Dr. Stephen J. AguiIar is an Assistant Professor of Education at the USC Rossier School of Education. His areas of expertise include motivation and self-regulated learning as they relate to the design and implementation of educational technologies. He specializes in learning analytics, the digital equity gap, and gameful approaches to teaching and learning.

His research agenda has two overlapping areas of focus: educational technology and policy relevant educational interventions. His educational technology work includes projects that evaluate the motivational and self-regulatory impacts of educational technologies; projects that leverage novel methods (i.e., data science techniques); and projects focused on documenting—and mitigating the impact of—the digital equity gap. Dr. Aguilar's work also focuses on policy-relevant educational interventions based in educational psychology and includes work that uses what we know about learning and motivation to correct misconceptions about educational policy. This work constitutes an essential tool to combat the proliferation of inaccurate information during increasing political polarization.

Dr. Aguilar has received funding from the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the Herman & Rasiej K-5 Mathematics Initiative, Great Public Schools Now, and 2U Incorperated, among others. He received a B.A. in Philosophy and Psychology from Georgetown University, a M.A. in the Humanities (Philosophy) from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Education and Psychology from the University of Michigan. Previously, he taught sixth and seventh grade in East Palo Alto, California and served as a the Director of Institute Technology for Teach For America-Los Angeles’s summer institute.