Beth Warren
Sylvia Earl Professor
Director, Earl Center for Learning & Innovation
Beth Warren is the Sylvia Earl Professor and director of the Earl Center for Learning & Innovation. As a learning scientist, her research focuses on designing and studying educational ecologies that build from the heterogeneity of human sense-making to multiply possibilities for learning and thriving for children and youth from historically marginalized communities. She takes a collaborative approach to research, partnering with teachers, youth, scientists and artists to re-center education as the cultivation of relationships that sustain learning and thriving.
Before joining BU Wheelock in 2016, Dr. Warren was a research scientist at BBN Laboratories and at TERC. Over the course of her career, she and her colleagues have been collaborators in several national research centers and have been awarded over $20 million in grant funding from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the US Department of Education, and the Ford Foundation.
Recent News
Education
EdD, Human Development and Reading, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education
EdM, Human Development and Reading, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education
BA, French Language and Literature, Wesleyan University
Research
Dr. Warren engages in design research that builds from the heterogeneity of human sense-making and experience to multiply possibilities for learning and development for children and youth from historically minoritized communities. She investigates questions at the intersection of culture, language, and learning in disciplinary literacies (e.g. sciences, humanities, arts), and she investigates designs for teacher learning that center the analysis, disruption and transformation of power in moment-to-moment classroom interaction.
Recently Funded Research:
James S. McDonnell Foundation (Role: Co-PI) 2018-2023 “Understanding How Elementary Teachers Take Up Discussion Practices to Promote Disciplinary Learning and Equity”
NSF (Role: PI) 2014-2019 “Expansive Meanings and Makings in ArtScience”
NSF (Role: PI) 2011-2014 “Educating the Imagination: A Studio Approach
to Transformative Science Learning”
U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Educational Sciences (Role: Co-PI) 2010-2014 “A Practice-based Approach to Professional Development in K-5 Science”
Visit Dr. Warren's Faculty ProfileSelected Publications
Warren, B., Vossoughi, S., Bang, M., Rosebery, A.S., and Taylor, E. (2020). Multiple ways of knowing: Re-imagining disciplinary learning. In N. Suad Nasir, C.D. Lee, R. Pea, and M. McKinney de Royston (Eds.), Handbook of the cultural foundations of learning. New York: Routledge.
Bang, M., Brown, B., Calabrese Barton, A., Rosebery, A., and Warren, B. (2017). Towards more equitable learning in science: Expanding relationships between students, teachers, and science practices. In C. Schwarz, C. Passmore, and B. Reiser (Eds.), Helping students make sense of the world using next generation science and engineering practices, pp. 33-58. Arlington, VA: NSTA Press.
Rosebery, A.S., Warren, B., and Tucker-Raymond, E. (2016). Developing interpretive power in science teaching. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 53(10), 1571-1600.
Bang, M., Warren, B., Rosebery, A.S., and Medin, D. (2012). De-settling expectations in science education. Human Development, 55(5), 243-358.