Headshot of Dr.Volha (Olga) Chykina

Dr. Volha (Olga) Chykina

Assistant Professor of Leadership Studies
Curriculum Vitae

  • Profile

    Dr. Volha (Olga) Chykina’s work focuses on how politics shapes education. American political scientist Harold Lasswell famously defined politics as a fight over “who gets what, when, and how.” Chykina researches where these distributional concerns intersect with education, often determining who gets to study or say what, when, and how, and who gets to succeed. Recent media headlines point to pitched battles on the politics of education in countries such as Hungary, and closer to home, in states such as Florida and Virginia.

    In her research, Chykina tries to understand how exclusionary attitudes and policymaking shape the educational environments and outcomes of historically underrepresented students. To do this, she uses a range of quantitative methods, from social network analysis to conjoint experiments; develops new measures; and leverages both sub-national data from the United States and cross-national data.

    Chykina received her doctorate in educational theory and policy and comparative and international education from the Pennsylvania State University. Prior to joining the Jepson School, she was a postdoctoral fellow with the Donia Human Rights Center at the University of Michigan. Her research has been published or is forthcoming in Sociological Science; International Journal of Comparative Sociology; British Journal of Sociology of Education; European Journal of Education; Socius; Sociological Perspectives; The Social Science Journal; Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education; Globalisation, Societies and Education; European Education; PLOS One; and the International Journal of Sociology of Education.

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    • Awards

      Mellon/SAR Academic Freedom Fellowship, 2023-24

  • Selected Publications
    Journal Articles

    Chykina, V. (2024). Expecting to achieve against the odds: Anti-immigrant sentiment and immigrants' educational and occupational expectations in Europe. European Journal of Education Research, Development and Policy 59 (1): 1-16. 

    Fernandez, F., Chykina, V., and Lin, Y. C. (2024). Science at risk? Considering the importance of academic freedom for STEM research. PLOS One, 19(2): 1-16.

    Chykina, V. (2023). Pro-integration policies and the occupational expectations of immigrant youth. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 64(2): 183-207. 

    Chykina, V., & Crabtree, C. (2023). Education and public support for COVID-19 mitigation measures. Socius, 9: 1-3.

    Chykina, V. (2022). Trying to excel in the Golden State: Anti-immigration sentiment and immigrant educational achievement in California. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20(5): 608-624.

    Bodovski, K., Munoz, I., Byun, S.-Y., & Chykina, V. (2020). Do education system characteristics moderate the socioeconomic, gender, and immigrant gaps in math and science achievement? International Journal of Sociology of Education, 9(2), 122–154.

    Chykina, V. (2019). Educational expectations of immigrant students: Does tracking matter?
    Sociological Perspectives, 62(3), 366–382.

    Bodovski, K., Chykina, V., & Khavenson, T. (2019). Do human and cultural capital lenses contribute to our understanding of academic success in Russia? British Journal of Sociology of Education, 40(3), 393–409.

    Schlicht-Schmälzle, R., Chykina, V., & Schmälzle, R. (2018). An attitude network analysis of post-national citizenship identities. PLOS One, 13(12), 1–19.

    Chykina, V., & Crabtree, C. (2018). Using Google Trends to measure issue salience for hard-to-survey populations. Socius, 4, 1–3.

    Crabtree, C., & Chykina, V. (2018). Last name selection in audit studies. Sociological Science, 5, 21–28.

    Bond, R., & Chykina, V., & Jones, J. (2017). Social network effects on academic achievement. The Social Science Journal, 54(4), 438–449.

    Smith, W., Fraser, P., Chykina, V., Ikoma, S., Levitan, J., Liu, J., & Mahfouz, J. (2017). Global citizenship and the importance of education in a globally integrated world. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 15(5), 648–665.

    Bodovski, K., Byun, S-Y., Chykina, V., & Chung, H. J. (2017). Search for a golden model of education: Cross-national analysis of math achievement. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 47(5), 722–741.

    Chykina, V., Chung, H. J., & Bodovski, K. (2016). Great expectations? Variation in educational plans of students in post-socialist Eastern Europe. European Education, 48(1), 43–62.

    Book Chapters

    Chykina, V. (2023). Educational Attainment. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Leadership Studies, edited by George R. Goethals, Scott T. Allison, and Georgia J. Sorenson. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

    Bodovski, K., & Chykina, V. (2019). Quantifying childhood. In K. Bodovski, Childhood and education in the United States and Russia: Sociological and comparative perspectives (pp. 81-95). Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing.

  • Links
    Volha Chykina website