Carol D Lee
Biographic Data
| ID | 655288 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carol D Lee |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carol D |
| FAMILY NAME | Lee |
| SIGNATURE | LEE C D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northwestern University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 292 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Browsing
News, quotes, and past insights related to the theme of the Spring 2026 issue of Kappan : “Curriculum and Instruction”
The Science of Learning and Development
Civic Education in a Time of Democratic Crisis
This volume features frontiers of scholarship in the political, social, and behavioral sciences that are advancing civic education. The volume begins with an analysis of recent efforts to create a shared agenda for civic learning against a backdrop of politicization in education. Additional articles provide theoretical and empirical support for the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for students to become engaged civic actors and probl…
The Future of Civic Education
We present a summary of the volume’s main insights and recommendations for a robust form of civic education that will prepare young people to become civic actors who can take responsibility for upholding and advancing democracy. This volume establishes the need to expand civic education across curricula, beyond a one-shot course. We argue that the challenges of democracy and civic problems we face are multifaceted, requiring reasoned judgment and…
What the Sciences of Human Learning and Development Tell Us about Civic Reasoning and Discourse
There is perhaps no more important skill to cultivate in today's students than civic reasoning: the ability to think about social issues in complex ways. Civic reasoning involves the integration of knowledge, epistemological orientations, and ethics, and this integration is influenced by individuals' perceptions of themselves and others, and by the problems they seek to address in the civic domain. We synthesize research from psychology, learning…
Reimagining American education
If schools are to prepare students to participate more productively in civic life, schools will need to ensure that they have opportunities to practice the skills of civic reasoning, argues Carol Lee. Yet schools are challenged by the limits in the curriculum and the difficulty of addressing the different types of prior knowledge that students bring to the classroom. Lee suggests that when schools build their content and pedagogy on current under…
Rethinking Learning
Theories of learning developed in education and psychology for the past 100 years are woefully inadequate to support the design of schools and classrooms that foster deep learning and equity. Needed is learning theory that can guide us in creating schools and classrooms where deep learning occurs, where learners’ full selves are engaged, and that disrupt existing patterns of inequality and oppression. In this article, we build on recent research …
Handbook of the Cultural Foundations of Learning
Edited by a diverse group of expert collaborators, the Handbook of the Cultural Foundations of Learning is a landmark volume that brings together cutting-edge research examining learning as entailing inherently cultural processes. Conceptualizing culture as both a set of social practices and connected to learner identities, the chapters synthesize contemporary research in elaborating a new vision of the cultural nature of learning, moving beyond …
Practice that supports learning and development
Darling-Hammond and colleagues (in press) offer a comprehensive overview of the implications of findings on the science of learning and development for pedagogical practices and the organization of
The Role of Public Schooling in Preparing Youth for Civic Reasoning and Engagement
This article explores the role of public schooling in preparing youth to engage in civic reasoning and civic action. The current challenges in the public arena—a pandemic, economic depression, civil unrest over continued systemic racism—illustrate the complexity of sense-making required to address these conundrums. At the same time, these challenges highlight inequities that have persisted over the course of U.S. history. The article further expl…
Introduction to Developmental Digital Technologies in Human History, Culture, and Well-Being
Commentary
Disciplinary Literacies and Learning to Read for Understanding
This article presents a framework and methodology for designing learning goals targeted at what students need to know and be able to do in order to attain high levels of literacy and achievement in three disciplinary areas—literature, science, and history. For each discipline, a team of researchers, teachers, and specialists in that discipline engaged in conceptual meta-analysis of theory and research on the reading, reasoning, and inquiry practi…
Examining Conceptions of How People Learn Over the Decades Through Aera Presidential Addresses
The mission statement of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) articulates the following goals: “improving the educational process,” “advancing knowledge about education,” “[encouraging] scholarly inquiry related to education,” and “[promoting] the use of research . . . to serve the public good.” I examine AERA presidential addresses from 1948 to 2010 as windows into how the research community has conceptualized learning and explor…
Assessing Literary Reasoning
This article addresses 3 broad challenges of assessment in reading comprehension: (a) explicitly articulating the knowledge and skills students need to recognize and be able to use in comprehending complex texts; (b) understanding how knowledge and skills progress and successively deepen and develop over repeated opportunities to engage in tasks that require critical thinking and interpretation; and (c) how to approach text selection and sequenci…
A Voyeuristic View of Possibilities and Threats
Let me first offer a humble forewarning that I approach this topic as a voyeur, enticed by the possibilities of the neurosciences for discovering insights into the complexities of human learning and development, and yet disturbed by both its uptake in the world of practice, and equally disturbed by what I think are serious conundrums in its use in related research circles. In this commentary, I discuss what I see as generative opportunities that …
The Multi-Dimensional Demands of Reading in the Disciplines
Literacy and Bidialectalism
In K‐12 education, language acquisition and variation often address bilingualism. However, for native speakers, dialect differences can influence opportunities to learn.
