Education Researcher, SRI Education
Carolina Zamora brings project management and collaboration skills, as well as background and knowledge of early childhood and arts education, to her work at SRI. Zamora conducts mixed-methods research and evaluation work throughout the division. Her work focuses on early childhood systems and programing, data systems, and arts education.
Zamora’s projects span a range of topic areas and methodologies. Within the Center for IDEA Early Childhood Data Systems (DaSy), she co-designs evaluation instruments and approaches and works with partner organizations to evaluate technical assistance (TA). She also leads the child and family outcomes study of the Catherine Hershey Schools (CHS) for Early Learning project, a 5-year quasi-experimental study to examine the effects of CHS on children and their families. Zamora has conducted qualitative research for a variety of projects, including the Creativity Challenge, a study examining access to and participation in arts education in California, and ARISE, a research partnership project with the Arkansas Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education aiming to understand the implementation of behavioral supports with the goal of reducing exclusionary practices in Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) funded programs. She also provided TA through the National Technical Assistance Center for Preschool Development Grants Birth Through Five (PDG B-5), which supported states in building high-quality mixed delivery systems of services and programs for young children and their families. Additionally, Zamora provides leadership within SRI Education related to addressing the needs of Spanish-speakers within projects.
Prior to SRI, Zamora spent 8 years in various educational environments, including serving as a preschool teacher, teaching artist, and museum educator/coordinator at the Guggenheim Museum. These diverse contexts and experiences inform her current work at SRI to use flexible methods and consider multiple perspectives in her research and TA.
Zamora holds an MEd in arts in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a BFA in sculpture from Pratt Institute. She is bilingual in Spanish and English.
Key projects
- The Center for IDEA Early Childhood Data Systems
- Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning Network Evaluation
- Creativity Challenge: The State of Arts Education in California
