Professor Penuel designs and studies curriculum materials, assessments, and professional learning experiences for teachers in STEM education, primarily in science. He also investigates how contemplative practices and critical inquiry can support educators in cultivating more compassionate learning environments and schools. A third line of his research focuses on how long-term research-practice partnerships can be organized to address systemic inequities in education systems linked to race, gender and sexual diversity, and language. In each of his projects, Penuel works in partnership with educators and education leaders to explore how to attenuate inequities in school systems by: (1) creating equitable classroom cultures that attend to student experience; (2) testing strategies for address epistemic injustices in whose knowledge is elicited and valued; and (3) connecting teaching to the interests, experiences, and identities of learners, particularly those to whom our society owes an education debt. He uses a wide range of research methods, including one Penuel and colleagues developed called design-based implementation research, to test what they co-design.
keywords
design-based implementation research, teacher learning, sociocultural approaches to classroom assessment, science curricula, afterschool programs, learning and development from sociocultural, social capital, complex social systems perspectives, research-practice partnerships, research utilization, science interest development, learning with digital media, compassion and dignity
