Associate Professor, Learning Sciences & STEM Education
Affiliate, UC Berkeley Center for Race & Gender
Affiliate, UC Berkeley Asian American Research Center
Research
Dr. Sengupta-Irving’s research explores the sociocultural, disciplinary, and political dimensions of children’s mathematics learning. Broadly, her work asks a deceptively simple question: What, in addition to mathematics, do children learn when they learn mathematics? Dr. Sengupta-Irving works closely with teachers to understand and design pedagogical approaches that promote racially minoritized children's fluency in disciplinary ideas and practies, while also engendering a sense of joy, agency, and collectivism in learning. Through a mix of prolonged ethnographic study, teaching experiments, and microanalyses of children’s interactions, her work generates new knowledge to resist neoliberal logics that render math learning a stratifying project of race, class, and gender in schools.
Background
Tesha Sengupta-Irving earned a B.S .in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After working in industry, she became a mathematics teacher who first worked with incarcerated youth and adults seeking a GED, then later with secondary students in the Compton Unified School District in California. She completed a Ph.D. in Mathematics Curriculum & Teacher Education at Stanford University, where she was awarded the Stanford Graduate Fellowship, a Spencer Research Training Grant, and a Spencer Dissertation Fellowship. She completed her postdoctoral studies at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Sciences, where she also served as Assistant Director of Research for the UCLA Lab School. Prior to joining the UC Berkeley faculty, Sengupta-Irving held academic positions at UC Irvine's School of Education and Vanderbilt University's Peabody College of Education.
Select Publications
Sengupta-Irving, T. & Philip, T. (2024). Teaching beyond the single story of STEM. Educational Leadership, 81(7), 0-0.
Sengupta-Irving, T., & Schiffrin-Sands, L. (2023). Principals, paradigms, and possibilities: STEAM Education Reform and the Centering of Black Life. Urban Education, 58(4), 0-0. PDF
Sengupta-Irving, T., Vogelstein, L., Brady, C., & Phillips Galloway, E. (2023). Prolepsis & telos: Interpreting pedagogy and recovering imagination in the mediation of youth learning. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 32(2), 211-249. PDF
Sengupta-Irving, T. (2021). Positioning and positioned apart: Mathematics learning as becoming undesirable. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 52(2), 187-208. PDF
Sengupta-Irving, T., Tunney, J., & Macias, M. (2021). Stories of Garlic, Butter, and Ceviche: Racial-Ideological Micro-Contestation and Microaggressions in Secondary STEM Professional Development. Cognition and Instruction, 39(1), 69-84. PDF
McKinney de Royston & Sengupta-Irving, T. (2019). Another step forward: Engaging the political in learning. Cognition and Instruction, 37(3),277-284. PDF
Sengupta-Irving, T., & Vossoughi, S. (2019). Not in their name: re-interpreting discourses of STEM learning through the subjective experiences of minoritized girls. Race Ethnicity and Education, 22(4), 479-501. PDF
Agarwal, P., & Sengupta-Irving, T. (2019). Integrating power to advance the study of Connective and Productive Disciplinary Engagement in mathematics and science. Cognition and Instruction, 37(3), 1-18. PDF
Sengupta-Irving, T., & Enyedy, N. (2015). Why engaging in mathematical practices may explain stronger outcomes in affect and engagement: Comparing student-driven with highly guided inquiry. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 24(4), 550-592. PDF
Interest and Professional Affiliations
Interests
- STEM Teaching and Learning
- Inequality and Resistance
- Politics, Ethics, and Emotions
- Agency and Identity
- Ethnographic Case Study & Design-Based Research
Affiliations
- American Education Research Association (AERA)
- National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
- International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS)
Editorships
- Commentary Editor, Journal for Research in Mathematics Education (Fall 2025)
- Associate Editor, Cognition and Instruction (Fall 2025)
