Miami.
