Krystal Thomas

Senior Education Researcher, SRI Education

Krystal Thomas, PhD, specializes in mixed-methods research and analysis to improve students’ educational pathways, with the ultimate goal of improving student learning and postsecondary success. With a background in developmental psychology, Thomas studies teaching practices that are developmentally appropriate, contextually relevant, and aligned with strengths and needs of each student. She designs tools and approaches that empower educators and foster meaningful learning experiences across a wide range of educational settings. She has expertise related to measurement of effective instructional approaches as well as the student skills and dispositions that support success.

At SRI, Dr. Thomas’s research portfolio spans postsecondary success, employability skills, and social-emotional development, with a focus on building practical, credible measures that reflect students’ lived experiences. She is co–principal investigator for the Postsecondary Teaching with Technology Collaborative, a national research and development center that supports faculty at broad-access institutions in creating engaging, technology-enhanced learning environments. In this role, she identifies and reviews existing instruments that measure students’ mindsets and dispositions related to self-directed learning and other student success skills, assessing how well these measures fit the study context and the student populations being served at broad-access institutions. In addition, she developed and validated measures related to postsecondary employability skills in technical fields.

Before joining SRI, Thomas was an IES Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning at the University of Virginia; a lead statistician at the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium; and a lab manager at the Cognitive Intervention Research, Culture and Learning Environments in Schools (CIRCLES) Lab.

Thomas holds a PhD and master’s in developmental psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University. She also earned a bachelor’s in psychology from Virginia State University.