David Uttal, Director
David Uttal
Professor, Psychology
Professor, Education
Research Interests
Mental representation, cognitive development, spatial cognition, early symbolization.
duttal@northwestern.edu
David Uttal Bio
STEERING COMMITTEE
Cynthia Coburn
Professor, Human Development and Social Policy
Professor, Learning Sciences
Research Interests
Relationship between instructional policy and teachers’ classroom practices in urban schools.
cynthia.coburn@northwestern.edu
Cynthia Coburn Bio
Jonathan Guryan
Lawyer Taylor Professor of Education and Social Policy
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Research Interests
Understanding the sources and consequences of racial inequality and the economics of education.
j-guryan@northwestern.edu
Jonathan Guryan Bio
Larry Hedges
Board of Trustees Professor of Statistics and Social Policy
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Research Interests
Development and application of statistical methods for the social, medical, and biological sciences; evaluation research.
l-hedges@northwestern.edu
Larry Hedges Bio
C. Kirabo Jackson
Abraham Harris Professor of Education and Social Policy
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Research Interests
Economics of education, labor economics, public finance, applied econometrics, development.
kirabo-jackson@northwestern.edu
Kirabo Jackson Bio
Nichole Pinkard
Alice Hamilton Professor of Education and Social Policy
Professor of Learning Sciences
Faculty Director of the Office of Community Education Partnerships
Research Interests
Design and use of pedagogical-based social networks and socio-technical systems to support community-level ecological models of learning
nichole.pinkard@northwestern.edu
Nichole Pinkard Bio
Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Ex Officio
Director and Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Margaret Walker Alexander Professor of Human Development and Social Policy
Research Interests
Policy implementation; education, health and support of children in poverty.
dws@northwestern.edu
Diane Schanzenbach Bio
James Spillane, Ex Officio
Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Professor in Learning and Organizational Change
Professor, Human Development and Social Policy
Professor, Learning Sciences
Faculty Associate, Institute for Policy Research
Research Interests
Policy implementation; educational policy; organizational change; school leadership; relations between policy and teachers’ and administrators’ practice.
j-spillane@northwestern.edu
Jim Spillane Bio
CORE FACULTY
Emma Adam
Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Human Development and Social Policy
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Research Interests
Social influences on emotional and physiological stress and sleep quality in children and adolescents and their parents; effects of stress and sleep on emotional and physical health and academic outcomes.
Megan Bang
Professor, Learning Sciences
Research Interests
Dynamics of culture, learning, and development broadly with a specific focus on the complexities of navigating multiple meaning systems in creating and implementing more effective and just learning environments in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics education; reasoning and decision-making about complex socio-ecological systems in ways that intersect with culture, power, and historicity.
Tabitha Bonilla
Assistant Professor, Human Development & Social Policy
Research Interests
Political communication, identity (race, gender, and intersectionality), political behavior (voting, contact with representatives, etc.) , political attitudes, and measurement of bias.
Jeannette Colyvas
Associate Professor, Human Development and Social Policy
Associate Professor, Learning Sciences
Associate Professor and Executive Board Member , Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
Associate Professor (by courtesy) , Department of Sociology
Associate Professor (by courtesy) , MORS, Kellogg School of Management
Faculty Affiliate , Institute for Policy Research
Director of Undergraduate Programs , School of Education and Social Policy
Research Interests
Organizational persistence and change; diffusion, implementation, and institutionalization; institutions and networks; comparing public, private, and non-profit forms of organizing; government-university-industry interfaces; public and private science.
j-colyvas@northwestern.edu
Jeannette Colyas Bio
Mesmin Destin
Associate Professor, Human Development and Social Policy
Associate Professor, Psychology
Research Interests
Psychological processes underlying associations between socioeconomic circumstances and behaviors/outcomes, such as academic motivation and achievement; effects of financial assets on goals and behavior; small classroom-based interventions to improve school outcomes for low-income and minority youth.
m-destin@northwestern.edu
Mesmin Destin Bio
Matthew Easterday
Associate Professor, Learning Sciences
Research Interests
Technology for the new civics – producing scientifically supported educational technology to create informed and engaged citizens who can solve the serious policy problems facing society such as poverty, global warming and militarism. Training such citizens requires us to understand how competent citizens analyze policy, communicate issues, and organize to make change. It also requires us to design more effective educational technology that can teach the knowledge, skills and dispositions citizens need.
