Biography

Mehdi Ghahremani is an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at the Department of Counseling, Higher Education Leadership, Educational Psychology, and Foundations (CHEF), Mississippi State University; where he teaches and studies human development to promote understanding of differences among people and analyzes effective and productive modes of thinking such as critical thinking, design thinking, and wisdom. He is a mixed-method researcher certified in quantitative and qualitative inquiry. He received his Ph.D. in Educational Studies, with a focus on Gifted, Creative, and Talented Studies, and two research certificates—Qualitative Research Certificate in Social Sciences, and Quantitative Research, Assessment, and Evaluation in Education (QRAE) Certificate—from Purdue University. For his research endeavors, he received The Carolyn Callahan Doctoral Student Award from the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC). His research experiences have focused on different mixed-methods research projects in a variety of settings, developing conceptual and theoretical models, such as characterizing critical thinking (Pentagram of Habits), wise-thinking (Polyhedron Model of Wisdom), creativity (M-IPO model of group-level creativity), collaborative disciplinary engagement (PDE rubric), culturally responsive PD intervention (U-STEM project), and exploring visual representations of early-engineering design projects in school-aged learners (i-SEED Scale). His bachelor’s and master’s degree in Physics inspired him to be a Physics teacher for more than ten years. He served as the head of the Physics department, in which he was responsible for the development of curriculum and authentic assessment methods for high-potential children. He has served as a member of the Education Committee, as a coordinator of scientific competition, as a chief examiner and as a judge for students’ projects in Physics (2006-2010), as an assistant coordinator (2015), and as an administrative assistant for GER2I’s summer camps (2014-2019). His research interests center around STEM-talent development; psychology of higher-order thinking (HoT) skills such as critical thinking, creativity, design thinking, and wisdom; and dispositions/habits of mind associated with these effective and productive modes of cognitive skills, from an educational perspective.