Faculty study, design and participate in transformative approaches to individual and social development, approaches within schools and classrooms, and across diverse sites and contexts in communities, workplaces and social movements. Students will examine how to promote equity and honor socio-cultural and linguistic diversity; transform schools, technology, and other educational spaces; support teachers as learners; and foster promising social futures for all youth; and develop theories informing this practice.
Key Intellectual Areas
Learning Sciences (LS) is a well-established, substantial, and thriving international intellectual discipline, with a clear identity, community, conference, and journal. The cluster’s mandate is to groom graduate students to partake in this line of scholarship, forging a strong sense of academic affiliation, building theoretical fluency, methodological expertise, and collaborative networks.
LS is unique in how it feeds from the cognitive sciences and contributes back to its literatures by way of empirical studies grounded in authentic educational contexts.
LS’s flagship approach to inquiry—design-based research—is a paragon of ethically driven transformative methods for developing theory through addressing practical needs.
Features of the Learning Sciences and Human Development (LS/HD) cluster include the following emphases:
LS is unique in how it feeds from the cognitive sciences and contributes back to its literatures by way of empirical studies grounded in authentic educational contexts.
LS’s flagship approach to inquiry—design-based research—is a paragon of ethically driven transformative methods for developing theory through addressing practical needs.
Features of the Learning Sciences and Human Development (LS/HD) cluster include the following emphases:
- Synthesis of advances in learning science including Human Development with STEM (broadly conceived to include Data Science and AI).
- Research programs spanning preK-16.
- Focus on investigations in authentic contexts.
- Emphasis on methods suited to authentic contexts including design research.
- Strong training in research and practice for learning and development in early childhood STEM education.
Student Learning and Experience
Features of the student experience include:
- An LS Affiliate program for undergraduate and graduate students who wish to build on their expertise in a STEM field to pursue a Ph.D. Affiliates might wish to prepare for an application to SESAME or a similar program that prepares them for expanding opportunities including a teaching professorship, an Assistant Professorship at a university, a job at a tech company, or work in informal education such as at a museum. Target audience includes BSE major and minor; CalTeach; Computer Science M.A.; Electrical Engineering / Computer Science M.A.; Haas M.B.A.; and students in STEM who thrive as GSIs.
- Opportunity for graduate students, including LS Affiliates to earn the Learning Sciences Certificate in Instructional Design; Learning Technologies; and Educational Research. Beneficial connections to SESAME, including some shared courses and a broader, STEM-based community.
- A campus-wide seminar series that includes work in progress talks by BSE faculty, dissertation talks by students in their last semester in the BSE, education talks by faculty across the campus, and talks by visiting scholars.
- Research Groups (RG) led by each faculty member in the cluster to mentor Ph.D., M.A. (including those in UCSF M.A.), and affiliated undergraduate students. RG implement the apprenticeship model for student advising. RG scaffold research projects:
- Support first year students to select a research question, visit research sites to observe studies in progress, and meet a series of milestones that culminate in a paper suitable for submission to an academic meeting.
- Support second year students to plan a pilot study for their dissertation, prepare for a proposal review and qualifying exam, practice research presentations, and iteratively refine their investigation.
- Support students in their third and subsequent year to carry out their dissertation research, develop a job talk, practice being interviewed for a job, etc.
- Foster professional identity and community, often enabling networking with peer researchers within the RG; in other RG; in other departments; and in other universities.