Overview
Katie D’Silva is an expert in K–16 STEM education, with a deep commitment to ensuring positive outcomes for all. She partners with teachers, college faculty, districts, education product developers, and other researchers to boost the impact of their programs and increase opportunity and success for all students. D’Silva centers inclusive research and evaluation strategies, such as engaging relevant parties across all phases of research and evaluation. Her work produces actionable findings that inform program improvement and policy decisions.
D’Silva maintains a multifaceted portfolio. She supports undergraduate education researchers and education product teams through mixed-methods evaluation and usability research. She also coleads large-scale impact studies in K–12 and postsecondary settings, such as the Randomized Control Trial of the Puente Community College Project. D’Silva is well versed in a variety of methodologies, such as case studies, large-scale quantitative studies, mixed-methods evaluations, and education technology usability studies. She is certified in What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) group design standards and is a qualified administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory.
Before joining WestEd, D’Silva worked as an electrical engineer and then as a high school mathematics teacher. Across these roles, she has focused on creating clear pathways to expand access and help students succeed in STEM studies and careers.
Education
- MA in education, Stanford University
- BS in electrical engineering with a minor in mathematics, Tulane University
Select Publications
Walters, K., Huang, C.-W., Klipple, K., D’Silva, K., Huang, M., & Ray, D. (2026, March). Evaluating the impact of an innovative statistics corequisite course on community college student math outcomes [Paper presentation]. The American Educational Research Association 2026 Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
D’Silva, K., Owen, R., Ray, D., Savcak, L., Klipple, K., Walters, K., Thornley, L., Huang, C.-W., & Huang, M. (2026, February). Understanding the implementation and impacts of an innovative corequisite math course [Paper presentation]. The Annual Conference of SIGMAA on RUME, Alexandria, VA, United States.
Rauner, M., D’Silva, K., Durodoye, R., & Tejwani, J. (2024, September). Incorporating anti-racist evaluation strategies in research methods [Paper presentation]. The Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) 2024 Conference, Baltimore, MD, United States.
D’Silva, K., Bartel, A. N., Morton, C., Matlen, B., Barrett, D., Gleason, C., & Triant, J. (2023, September). Embedding equitable research practices in a cluster randomized controlled trial [Poster presentation]. The Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) 2023 Conference, Arlington, VA, United States.
Morton, C., McKinney, D., D’Silva, K., Kao, Y., & Edwards, A. (2023, September). Scaling up through networked improvement outcome study: The impact of Carnegie Math Pathways on college gateway mathematics course success and subsequent college-level mathematics course-taking and credit-accumulation [Poster presentation]. The Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) 2023 Conference, Arlington, VA, United States.
D’Silva, K., & Matlen, B. J. (2023, July). Embedding equitable research practices into the rigorous study of a cognitive learning intervention [Poster presentation]. The Cognitive Science Society 44th Annual Meeting, Sydney, Australia.
D’Silva, K., Hauk, S., Dyer, E., & Davenport, J. (2019, April). Using pitfalls to support middle school mathematical discussion and equity [Paper presentation]. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Research Conference, San Diego, CA, United States.
Hauk, S., & D’Silva, K. (2018). Goals, resources, and orientations for equity in collegiate mathematics education research. In A. Weinberg, C. Rasmussen, J. Rabin, M. Wawro, & S. Brown (Eds.), Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education (pp. 227–241). San Diego, CA.
Hubbard, A., & D’Silva, K. (2018). Professional learning in the midst of teaching computer science. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (pp. 86–94). Espoo, Finland.
Kao, Y., D’Silva, K., Hubbard, A., Green, J., & Cully, K. (2018). Applying the mathematical work of teaching framework to develop a computer science pedagogical content knowledge assessment. In Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (pp. 888–893). Baltimore, MD.
D’Silva, K., Green, J., Cully, K., Hubbard, A., & Kao, Y. (2017, August). Assessing computer science pedagogical content knowledge [Poster presentation]. The ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research, Tacoma, WA, United States.
Carroll, C., Hauk, S., Cremer, S., Salguero, K., Gale, M., Viviani, K., & D’Silva, K. (2015). Using color in mathematical modeling. CMC ComMuniCator, 39(4), 17–20.