Tamara “Tammy” Clegg is an Associate Professor in the College of Information Studies and the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership and at the University of Maryland. She co-directs the Youth eXperience (YX) Lab at the College of Information Studies, University of Maryland. Tammy’s work focuses on developing technology (e.g., social media, mobile apps, e-textiles, community displays) to support life-relevant learning where learners, particularly those from underrepresented groups in science, engage in science in the context of achieving personally relevant goals. She seeks to understand ways such learning environments and technologies support scientific disposition development. Tammy’s work is funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Studies, and Google.

Eve Manz is Assistant Professor of Science Education at the Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. Her research focuses  on understanding how to design and orchestrate learning environments that apprentice young students into disciplinary practices. She conducts this work within elementary science classrooms, and seeks to ensure that science practices (e.g., experimentation, argumentation, representation) are instantiated not as rote skills or descriptions of what distant scientists do but as activities that empower students, are meaningful to them, and help them develop an “intellectually honest” understanding of how disciplinary knowledge is (or could be) developed and used. She is committed to conducting research that makes visible the complexity of elementary school teaching and learning, disrupts settled power relations, and recognizes participants as valued sense-makers.

David Stroupe is an Assistant Professor of teacher education. He also serves as the associate director of STEM Teacher Education at the CREATE for STEM Institute at MSU. He has three overlapping areas of research interests anchored around ambitious teaching practice. First, he frames classrooms as science practice communities. Using lenses from Science, Technology, and Society (STS) and the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS), he examines how teachers and students negotiate power, knowledge, and epistemic agency. Second, he examines how beginning teachers learn from practice in and across their varied contexts. Third, he studies how teacher preparation programs can provide support and opportunities for beginning teachers to learn from practice. David has a background in biology and taught secondary life science for four years. David is the recipient of the AERA Exemplary Research Award for Division K (Teaching and Teacher Education), the Early Career Research Award from the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, and “Research Worth Reading” from National Association for Research in Science Teaching and the National Science Teacher Association.

1. Early maltreatment and heterogeneity in academic engagement for young children
   Casey Mullins, Carlomagno Panlilio, and Amanda Ferrara
2. Family Sense-making in Rural Astronomy Workshops
   Heather Toomey Zimmerman, PhD, Michele Crowl, PhD, and Jennifer Scudder, MEd
3. Making the design explicit: Preparing teachers to learn ambitious science teaching
   JD McCausland, Scott McDonald, Kathryn M. Bateman
4. Preservice Secondary Mathematics Teachers’ Instrumental Genesis and Their Growth of Geometric Knowledge in a Dynamic Geometry Environment
   Xiangquan Yao
   
5. Students’ Investment in the Engineering Problem Space through Engineering Storybooks
   Carmen M. Vanderhoof, Gregory J. Kelly, and Christine M. Cunningham
6. Teachers’ Use of Physics Learning Progressions in Classroom Assessment Practices after Professional Development
   Michelle Wooten, Alicia Alonzo, and Julie Christensen
7. The effect of traumatic events and symptoms on inhibitory control and learning
   Amanda M. Ferrara and Carlomagno C. Panlilio
8. Using storybook narratives to support preschool-age children’s investigations of science phenomena
   Julia Plummer and Kyungjin Cho

1. Collaboration among family members showing varying emotional engagements: Understanding their situational interests during making projects at a science museum
   Yong Ju Jung and Heather Toomey Zimmerman

2. Everyone Accounted For: Representation as a Critical Part of the National Science Foundation’s Broadening Participation Mandate
   Starlette M. Sharp

3. Examining the Effects of Learners’ Background and Social Network Position on Content-Related Interaction via the MOOC Platform Qiyuan Li and Priya Sharma
4. Fostering connections between science practices and everyday life
   Zachary McKinley
   
5. Group’s Response to Design for Productive Failure
   Shulong Yan and Marcela Borge
6. Science Teacher Learning and Educational Politics
   Kathryn M. Bateman and Scott McDonald

7. The Body as a Boundary Object: Viewing the Pedagogical Encounters of Golf Instructors across Space-Time
   Nate Turcotte, Ty Hollett, Dan Merrell, and Steve Wager
8. Understanding Teacher and Student Talk Across Global Classroom Contexts
   Rachel M. V. Croninger, Sara E. Baszczewski, P. Karen Murphy, Liwei Wei, Funke Omidire, Liesel Ebersöhn

Kevin Crowley is Professor of Learning Sciences and Policy at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is also Associate Dean for Research and Faculty in the School of Education.  He works in partnership with museums, community organizations, and other informal educators to develop innovative out of school learning environments. Crowley’s group conducts basic learning sciences research in informal settings and develops new theories of how people learn about science, technology, engineering, and art. Recent projects include a research-practice partnership with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History focused on climate change education and 21st century naturalism and understanding and supporting a city-wide network of museum/community partnerships for family learning in Philadelphia. Crowley is also part of the leadership team for the Center for the Advancement of Informal Science Education https://www.informalscience.org/. Crowley has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University and a BA in psychology from Swarthmore College.

