School of Arts and Sciences
Department of Education

Full Profile

Courses / Teaching Activities
Sugat Dabholkar

Sugat Dabholkar

Research Assistant Professor, Education
Sugat Dabholkar

Full Profile

Courses / Teaching Activities

Research/Areas of Interest

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.

Education

  • Ph.D., Learning Sciences, Northwestern University, United States, 2021
  • MBA, Human Resources, Xavier School of Management, India, 2010
  • M.Sc., Computational Biology, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India, 2007

Biography

As a Learning Scientist, I design and study curricula in schools and at the undergraduate level to investigate student participation as they navigate different aspects of their identities and values in a learning context. Working with teachers and students from diverse backgrounds to honor and integrate their context-specific funds of knowledge in curricular design is central to my educational design and research work. As technology becomes more prevalent in academic contexts, I want to foreground student-centered equitable use of technology in classrooms. I am interested in extending my work by partnering with local and global communities to study how technological and pedagogical innovations can mediate such co-design efforts to support students' epistemic agency as they learn and do science.