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.
Special Education, human development, teaching and learning, adolescence, gender, equity in education, qualitative research methods, child and adolescent literature and literacy, writing
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.
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 more recent work involves partnerships with researchers and educators to start 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.
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.
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
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.
McDonnell Family Assistant Professor of Engineering Education
brain and learning sciences, science education, engineering education, diversity and identity, technology and education, language and cognition, multicompetence