Victor R. Lee is Associate Professor of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences at Utah State University. His research explores learning through wearables and self-tracking technologies, Maker education in out-of-school settings, and unplugged and screen-free computer science education at the elementary school level. Prior research involved studying the use and design of science curriculum materials and conceptual change. Dr. Lee is past recipient of a National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation Post-doctoral fellowship, the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award, and the Jan Hawkins Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association. He has published two academic volumes, entitled Learning Technologies and the Body: Integration and Implementation in Formal and Informal Learning Environments and Reconceptualizing Libraries: Perspectives from the Information and Learning Sciences (with Abigail Phillips). He serves on several major journal editorial boards. He holds a Ph.D. in learning sciences from Northwestern University.

Katie Headrick Taylor is Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development at the University of Washington’s College of Education. She’s interested in the political development of youth, and how these processes manifest across physical and digital communities. She co-designs and studies public-facing learning and teaching environments in which young people take-up stewardship and leadership roles within school-community partnerships. Dr. Taylor is a mother of two young children and tsundoku zealot (look it up). She received her PhD at Vanderbilt University and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the LIFE Center’s Northwestern outpost. 

Rafi Santo is a learning scientist focused on the intersection of digital culture, education and institutional change. Centering his work within research-practice partnerships, he has studied, collaborated with and facilitated a range of organizational networks related to digital learning, computing and technology in education. Within informal education, he has focused on organizational change and the design of innovation networks around digital learning, focusing on both regional networks including the Mozilla Hive NYC Learning Network, a collective of 70 informal education organizations, as well as national networks, including the Digital Learning Challenge community supported by the Susan Crown Exchange. In K-12 schooling, he works with CSforALL to support school districts to develop values-driven strategic plans around universal computing education initiatives. His research on Hacker Literacies has appeared in journals including International Journal of Learning and Media and Digital Culture & Education, and he is co-author of a four volume collection on digital making from MIT Press called Interconnections: Understanding Systems through Digital Design. His work has been supported by the Spencer Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation and the Susan Crown Exchange.

William A. Sandoval studied Computer Science at the University of New Mexico and earned his Ph.D. in the Learning Sciences from Northwestern University in 1998. His research focuses on epistemic cognition: how people think about what and how they know. He is especially interested in how science learning in school can promote a deep understanding of scientific argument that supports productive engagement with science in public life. He edited (with Jeffrey Greene and Ivar Bråten) the first International Handbook of Epistemic Cognition. He has published and presented internationally in science education, educational psychology, and the learning sciences. He served as associate editor of the Journal of the Learning Sciences for several years and continues to serve on the editorial boards of JLS, Cognition & Instruction, Educational Psychologist, and Science Education. He served on the National Research Council study panel that produced America’s Lab Report in 2005, and regularly advises various science education groups. Prof. Sandoval is as an expert on educational design research, most widely recognized for developing the now popular technique of conjecture mapping. He was elected to the International Society of the Learning Sciences Board of Directors in 2011, and served as the Society’s president in 2017-18. He is a Fellow of the International Society of the Learning Sciences and the International Society of Design and Development in Education, and is also a member of the American Educational Research Association, the National Association of Research on Science Teaching, the American Psychological Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Kris D. Gutiérrez is Carol Liu Professor at the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley. Gutiérrez’s expertise is in the learning sciences, literacy, educational policy, and qualitative, and design-based approaches to inquiry. Gutiérrez is a member of the National Academy of Education and fellow of AERA and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. She is past president of the American Educational Research Association and was appointed by President Obama to the National Board for the Institute of Education Sciences, for which she served as vice-chair. Gutiérrez’s research examines learning in designed environments, with attention to students from nondominant communities and Dual Language Learners. Her work on Third Spaces examines the affordances of syncretic approaches to literacy and learning, new media literacies, STEM learning, and the re-mediation of functional systems of learning.  Her work in social design experiments seeks to leverage students’ everyday concepts and practices to ratchet up expansive and equitable forms of learning.  Key examples of longstanding collaborations with immigrant and migrant communities include Las Redes, a 15-year long after-school afterschool program that privileged hybrid language practices for youth, grades K-5, El Pueblo Mágico, a STEM-oriented after-school program, and the UCLA Migrant Student Leadership Program for California youth from migrant farmworker backgrounds.

Gutiérrez serves on the National Research Council Committee on Strengthening Science Education through a Teacher Learning Continuum and on the Guiding the Implementation of PreK-12 Engineering Education Committee, National Academy of Engineering. Her empirical studies are funded by Spencer, NSF and the MacArthur Foundation as co-pi on the MacArthur Funded Connected Learning Research Network.