easterday@northwestern.edu
Matt Easterday Bio
David Figlio
Dean, School of Education and Social Policy
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Orrington Lunt Professor of Education and Social Policy
Research Interests
Accountability policy; economics of education; teacher quality; teacher labor markets; anti-poverty policy; intergenerational transmission of human capital; evaluation design.
figlio@northwestern.edu
David Figlio Bio
Claudia Haase
Associate Professor, Human Development and Social Policy
Associate Professor, Psychology
Faculty Associate, Institute for Policy Research
Faculty Affiliate, Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences
Research Interests
Life-span development; emotion; motivation; close relationships; psychophysiology
claudia.haase@northwestern.edu
Claudia Haase Bio
Michael Horn
Associate Professor and Program Coordinator, Learning Sciences
Associate Professor, Computer Science
Research Interests
Design of educational technology, learning in museums, computer programming, tangible interaction.
michael-horn@northwestern.edu
Michael Horn Bio
Simone Ipsa-Landa
Associate Professor, Sociology and Human Development and Social Policy
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Research Interests
Ispa-Landa’s scholarship concerns the sociology of education, race and gender, and youth peer cultures. She is interested in understanding how individuals and groups respond to stigma and discrimination, maintain the meaning systems that support it, and seek to overcome its negative consequences. She is currently working on two projects: first, how college men and women in historically white Greek life navigate gendered power dynamics and sexual violence. Her second project is a book about the strengths and challenges of various approaches to racial disparities in discipline in a self-consciously liberal suburban school district. Her areas of teaching include race and ethnicity, gender, sociology of education, sociology of youth and childhood, and qualitative research methods.
s-ispa-landa@northwestern.edu
Simone Ipsa-Landa Bio
Molly Losh
Jo Ann G. and Peter F. Dolle Professor of Learning Disabilities
Associate Dean for Research
Research Interests
Her research focuses on autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions, with a specific focus on understanding the basis of language and communication impairments that span diagnostic boundaries. Work from her lab has helped to identify key cognitive mechanisms that may underlie the social-communicative impairments in autism, in order to bridge gaps between observable clinical behaviors and underlying biology, necessary for understanding the causes of autism and related conditions.
m-losh@northwestern.edu
Molly Losh Bio
Ofer Malamud
Associate Professor, Human Development and Social Policy
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Research Interests
General and vocational education; Technology and child development; Returns to college education
ofer.malamud@northwestern.edu
Ofer Malamud Bio
Quinn Mulroy
Assistant Professor, Human Development and Social Policy
Assistant Professor (by courtesy), Political Science
Faculty Associate, Institute for Policy Research
Research Interests
Quinn Mulroy is a political scientist whose work engages central questions in the subfields of social policy, law and society, inequality, political institutions, and American political development. At its core, her research agenda centers substantively on the study of inequality (racial, economic, and gender) through the lens of the policies, state-society relationships, and political institutions that can reinforce and/or challenge its persistence in American politics. Using a mixed set of methodological approaches – including historical analyses of archival materials, ethnographic observation, interviewing, survey experiments, and statistical examinations of quantitative data – she is engaged in several ongoing projects exploring the political development of social policy addressing inequality and the often informal, hidden, and unintended modes of enforcement crafted by those who implement it.
qmulroy@northwestern.edu
Quinn Mulroy Bio
Jen Munson
Assistant Professor, Learning Sciences
Research Interests
Mathematics teaching and learning; coaching and professional development; teacher education
jmunson@northwestern.edu
Jen Munson Bio
Yang Qu
Assistant Professor, Human Development and Social Policy
Assistant Professor (by courtesy), Department of Psychology
Faculty Associate, Institute for Policy Research
Research Interests
Yang Qu is a developmental psychologist who takes an interdisciplinary approach that combines developmental psychology, cultural psychology, and neuroscience to examine how sociocultural contexts shape adolescent development. In this vein, he has two lines of research. First, Yang investigates the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying cultural differences in adolescents’ academic, social, and emotional development. Second, he examines how parents influence adolescents’ beliefs and brain, with attention to the implications for adolescents’ learning and psychological adjustment. In both these lines of inquiry, Yang studies children from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds using a variety of methodological approaches, including longitudinal and experimental designs along with survey, observational, and biological (e.g., neuroimaging with fMRI) assessments.
