Brian E. Gravel
Assistant Professor | Director of Elementary Education | Tufts University
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education in the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University. I study how people of all ages use representations to work and learn in STEM. As a former engineer and teacher, I have always loved building things and exploring how materials behave and interact. Now I study how people participate and learn in these kinds of making activities. My writing explores representational practices, teaching and learning in making, and ways of re-making STEM spaces. Through strong partnerships with students, teachers, researchers, schools, and community organizations, I work hard to ground my design research in complex contexts where, together, communities can build toward equity in STEM learning and participation.
COLLABORATIVE APPROACH
The nature of STEM-rich making, as transdisciplinary and multimodal, necessitates strong partnerships with a diverse set of scholars, educators, and participants. My work builds proudly on and with the work of others. Recently, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Vanessa Svihla on a new study for the Journal of the Learning Sciences “Fostering heterogeneous engineering through whole-class design work.” I’ve also been fortunate to work with Eli Tucker-Raymond, Aditi Wagh, Susan Klimczak, Naeem Wilson–a participant in the STEMLiMS project–on another recent article for the Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research. This study “More than Mechanisms: Shifting Ideologies for Asset-Based Learning in Engineering Education,” draws on important work developed after the political awakening over the summer of 2020 and applies it to the world of engineering.
To learn more about what my colleagues and associates are doing, please visit their websites and follow my blog! I will be updating my blog with news from myself and my peers (not sure how regularly just yet).