Gutiérrez’s research has been published widely in premier academic journals and is a co-author of Learning and Expanding With Activity Theory. Gutiérrez has won numerous awards, including the AERA Division C Sylvia Scribner Award for influencing the field of learning and instruction, the 2016 Oscar Causey award for influencing the field of literacy, the 2016 Medal of Excellence from the Columbia University/Teachers College, the 2014 Distinguished Contributions to Social Contexts in Education Research – Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2014 Henry T. Trueba Award for Research Leading to the Transformation of the Social Contexts of Education, (Division G, AERA), the 2005 AERA Division C Sylvia Scribner Award. She was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, an AERA and NEPC Fellow, and an Osher Fellow at the Exploratorium Museum of Science. Gutiérrez received the AERA Hispanic Research in Elementary, Secondary, or Postsecondary Education Award and the Inaugural Award for Innovations in Research on Diversity in Teacher Education, Division K (AERA). She served on the U.S. Department of Education Reading First Advisory Committee and was a member of President Obama’s Education Policy Transition Team. Professor Gutiérrez was also identified as one of the 2009 Top 100 influential Hispanics.

Carol D. Lee is the Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Education in the School of Education and Social Policy and in African-American Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, U.S.A.  She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.  She is a past president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), AERA’s past representative to the World Educational Research Association, past vice-president of Division G (Social Contexts of Education) of the American Educational Research Association, past president of the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy, and past co-chair of the Research Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English.  She is a member of the National Academy of Education in the United States, a fellow of the American Educational Research Association, a fellow of the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy, and a former fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.   She is a recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the National Council of Teachers of English, Scholars of Color Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Educational Research Association, the Walder Award for Research Excellence at Northwestern University, the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Illinois-Urbana, The President’s Pacesetters Award from the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education and an honorary doctorate from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She has led three international delegations in education on behalf of the People to People’s Ambassador Program to South Africa and the People’s Republic of China.  She is the author or co-editor of three books, the most recent Culture, Literacy and Learning: Taking Bloom in the Midst of the Whirlwind, 4 monographs, and has published over 62 journal articles and book or handbook chapters in the field of education.  Her research addresses cultural supports for learning that include a broad ecological focus, with attention to language and literacy and African-American youth.  Her career spans a 53 year history, including work as an English Language Arts teacher at the high school and community college levels, a primary grade teacher, and a university professor.  She is a founder of three African centered schools that span a 47 year history, including two charter schools under the umbrella of the Betty Shabazz International Charter Schools (est. 1998) where she serves as chair of the Board of Directors.  She is married to Dr. Haki R. Madhubuti, poet and publisher of Third World Press, and is the mother of three adult children and four grandchildren, and together they have six adult children and nine grandchildren.   

Dick Grandy: I was an undergraduate math major and physics minor.  Adolph Grunbaum turned me to philosophy of science, and as a graduate student i worked with his teacher, C G Hempel, a member of the Berlin branch of the Vienna Circle. Kuhn convinced me that understanding the nature of science required also exploring issues of cognition, sociology, economics and politics.  Learning more details about our cognitive abilities led me to appreciate the value of models—mental, mathematical, physical—all potential enhancements of our cognitive functioning.  My concerns have evolved over 5 decades from grappling with  the observational-theoretical distinction to puzzling  about how we cognifacture data.

Susan Yoon, PhD, is Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She has research interests in science and technology education, complex systems, social network and social capital applications for learning, and the learning sciences. Her work spans both formal and informal science and technology environments where she has developed tools, curricula, and PD activities to support sense making through visualization tools, socioscientific sensibilities, and decision-making about science in real world contexts. She has researched the affordances of wearable and mobile technologies, augmented reality technologies, digital knowledge-building collaborative platforms, and agent-based computer simulations that support STEM content learning and participation with middle and high school students and teachers. Her most recent project in conjunction with the Perelman School of Medicine at Penn investigates how to incorporate cutting-edge research in the field of biomedical informatics into high school environmental science curriculum to engage students in local scientific action. She is the recipient of the 2009 AERA Division C Jan Hawkins Award for early career contributions in learning. She sits on the Board of Directors for the International Society of the Learning Sciences and is co-Editor-in-Chief of the /Journal of the Learning Sciences/ for the period 2017–2020.

The conference theme for this year’s Waterbury Summit grew out of a meeting discussing the Learning Sciences at Penn State. Specail thanks to those that offered suggestions and inspirations. Including:

Brian Belland
Marcela Borge
Roy Clariana
Amy Voss Farris
Ty Hollett
Greg Kelly
Matthew McCrudden
Chan-Min Kim
Jonna Kulikowich
Gabriela Richard
Tanner Vea
Xiangquan James Yao

Thank you also to:

Gay and Bill Krause
Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center
PSU Conferences and Instititutes
The College of Educatin Graduate Students
Paul’s Provisions and Catering
Kenneth B. Waterbury Endowment for Secondary Education
Dean David Monk