yangqu@northwestern.edu
Yang Qu Bio
David Rapp
Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence
Professor, Learning Sciences
Professor, Psychology
Research Interests
Reading comprehension; memory following learning experiences; updating prior knowledge; the acquisition of accurate and inaccurate information; translation of cognitive science research to educational settings; multimedia learning; visualizations as learning tools.
rapp@northwestern.edu
David Rapp Bio
Brian Reiser
Orrington Lunt Professor of Education and Social Policy
Professor of Learning Sciences
Research Interests
The design of learning environments and curriculum materials for science that support authentic practices including explanation, argumentation, and designing investigations. His research examines the cognitive and social interaction aspects of scientific inquiry, principles for scaffolding practices in software and curriculum materials, teaching practices, and curriculum design frameworks.
reiser@northwestern.edu
Brian Reiser Bio
William Revelle
Professor, Psychology
Research Interests
Psychometric theory; structural equation modeling
revelle@northwestern.edu
William Revelle Bio
Megan York Roberts
Associate Professor, Communication Sciences and Disorders
Research Interests
My work focuses on improving access to effective early intervention for toddlers with developmental delays (e.g., autism, hearing loss). This clinically-based line of research examines new ways of identifying autism and different variations of caregiver-mediated communication interventions tailored specifically for different populations of children.
megan.y.roberts@northwestern.edu
Megan Roberts Bio
James Rosenbaum
Professor, Human Development and Social Policy
Professor, Sociology, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Research Interests
High schools, community colleges, youth transitions to work and adulthood. School and college reform and restructuring. Sociology of education.
j-rosenbaum@northwestern.edu
James Rosenbaum Bio
Terri J. Sabol
Assistant Professor, Human Development and Social Policy
Research Interests
Individual and environmental factors that lead to healthy child development.
terri.sabol@northwestern.edu
Terri Sabol Bio
Bruce Sherin
Professor, Learning Sciences
Research Interests
Conceptual change in science; computational linguistics applied to natural language data; programming environments for learning; external representations in science and mathematics.
bsherin@northwestern.edu
Bruce Sherin Bio
Miriam Sherin
Alice Gabrielle Twight Professor of Learning Sciences
Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education
Research Interests
Mathematics teaching and learning; teacher cognition and teacher noticing, the role of video in teacher learning.
msherin@northwestern.edu
Miriam Sherin Bio
Reed Stevens
Professor, Learning Sciences
Research Interests
Learning and activity in a wide range of places and situations; design of learning tools curriculum, activities, and technologies.
reed-stevens@northwestern.edu
Reed Stevens Bio
L. Elizabeth Tipton
Ad Hoc MS Program Director
Associate Professor, Statistics
Research Interests
Decision-making; improving generalizability and external validity of randomized trials; development of statistical methods and tools for causal generalizations.
tipton@northwestern.edu
Elizabeth Tipton Bio
Sepehr Vakil
Assistant Professor, Learning Sciences
Affiliated Faculty Member, Science in Human Cultures Program
Affiliated Faculty Member, Cognitive Science Program
Research Interests
Intersections of technology, race, ethics, and learning; STEM education; participatory design and community-engaged research methodologies; historical and sociopolitical analyses of engineering and computer science education across global contexts; philosophy and history of education
sepehr.vakil@northwestern.edu
Sepehr Vakil Bio
Shirin Vossoughi
Associate Professor, Learning Sciences
Research Interests
As a learning scientist and ethnographer of education, I am concerned with understanding the social, cultural, political and ethical dimensions of human learning in ways that contribute to projects of educational justice. To this end, I study the forms of pedagogical mediation, thinking, relationality and development that take shape within settings that cultivate transformative learning, particularly with migrant, immigrant, diasporic and other non-dominant youth. My work seeks to understand micro-interactional processes of human learning as tied to broader forms of social change, and the potentials of learning environments as lived arguments for the possible.
shirin.vossoughi@northwestern.edu
Shirin Vossoughi Bio
Adriana Weisleder
Assistant Professor, Communication Sciences and Disorders
Research Interests
adriana.weisleder@northwestern.edu
Adriana Weisleder Bio
Marcelo Worsley
Assistant Professor, Learning Sciences
Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Research Interests
Advancing society’s understanding of how students learn in complex learning environments by forging new opportunities for using multimodal technology