Learning Sciences & Human Development

Marcia C. Linn

Marcia C. Linn is Evelyn Lois Corey Professor of Instructional Science, specializing in science and technology in the School of Education, University of California, Berkeley. She is a member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS). She has served as...

Elliot Turiel

Elliot Turiel teaches courses on human development and its relation to education. He holds the Jerome A. Hutto Chair in the School of Education, and is an affiliated professor in the Department of Psychology. He has served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs ad Interim Dean in the School of Education. He has served as president of the Jean Piaget Society. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a National Institute of Mental Health Fellow, and is a member of the National Academy of Education. In 2021 he recieved the Distinguished Contributions to Developemental Science Award, from the Jean...

Laura Sterponi

Merging my graduate degree training in developmental psychology (PhD, 2002) and in applied linguistics (PhD, 2004), I have developed a research program that is centrally concerned with the role of language and literacy practices in children’s development and education.

As a developmental psychologist, I have always been interested in discerning the sociocultural underpinnings of learning processes. The cognitive capabilities that our neurological apparatus enables us as human beings to attain do not pre-exist and are never abstracted from the social practices in which they develop...

Dor Abrahamson

Dor Abrahamson researches mathematics learning and teaching. He develops and evaluates theoretical models of these processes by analyzing empirical data collected during implementations of his innovative pedagogical design. Drawing on embodiment and sociocultural paradigms, Abrahamson is particularly interested in modeling how learners coordinate between intuitive and formal views on situated phenomena and what roles teachers play in ushering these coordinations. Abrahamson’s analyses of pedagogical interactions focus on student and...

Xinyu (Celia) Wei

Xinyu (Celia) Wei is a second-year Master’s student in the Learning Sciences and Human Development program at the School of Education at UC Berkeley. As an international scholar from China, Xinyu desires to help students celebrate productive struggles, leverage everyday experiences, and develop intellectual and sociocritical thinking skills to tackle worldwide equity barriers within STEM education. Her mission guides her as an emergent researcher who works with classroom teachers and students to design and implement meaningful and culturally grounded mathematics and science...

Yi Zhou

Yi (Joe) Zhou is an international student from China. He is a PhD student in the Learning Sciences and Human Development cluster at UC Berkeley's School of Education, advised by Professor Elliot Turiel. Yi is hugely interested in the broad topic of morality, and enjoys reading ethical theories and moral psychology. His own research is in the field of moral development.

He is currently looking at individuals' judgments about the desirability of doing the morally right thing and their practical decisions in social situations involving conflict between morality and self-interest. He is...

Yared Portillo

Yared is a PhD student in the Learning Sciences and Human Development cluster at UC Berkeley’s School of Education with a focus on Language, Literacy, and Culture. Before graduate school, Yared was a community organizer and educator in South Philadelphia where she worked with the Latinx immigrant community. She has also been working as a community-based music educator for nearly 10 years, currently facilitating son jarocho workshops in Sacramento, Calif.

Yared’s research focuses on studying the processes of collective meaning making that takes place in learning and teaching fandango...

Franklin B. Mejía

Franklin B. Mejía received a BA and a Masters in Education at the University of California, San Diego and is currently a 4th year graduate student in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Currently, he is finalizing his third prequalifying paper and is studying for his oral qualifying examination to advance to candidacy. His areas of expertise include talent development, cultural identities, Latinx education, teacher effectiveness, and Latinx legal court cases involving school segregation/desegregation efforts.

Meg Escudé

Meg Escudé is a phd student in the Learning Sciences and Human Development cluster. Her research engages community-based afterschool educators in the co-development of liberatory learning experiences for young people. Meg has over 12 years of experience as an educator and program director in which she worked to create out-of-school learning environments that honor the diverse ways in which non-dominant children and youth express their brilliance, particularly in work that intersects STEM, cultural practice, and art.

Specializations and Interests

Participatory...

Jacob Barton

Jake grew up in rural New Hampshire in a family of teachers, and learned to admire educators from an early age. In college, he did his best to reconcile his interests in climate science and storytelling, graduating from Harvard with a BA in Environmental Science & Public Policy and a minor in English literature. After leading outdoor education trips in Colorado and Alaska, Jake started as a science teacher, soccer coach, and director of sustainability at a high school in southwest Virginia. He began his time as a Doctoral student at Berkeley in 2019.

Jake’s research explores the...