College of Education and Human Development

Department of Educational Psychology

Geoffrey Maruyama

  • Professor Emeritus

  • Educational Psychology
    160 Education Sciences Bldg.
    56 East River Road
    Minneapolis, MN 55455

  • geoff@umn.edu
Geoffrey Maruyama

Areas of interest

  • Achievement processes in schools and other organizations
  • Connections between social processes and educational success
  • Research and community partnerships in challenged communities and urban settings
Degrees

PhD, University of Southern California

Biography

First in the World Grant website

I am a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota.  My primary research has focused on achievement processes in schools, particularly on social processes and on antecedents of educational success; on research methods for educational and other applied settings; and, recently, on action research approaches in challenged communities and engaged scholarship in urban settings.  I have written three books, Basics of Structural Equation ModelingResearch in Educational Settings (with Stanley Deno), and, most recently, Research Methods in Social Relations (8th edition, with Carey Ryan), and numerous articles and chapters. 

My interest in what happens in diverse urban schools began when I became involved in a study of school desegregation while in graduate school. Those interests led me to study a range of issues in schools, including school schedules and structures, teaching approaches such as cooperative learning and conflict resolution, social influence processes, and student background characteristics including poverty, type of housing in which the family lived, language, ability, and race/ethnicity. This work has been facilitated by time I spent in the Saint Paul Public Schools as their director of research, evaluation and assessment. Recently, my work has expanded beyond schools to look more broadly at how universities engage urban communities to build partnerships addressing key social issues.   I have complemented my substantive interests with methodology interests in structural equation methods, research methods, and program evaluation.

I have held administrative roles that have enriched and informed my research interests, including director of the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI), assistant/associate vice president for multicultural and academic affairs, and associate vice president for system academic administration.  I am a past-president and past secretary treasurer of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), and edited one of their journals, Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy. I am a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychological Society.  My PhD and MA degrees are from the University of Southern California in social psychology, and my BA from Macalester College in psychology.

Courses I teach

  • EPSY 5-157—Social Psychology of Education
  • EPSY 8266—Statistical Analysis Using Structural Equation Methods
  • EPsy 8-157—Key Topics and Issues in Applying Social Psychology to Education
  • EPSY 8-216—Seminar: Research Processes in Psychological Foundations of Education
Publications

Maruyama, G., & Van Boekel, M. (2014). Action Research.  In Oxford Bibliographies in Psychology. Dana S. Dunn (Ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

Maruyama, G., & Ryan, C. (2014).  Research Methods in Social Relations, 8th Edition.  Oxford, England:  Wiley-Blackwell.

Maruyama, G. (2012). Assessing College Readiness:  Should We Be Satisfied with ACT or Other Threshold Scores?  Educational Researcher.  41, 252-261.

Maruyama, G., Jones, R. J., & Finnegan, J. R. (2009).  Advancing an urban agenda:  Principles and experiences of an urban land grant university.  Metropolitan Universities, 20, 75-100.

Maruyama, G., Burke, M., & Mariani, C. (2005). The role and importance of pre-collegiate partnership programs in environments ambivalent about affirmative action. Journal of Social Issues, 61(3), 427-448.

Flores Neimann, Yolanda, & Maruyama, G. (2005). Inequities in higher education: Issues and promising practices in a world ambivalent about Affirmative Action. Journal of Social Issues, 61(3), 407-426.

Maruyama, G. (2004). Program evaluation, action research, and social psychology: A powerful blend for addressing applied problems. In Sansone, C., Morf, C. C., & Panter, A. (Eds.) Handbook of methods in social psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 429-442.

Maruyama, G. (2003). Disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes: What do we know and what can we do? Journal of Social Issues, 59, 653-676.

Maruyama, G. (1998). Basics of Structural Equation Modeling. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.

Presentations

Lopez, I., Russ, S., Williams, A., & Maruyama, G. (2016) Undergraduate Students’ Experience in a Socio-Psychological Intervention. Poster presented at the annual SPSSI (Society for Psychological Study of Social Issues) conference in Minneapolis, MN.,  June.

Maruyama, G. (2016).  Making research matter:  Insights on engagement beyond the academy.  Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Minneapolis, MN., June.

Maruyama, G. (2016).  Giving, taking, and using psychology:  Student perspectives on community-university partnerships.  Session organized for the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Minneapolis, MN., June. 

Maruyama, G. (2016).  Challenges in assessing university and student impacts from community-university partnerships.  Organizer and presenter of session at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Minneapolis, MN., June.

Ward, C., Westerhof, L., Maruyama, G., Zeaske, R., & Kratchmer, L.. (2016). Attitudes toward food insecurity in the United States.  Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Minneapolis, MN., June. 

Song, W., Lopez, I., Furco, A., Maruyama, G., & Soria., K. (2016) Using Propensity Score Matching to Draw Causal Inferences in Observational Studies of Service-Learning. Paper presentation at the annual meeting of the IARSLCE (International Association for Research on Service-Learning & Community Engagement) conference in New Orleans, LA., September.