School of Arts and Sciences
Department of Education

Faculty

Faculty

Core Faculty

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Andrew Izsak

Professor and Department Chair of Education
The psychology of mathematical thinking, teachers' and students' understanding and use of inscriptions, multiplicative reasoning, applications of psychometric modeling for assessment and research in mathematics education.
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Ryan Redmond

Senior Lecturer and Associate Chair
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Susan Barahal

Senior Lecturer
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Linda Beardsley

Distinguished Senior Lecturer
Linda's research interests include developing effective partnerships between higher education and public schools, training teachers to teach in urban settings, and integrating technology into classroom teaching. Her articles and book reviews have been published in Childhood Education, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, The Newslink, Helping Young Children Learn, and Massachusetts Department of Education publications.
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Bárbara M. Brizuela

Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences
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Steven Cohen

Senior Lecturer
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Sugat Dabholkar

Research Assistant Professor
A significant part of my work focuses on designing and co-designing learning environments. I study how specific design features of these learning environments facilitate learning about what it means to do science. I am interested in investigating students' epistemic engagement and participation in connection with science—how students know what they know in science classrooms and how they think about knowledge construction as a central part of the endeavor of science. Another essential part of my research is making and using agent-based computational models of complex systems to support students in thinking and learning about emergent phenomena such as natural selection. I have designed and co-designed several curricular units that have been used in high schools in the US and India.
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Meredith Edelstein

Lecturer
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Julia Gouvea

Associate Professor
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Brian Gravel

Associate Professor
Brian's research focuses on students' representational practices in science and engineering studied using design-based research on learning technologies and socio-technical learning environments. This work builds from the development of SAM Animation, which is stop-motion animation software developed at the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach. Brian co-developed SiMSAM: a multi-representational toolkit to support creative computational modeling activities for middle grades learners. Curious about design, play, and making, his work involves partnerships with researchers and educators to explore dimensions of STEM learning at the intersections of people, materials, representations, and cultures. One such example is starting Nedlam's Workshop in 2014, a makerspace in an urban high school that emphasizes multidisciplinary inquiry. Through this work, he developed both empirical and theoretical contributions focused on heterogeneous design, STEM literacies in making, and analyses of how communities of makers organize to support each other's practices. Collectively, his research complicates and expands the field's understandings of how inquiry unfolds in making contexts, and how makerspaces can be a site for equitable and dignified participation in STEM. Brian's newer work involves teachers engaging in playful computational making to study how they (re)negotiate relationships to inquiry, disciplines, computational tools, and heterogeneous ways of knowing. This includes the exploration of geographies of care and responsibility that support STEM learning environments that center wellbeing. His scholarship examines the many facets of making and making spaces in schools, both in the United States and abroad. Brian's collaborative research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the LEGO Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation. Selected Publications Gravel, B. E., & Puckett, C. (2023). What shapes implementation of a school-based makerspace? Teachers as multilevel actors in STEM reforms. International Journal of STEM Education. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-023-00395-x Gravel, B. E., & Svihla, V. (2021). Fostering heterogeneous engineering through whole-class design work. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 30(2), 279–329. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2020.1843465 Gravel, B. E., Tucker-Raymond, E., Wagh, A., Klimczak, S., & Wilson, N. (2021). More than mechanisms: Shifting ideologies for asset-based learning in engineering education. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research 11(1), 276–297. https://doi.org/10.7771/2157-9288.1286 Tucker-Raymond, E., & Gravel, B. E. (2019). STEM literacies in makerspaces: Implications for learning, teaching, and research. Routledge.
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Scott Greenspan

Lecturer
Scott's research focuses on school-based mental health services and multi-tiered systems of support, physical activity promotion, and affirming psychosocial supports for LGBTQIA+ youth. He publishes his work in peer-reviewed journals and presents at national conferences.
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David Hammer

Professor
Research on learning and instruction. My research is on learning and teaching in STEM fields (mostly physics) across ages from young children through adults. Much of my focus has been on intuitive "epistemologies," how instructors interpret and respond to student thinking, and resource-based models of knowledge and reasoning.
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Milo Koretsky

