Leema Berland

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Leema Berland
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Leema Berland

Associate Professor
Curriculum and Instruction (CI)

Associate Professor
Curriculum and Instruction (CI)

226-A Teacher Education Building  binoculars icon
225 N. Mills Street
Madison, WI 53706
Office: 608/263-2707

lberland@wisc.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Personal Biography

Leema K. Berland earned her PhD in the Learning Sciences from Northwestern University in 2008. Prior to joining the WI faculty, Dr. Berland was an assistant professor in STEM education at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Berland is currently a Principal Investigator on the National Science Foundation funded project “Fostering Pedagogical Argumentation: Reasoning With and About Student Ideas” and Co-Principal Investigator on the NSF funded project “Supporting scientific practices in elementary and middle school classrooms.” Dr. Berland’s work focuses on supporting and understanding student engagement in the scientific practices and on helping teachers do the same.


Education

Ph D, Learning Sciences
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL

BA, Computer Science, Educational Studies, Magna cum laude
Carleton College
Northfield, MN


Research Interests

As an Associate Professor in Science Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Leema Berland focuses on facilitating and studying students as they engage in the sensemaking practices of science, such as scientific argumentation, modeling, and explanation, as well as engineering design practices. To that end, Dr. Berland has explored how students interpret sensemaking work, how those interpretations influence their participation in the target practices, and why they interpret it in the ways that they do. Each of these questions is designed to better understand the dynamics of how and why students are able (or unable) to productively engage in scientific sensemaking. In addition, Dr. Berland has also explored ways to better support pre-service teachers in creating learning environments that will enable their future students to participate in the sensemaking practices of science. Dr. Berland’s work has been funded via numerous NSF grants, and resulted in publications in Science Education, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Journal of Learning Sciences, and Science Scope.

Publications

  • Russ, R., & Berland, L.K. (2019). Invented Science. Journal of the Learning Sciences. 28(3), 279-301.
  • McNeill, K., & Berland, L.K. (2017). What is (or should be) scientific evidence use in K-12 classrooms? Journal of Research in Science Teaching. 54(5), 672-289.
  • Berland, L.K., Schwarz, C., Kenyon, L., Lo, A., Krist, C., & Reiser, B. (2016). Epistemologies in Practice: making scientific practices meaningful for students. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. 53(7), 1082-1112.
  • Berland, L.K., & Crucet, K.C. (2015). Epistemological Tradeoffs: accounting for context when evaluating epistemological sophistication of student engagement in scientific practices. Science Education. 100(1), 5-29.
  • Hammer, D., & Berland, L.K. (2013). Confusing claims for data: A critique of common practices for presenting qualitative research on learning. Journal of the Learning Sciences. 23(1), 37-46.
  • Berland, L.K., & Hammer, D. (2012). Framing for scientific argumentation. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. 49(1), 68-94.
  • Berland, L.K., & Reiser, B.J. (2011). Classroom communities’ adaptations of the practice of scientific argumentation. Science Education. 95(2), 191-216.
  • Berland, L.K. (2011). Explaining variation in how classroom communities adapt the practice of scientific argumentation. Journal of the Learning Sciences. 20(4), 625-664.
  • Berland, L.K., & McNeill, K.L. (2010). A learning progression for scientific argumentation: understanding student work and designing supportive instructional contexts. Science Education. 94(1), 765-793.

Presentations

  • Berland, L.K., Russ, R., & Feinstein, N.W. (2018). Curiosity Practice: A powerful new lever for fostering scientific engagement. In J. Kay and R. Luckin (Eds.), Rethinking learning in the digital age: making the Learning Sciences count., Proceedings of the 13th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2018), International Society of the Learning Sciences, London, UK.
  • Berland, L.K., & McNeill, K.L. (2018). How can personal experiences be leveraged as “scientific evidence” in k-12 classrooms?, Proceedings of the 13th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2018), International Society of the Learning Sciences, London, UK.
  • Russ, R., & Berland, L.K. (2018). Inquiry Science vs Invented Science, National Association of Research in Science Teaching, Atlanta, GA.
  • Berland, L.K., Russ, R., & West, C. (2018). Pre-service teachers reframing pedagogy to support scientific sensemaking practices, National Association of Research in Science Teaching, Atlanta, GA.
  • Berland, L.K. (2017). How context influences pre-service teachers attending and responding to student ideas, 17th Biennial EARLI Conference for Research on Learning and Instruction, Tampere, Finland.
  • Russ, R., & Berland, L.K. (2017). How can students have epistemic agency when they have not identified what to learn?, American Educational Research Association Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX.
  • Berland, L.K., & Russ, R. (2017). Using responsive teaching to turn teacher attention to student epistemic agency (Poster), Annual Conference, American Educational Research Association, San Antonio, TX.
  • Berland, L.K., & Russ, R. (2016). Learning Through Argumentation: A Process of Dynamic Refinement, EARLI Conference for Research on Learning and Instruction, Ghent, Belgium.
  • Berland, L.K., Allen, D., Crawford, R., Farmer, C., & Guerra, L. (2012). Learning Sciences guided high school engineering curriculum development, American Society for Engineering Education annual meeting, American Society for Engineering Education, San Antonio, TX.
  • Berland, L.K., & McKenna, W. (2012). Student responses to challenge-based curricula, American Society for Engineering Education annual meeting, American Society for Engineering Education, San Antonio, TX.
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