Andres Sebastian Bustamante
Associate Professor, School of Education, Joint Appointment in Department of Informatics
Biography
Andres Sebastian Bustamante, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the School of Education with a joint appointment in the Department of Informatics at the University of California Irvine. He received a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Miami in 2016 and completed an Institute of Education Sciences postdoctoral fellowship at Temple University. Bustamante directs UCI's School of Education Research Practice Partnership community Organizing Collaboration for Educational Advancement Network (OCEAN) and serves as a Senior Fellow for the UC CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity & Learning.
Bustamante has secured over $18 million in research funding as principal investigator or co-principal investigator from agencies including the National Science Foundation, the Lego Foundation, and the Heising Simons Foundation. His research focuses on playful STEM learning in early childhood, with particular emphasis on co-designing learning experiences with Latine families and communities. He developed Fraction Ball, a physically active mathematics intervention that has been tested through randomized controlled trials and scaled across multiple school districts. His work on Playful Learning Landscapes transforms public spaces such as bus stops and grocery stores into opportunities for informal STEM learning through community co-design processes.
Bustamante has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles in journals including Child Development, Developmental Psychology, and the Journal of Educational Psychology. He served as Associate Editor for Early Education & Development, is a Consulting Editor for Child Development and sits on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. He received the APS Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science in 2021 and has been recognized with multiple awards for faculty mentorship and innovation in early childhood education.
Return to topEducation
- Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology, University of Miami, 2016
- Bachelor of Arts in Developmental Psychology, Emmanuel College, 2009
Distinctions
- APS Rising Star Award, Association for Psychological Science, 2021
- Early Career Fellow in Early Childhood Education and Development, American Education Research Association & Society for Research in Child Development, 2017-2019
- Latin American School for Education, Cognitive, and Neural Sciences Fellowship, LA School, 2018
- John and Louise Bryson Transformative Leader in Early Childhood Award, PBS Kids Southern California, 2024
- Early Career Innovator/Emerging Innovation of the Year, UCI BEALL Innovation Center, 2025
- Innovative Collaborator Award, University of California Irvine DREAM Center, 2024
- Kirk R. Danhour Memorial Award, University of Miami, Department of Psychology, 2015
- Rod Gillis Graduate Teaching Award, University of Miami Department of Psychology, 2015
- Outstanding Faculty Mentorship Award, University of California Irvine Latine Excellence and Achievement Awards, 2025
- Outstanding Faculty Mentorship Award, University of California Irvine DREAM Center, 2022
Areas of Expertise
- Early Childhood Education
- Playful Learning Interventions
- Community-Based Participatory Design
- STEM Curriculum Development
- Embodied Mathematics Instruction
- Artificial Intelligence Educational Tools
- Longitudinal Developmental Outcomes
Recent Publications
- Leyva D., Weiland C., Bustamante A.S., Rochester S.E., “How to Apply a Strengths-Based Approach to Randomized Controlled Trials”, Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 2026.
- He, K., Liu, X., Xu., Y., Bustamante, A. S., Warschauer, M., “Carlitos the Curious Caterpillar: Exploring Teacher-AI Co-Creation of Culturally Responsive Educational Materials for Young Learners”, Proceedings 24th Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference Idc 2025, pp. 236-254, 2025.
- Salazar, J., Seccia, I. T., Maldonado, J., Hernandez, L., Bermudez, V., Acevedo-Farag, L. M., Ahn, J., Bustamante, A. S., “Sustaining Latine Families' Cultural Values through Technological Mediation Practices”, Journal of Latinos and Education, pp. 1-12, 2025.
- Ramer, J. D., Marquez, D. X., DuBois, D. L., Duncan, R. J., Bustamante, A. S., Vandell, D. L., Bustamante, E. E., “Childhood predictors of high school sport participation and effects of participation on young adult activity and mental health”, Annals of Medicine, vol. 57, no. 1, 2025.
- Lopez, J.L, Rhodes, K.T, Begolli, K. N, Bustamante, A.S, Ahn, J., “What "Exactly" Describes Planning in a Math Game-Based Assessment? Introducing "Fraction Ball: Exactly."”, Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pp. 4875-4884, 2025. Presented at Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
- Bermudez, V. N., Lara, A., Ochoa, K., Garcia, L., Pesch, A., Anderson, M. J., Salazar, J., Gomez, W., Rodriguez, R., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Ahn, J., Bustamante, A. S., “Engaging Parents as Co-Designers and Researchers in Research-Practice Partnerships”, NNERPP Extra, vol. 6, no. 4, 2024.
- DePascale, M., Bustamante, A. S., Dearing, E., “Strengths-Based Approaches to Investigating Early Math Development in Family and Community Context: A Conceptual Framework”, AERA Open, vol. 10, 2024.
- Dearing, E., Bustamante, A. S., Zachrisson, H. D., Vandell, D. L., “Family income in early childhood, the accumulation of developmental opportunities, and educational attainment and salary in adulthood”, Educational Researcher, 2024.
- Begolli, K., Bermudez, V., Lawrence, L., Valdez, S., Santana, E., Alvarez-Vargas, D., Acevedo-Farag, L., Ahn, J., Bailey, D., Rhodes, K., Richland, L., Bustamante, A. S., “Incorporating Design Based Implementation Research with a Randomized Controlled Trial to develop and evaluate the efficacy of playful rational number learning”, Contemporary Educational Psychology, vol. 78, 2024.
- Alvarez-Vargas, D., Begolli, K., Choc, M., Farag, L., Bailey, D. H., Richland, L., Bustamante, A. S., “Fraction ball impacts on student and teacher math talk and behavior”, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, vol. 239, 2024.
