The ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods was pleased to host Dr Benjamin L Castleman from the University of Virginia. Dr Castleman is an expert on behaviourial insights into educational access and attainment in the United States. In this lecture, he shared his experiences and findings from conducting randomised controlled trials in education research.

Dr Castleman was introduced by Dr Nicholas Biddle from the Centre for Social Research and Methods. Dr Biddle has extensive experience studying educational access and outcomes in Australia, including among Indigenous populations.

Presentations

Dr Nicholas Biddle, ‘Education research in Australia and getting serious about causality’

Dr Benjamin L Castleman, ‘Methods to answer causal questions in education’

Dr Benjamin L Castleman

Ben Castleman is an Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Ben’s research focuses on policies to improve college access and success for low-income students. Several of his papers examine innovative strategies to deliver high-quality information about the college-going process to low-income students and their families, and to ease the process of students and families getting professional support when they need assistance. He has conducted several randomized trials to investigate how the offer of additional support during the summer after high school impacts the rate and quality of low-income students’ college enrollment. In addition, Ben uses quasi-experimental methods to study the impact of state and federal need-based grant programs on students’ long-term collegiate outcomes. His research has been featured on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, as well as in Time Magazine, USA Today, and the Huffington Post.

Dr Nicholas Biddle

Nicholas is a quantitative social scientist, Deputy Director of the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods, and a Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) at the Australian National University (ANU). He is currently Graduate Convenor for CAEPR and a member of the College's Research Committee.  Between July 2011 and February 2012, Nicholas was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. He is currently working on the Indigenous Population project, funded by the Commonwealth and State/Territory Governments. He has recently completed a Research Fellowship for the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) and previously held a Senior Research Officer and Assistant Director position in the Methodology Division of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.