McDonnell Family Bridge Professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering and Education
engineering education research, learning and engagement in the university classroom, development of disciplinary practices, instructional design and technology development, instructional practices, organizational change, social practice theory
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Hong Ly

Lecturer
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Patricia Palmer

Lecturer
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Takeshia Pierre

Assistant Professor
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Shameka Powell

Associate Professor
Educational Equity, Teacher Education, Critical Race Theory, Social Context of Schooling, Urban Schooling, Multicultural Education
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Noelle Roop

Lecturer
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Erin Seaton

Senior Lecturer
Special Education, human development, teaching and learning, adolescence, gender, equity in education, qualitative research methods, child and adolescent literature and literacy, writing

Affiliate Faculty

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Ira Caspari-Gnann

Assistant Professor
Chemistry and STEM Education. In order to understand how and why successful teaching and learning of chemistry at the university level works, the Caspari research group focuses on analyzing students', teaching assistants' (TA), learning assistants' (LA), and instructors' reasoning, interactions, and culture. The group collects video data of classroom practices and conducts qualitative research interviews with instructors, TAs, LAs, and students to better understand how certain interactions and ways of reasoning lead to student sense making and learning. While zooming in and investigating how students connect aspects of chemistry, the group also zooms out and investigates classroom culture and how individual interactions and personal experiences integrate into larger systems of teaching and learning. The group uses this fundamental research as a theoretical basis for implementing teaching innovations and designing training opportunities in order to promote supportive learning environments for students that value and encourage their unique ways of being, knowing and doing.
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Vesal Dini

Lecturer
Physics Education Research: Scientists are professional learners who employ a range of skills and qualities to learn new things. Why should it be any different for students in how they advance in their understanding of scientific concepts? My current research focuses on how learners come to engage in the practices of science in their efforts to learn new things. To make progress on the question, I have studied how learners' views of knowledge (personal epistemologies) impact their scientific engagement in the contexts of introductory physics, quantum mechanics, and science teacher education. I have also studied the interaction of personal epistemology with emotions that come up in the doing of science (epistemic affect). Most recently, I have looked at how personal epistemology interconnects with social caring and epistemic empathy. These studies help outline some paths to progress in equity and inclusion in STEM fields, and inform my approaches to teaching.
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Trevion Henderson

Assistant Professor
Engineering education; Diversity, equity, and inclusion; team-based engineering pedagogies; engineering design thinking
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Justin Jiménez

Academic Coach
critical education studies, critical race feminisms, psychoanalysis and education, queer studies, poststructuralism, French theory
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Greses Pérez

McDonnell Family Assistant Professor of Engineering Education
cognition and learning sciences, science education, engineering education, diversity and identity, technology and education, language and cognition, multicompetence
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Cynthia Robinson

Senior Lecturer and Director of Museum Studies
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Chris Rogers

John R. Beaver Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Engineering Education, Human Robot Interaction, Mechanical Engineering, Music Engineering, Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
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Natasha Warikoo

Lenore Stern Professor in Social Sciences
Education, race, ethnicity, immigration, Asian Americans, culture, inequality, qualitative methods
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Kristen Wendell

Associate Professor and Stacey and Robert Morse Fellow
learning sciences, engineering education, design practices, classroom discourse, engineering knowledge construction

Part-time Faculty

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Anna Banerjea

Lecturer
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Denise Carver

Lecturer
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Deborah Donahue-Keegan

Lecturer
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Victoria Downes

Lecturer
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Emily Gatchell

Lecturer
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Alicia Gray

Lecturer
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Christopher Hall

Lecturer
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Richard Kim

Lecturer
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Joy Kubarek

Instructor
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Cathryn Magielnicki

Lecturer
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John Perella

Lecturer
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Jeff Shea

Instructor
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Dean Simpson

Lecturer
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Robert Trant

Lecturer
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Rachel Vorkink

Lecturer
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Michele Welch

Lecturer

Emeriti Faculty

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Steven Luz-Alterman

Senior Lecturer Emeritus
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Laura Rogers

Senior Lecturer Emerita
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Analucia Schliemann

Professor Emerita
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Martha Tucker

Senior Lecturer Emerita
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Kathleen Weiler

Professor Emerita