Student-Centered Religious Learning and Literacy Lab (SCRoLL Lab)

6 students and Professor Ziva Hassenfeld standing in a group

The 2023-24 SCRoLL Lab Members with Professor Ziva Hassenfeld

Student-Centered Religious Learning and Literacy Lab (SCRoLL Lab) provides opportunities for Brandeis students to develop social scientific research skills, as they participate in a range of collaborative empirical studies all focused on how children read and understand sacred texts.

SCRoLL Lab Director Professor Ziva R. Hassenfeld supervises 4-8 Brandeis University undergraduate students each year in the lab. The group collaborates on everything from designing new studies, recruiting participants, developing data and assessment instruments, conducting ethnographic observations and other forms of data collection, analyzing data, and publishing their findings.

The lab's research explores how children read, translate, comprehend, and discuss texts. Using sacred texts as a case study, the team investigates what children do when they read and discuss sacred texts, how they talk about them with their teachers and classmates, how they work to translate them, and what interpretations they offer.

Sacred texts have been studied across millennia in almost every context imaginable. Therefore, they offer unique opportunities to explore how people, starting from a young age, read closely. The research of the SCRoLL lab generates insights not only for educators who teach sacred texts, but also for the broader community of literacy and language educators.

Professor Hassenfeld stands addressing a group of students seated around a large wooden table with many black chairs around it and a patterned rug underneath. In the background, there is a whiteboard, a screen with students on Zoom, a lamp, and a plant. All people are wearing masks. The table is covered in laptops and papers.

SCRoLL Lab in their new lab space - fall 2022.

Prof. Ziva Hassenfeld stands in a conference room addressing a group of her student researchers sitting around a table. All are wearing masks.

SCRoLL Lab in action - fall 2021.

Prof. Ziva Hassenfeld and a teacher sit outside at a picnic table. They are looking at a laptop screen.

Truly fun to work on the Science of Reading: Tanakh project with these amazing day school educators and Brandeis students - summer 2021.

A laptop screen showing a Zoom meeting in progress with teachers and student researchers.

Truly fun to work on the Science of Reading: Tanakh project with these amazing day school educators and Brandeis students - summer 2021.