About me

Researcher in inclusive and special education, focused on the professional development of paraeducators.

I am an M.A. candidate in Education with a concentration in special education at Sonoma State University, advised by Dr. Elizabeth Ducy. For my thesis I have designed a qualitative interview study of paraeducator professional development. I am recruiting twenty paraeducators in inclusive classrooms across the United States for interviews. The study has IRB approval, data collection runs through fall 2026, and reflexive thematic analysis will follow.

Before returning to graduate study, from 2015 to 2024, I worked in applied practice as a psychologist and inclusive education consultant in Kazakhstan and Russia. I directed one of the first inclusive kindergartens in Kazakhstan and developed a state-accredited training program that prepared more than a hundred educators and paraeducators for inclusive settings. That work shaped the questions I now study, in particular the gap between policies that promise inclusion and the preparation and support educators actually receive. The paraeducator is where those questions meet: how states adopt the assistant as the unit of inclusion, who pays for the position, and how the people in it are prepared.

In 2023 I worked as a researcher at Aestima (Latvia), co-authoring three reports, one on artificial intelligence in the screening and assessment of autism and two on digital employment opportunities for autistic adults. I also curated the autism research knowledge base behind Aestima Superbot, an LLM-based research and evidence-synthesis tool. My earlier degrees are a Master's in Counseling Psychology from Saint Petersburg State University and a Bachelor's in Psychology from Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, both completed with distinction and based on quantitative research.

I am interested in how educators in inclusive classrooms build the knowledge their work demands, and how practical tools can support them. OIBAI, on the Projects page, is a tool I am developing for paraeducators. Experience has the fuller record, and Contact has ways to reach me.

I am preparing to apply to PhD programs in education for Fall 2027, with a research focus on inclusive education.

Research interests

• Paraeducator preparation and professional development
• Inclusive and special education
• Disability justice and critical perspectives on inclusion
• Education policy and the gap between policy and practice
• Comparative inclusive education policy, Kazakhstan and the United States
• Educational technology and AI for educators
• Qualitative inquiry in education