Debra Harkins, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Psychology
B.S., University of Massachusetts-Boston (Psychology and Anthropology); M.A., Ph.D., Clark University (Psychology); Postdoctoral Fellowships, Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

Specialty Areas

Systems learning, consultation, action research, diversity, conflict resolution and storytelling.

My research interests include action-based research and consultation that assesses the efficacy of using empowerment and process consultation models with parent, staffs and teachers in multi-cultural, underserved, diverse communities.  This works aims to develop organizational and community outreach programs that focus on empowerment and system learning, specifically interventions with administrators, immigrants, teachers, parents, adolescents and children.  This program seeks to build collaborations with agencies organizations and communities to reduce violence, foster harmony, promote growth and improve lives.  A second line of research includes the investigation of storytelling using parent-child narratives to explore issues of immigration, race, social class, gender, stress, empathy, and conflicts. This works has focused on the goals and styles of storytelling, the themes and evaluative components of narratives that are related to enculturation.

Austin, M. & Harkins, D.A. (under review.) Shifting spaces and emerging voices:  Participation, support and conflict in one school administrative team, Early Education and Development.

Mizock, L. & Harkins, D.A. (under review). Conduct disorder and racial identity development: Misdiagnosing adolescents of color, Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development.

Koepke, M.F. & Harkins, D.A. (under review). Conflict in the classroom:  Gender differences in the teacher-child relationship, Early Education and Development.

Harkins, D.A. & Wells, Y. (under review). Teaching and the post-modern student, Pedagogy and the Human Sciences.

Austin, M. & Harkins, D.A. (in press).  Assessing change:  Can organizational learning “work” for schools? The Learning Organization.

Piryatinsky, I. & Harkins, D.A. (in press) Exploratory study of narrative discourse:  Russian immigrants’ mother-child storytelling in Israel and Northeast United States.

Doppler, E.  Harkins, D.A. & Mehta, C. (2008).  Emerging empowerment:  Conflict resolution intervention and preschool teachers’ report of conflict behavior, Early Education and Development.

Mizock, L. & Harkins, D.A. (2007).  Barriers to culturally competent research: Institutional and individual variables, The Community Psychologist.

Silver, C. & Harkins, D.A.  (2007).   Labeling, affect and teacher’s hypothetical approaches to conflict resolution:  An Exploratory study.  Early Education and Development, 4.

Harkins, D.A. & Ray, S. (2004).  An Exploratory study of mother-child storytelling in East India and Northeast United States.  Narrative Inquiry, 14(1), 141-161.