- Dearing E., Bustamante A.S., Zachrisson H.D., Vandell D.L., “Accumulation of Opportunities Predicts the Educational Attainment and Adulthood Earnings of Children Born Into Low- Versus Higher-Income Households”, Educational Researcher, vol. 53, pp. 496-507, 2024.
- Bermudez, V. N., Salazar, J., Roldan, W., Garcia, L., Ochoa, K., Pesch, A., Soto-Lara, S., Gomez, W., Rodriguez, R., Ahn, J., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Bustamante, A. S., “Designing Culturally Situated Playful Environments for Early STEM Learning in a Latine Community”, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, vol. 65, pp. 205-216, 2023.
- Alvarez-Vargas, D., Lopez Perez, J. P., Bermudez, V. N., Beltran Grimm, S., Santana, E., Begolli, K., Bustamante, A. S., “Evidence-Based Designs for Physically Active and Playful Math Learning”, Theory Into Practice, vol. 62, no. 2, pp. 166-180, 2023.
- Bustamante, A. S., Bermudez, V., Ochoa, K., Belgrave, A., Vandell, D. L., “High-quality Early Childcare and Education as a Unique Predictor of High School STEM Achievement for Students from Low-income Backgrounds”, Developmental Psychology, vol. 59, pp. 1440-1451, 2023.
- Lin E.S., Alvarez-Vargas D., Lawrence L., Ochoa K., Acevedo-Farag L.M., Cao Z., Rhodes K., Bustamante A.S., ““Sparking” Math Talk in a Fraction Ball Classroom Lesson”, Proceedings of International Conference of the Learning Sciences Icls, pp. 2163-2164, 2023.
- Belgrave, A., Bermudez, V., Chew, P., Lin, Y., Ahn, J., Bustamante, A. S., “Using a Participatory Design Approach for Co-creating Culturally Situated STEM Enrichment Activities”, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, vol. 82, no. 1, 2022.
- Xu, Y., Vigil, V., Bustamante, A. S., Warschauer, M., “Contingent Interaction with a Television Character Enabled by Artificial Intelligence Promotes Children's Science Learning and Engagement”, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, vol. 81, no. 1, 2022.
- Garcia, L., Roldan, W., Bermudez, V., Bustamante, A.S., Ahn, J., “Elevating the Ways in Which Latina Mothers Perceive, Do, and Envision Early STEM learning”, Proceedings of International Conference of the Learning Sciences Icls, pp. 551-558, 2022. Presented at International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS).
- Bustamante, A. S., Begolli, K., Alvarez-Vargas, D., Bailey, D. H., Richland, L., “Fraction Ball: Playful and Physically Active Fraction and Decimal Learning”, Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 114, pp. 1307-1320, 2022.
- Xu, Y., Vigil, V., Bustamante, A. S., Warschauer, M., “Elinor's Talking to Me!: Integrating Conversational AI into Children's Narrative Science Programming”, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings, 2022. Presented at CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Most Cited Publications
- Bustamante, A. S., White, L. J., Greenfield, D. B., “Approaches to learning and school readiness in Head Start: Applications to preschool science”, Learning and Individual Differences, vol. 56, pp. 112-118, 2017.
- Bustamante, A. S., Greenfield, D. B., Nayfeld, I., “Early childhood science and engineering: Engaging platforms for fostering domain-general learning skills”, Journal of Education Sciences, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 144-157, 2018.
- Bustamante, A. S., Schlesinger, M., Begolli, K. N., Golinkoff, R. M, Shahidi, N., Zonji, S., Riesen, C., Evans, N., Hirsh-Pasek, K., “More than Just a Game: Transforming Social Interaction and STEM play with Parkopolis”, Developmental Psychology, vol. 56, no. 6, pp. 1041–1056, 2020.
- Hindman, A. H., Bustamante, A. S., “Teacher Depression as a Dynamic Variable: Exploring Nature and Predictors of Change Journal”, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, vol. 61, pp. 43-55, 2019.
- Hassinger-Das, B., Bustamante, A. S., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., “Learning landscapes: Playing the way to learning and engagement in public spaces”, Journal of Education Sciences, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 74-95, 2018.
- Bustamante, A. S., White, L. J., Greenfield, D. B., “Science and approaches to learning in Head Start: Examining bi-directionality”, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, vol. 44, pp. 34-42, 2018.
- Bustamante, A. S., Dearing, E., Zachrisson, H. D., Vandell, D. L., “Adult Outcomes of Sustained High-Quality Early Childcare and Education: Do They Vary by Family Income?”, Child Development, vol. 93, no. 2, pp. 502-523, 2021.
- Bustamante, A. S., Hindman, A. H., Champagne, C., Wasik, B. A., “Circle time revisited: How do preschool classrooms use this part of the day?”, The Elementary School Journal, vol. 118, no. 4, pp. 610-631, 2018.
- Bustamante, A. S., Hassinger-Das, B., Hirsh-Pasek, K, Golinkoff, R. M., “Learning Landscapes: Where the science of learning meets architectural design”, Child Development Perspectives, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 34-40, 2019.
- Bustamante, A. S., Hindman, A. H., “Construyendo en la fuerza: Approaches to learning and school readiness gains in Latino children served by Head Start”, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, vol. 52, no. A, pp. 124-137, 2020.
Contact Information
Website: https://sites.uci.edu/ucistemlearninglab/
Email: asbustam@uci.edu
Phone: (949) 824-7367
Address: 3363 Education, Irvine, CA 92697-5500
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Last updated on 3/27/2026.