Contents Vol. 55, 2012
Conceptualizing Cultural and Racialized Process in Learning
Soaring Above the Clouds, Delving the Ocean’s Depths
This article was originally the presidential address for the 2010 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. It offers three orienting ideas drawn from across human development, neuroscience, cognition, and cultural psychology, as well as studies of biological systems: (1) the intertwining of culture and biology in human development, (2) adaptation through multiple pathways, and (3) interdependence across levels of context. …
From the Desk of the President
Wallace Foundation Distinguished Lecture—The Centrality of Culture to the Scientific Study of Learning and Development
This article was presented as the 2008 Wallace Foundation Distinguished Lecture at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York City. It argues that, to generate robust and generative theories of human learning and development, researchers must address the range of diversity within human cultural communities. The argument is warranted on implications from brain science regarding human adaptability and on core fi…
Every good‐bye ain’t gone’
This article explicates the Cultural Modeling Framework for designing robust learning environments that leverage everyday knowledge of culturally diverse students to support subject‐matter‐specific learning. It reports a study of Cultural Modeling in the teaching of response to literature in an urban underachieving high school serving African‐American students from low‐income communities who are also speakers of African‐American English. The stud…
Making visible the invisible logic of inquiry
Book reviewed in this article: Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy Events: A Microethnographic Perspective . David Bloome, Stephanie Power Carter, Beth Morton Christian, Sheila Otto, and Nora Shuart‐Faris. 2005
A Culturally Based Cognitive Apprenticeship
Carol D. Lee, A Culturally Based Cognitive Apprenticeship: Teaching African American High School Students Skills in Literary Interpretation, Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Oct. - Nov. - Dec., 1995), pp. 608-630
Is October Brown Chinese? A Cultural Modeling Activity System for Underachieving Students
This article analyzes the quality of intellectual reasoning of a class of high school students with standardized reading scores in the bottom quartile. The analysis situates the intellectual work on 1 day of instruction in terms of the history of the activity system out of which the dispositions of these students were constructed over time. The analysis deconstructs the historical dimensions of the cultural practices these students learned to acq…
Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep”
We call for the integration of cultural socialization and identity processes in learning as a goal of educational research. Our aim is to improve educational outcomes for racial and ethnic minority youth and for youth facing persistent intergenerational poverty. This requires that educational researchers understand the cultural niches in which young people develop. We illustrate this claim through the lenses of the Cultural Modeling Framework and…
Every good‐bye ain’t gone’
This article explicates the Cultural Modeling Framework for designing robust learning environments that leverage everyday knowledge of culturally diverse students to support subject‐matter‐specific learning. It reports a study of Cultural Modeling in the teaching of response to literature in an urban underachieving high school serving African‐American students from low‐income communities who are also speakers of African‐American English. The stud…
Wallace Foundation Distinguished Lecture—The Centrality of Culture to the Scientific Study of Learning and Development
This article was presented as the 2008 Wallace Foundation Distinguished Lecture at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York City. It argues that, to generate robust and generative theories of human learning and development, researchers must address the range of diversity within human cultural communities. The argument is warranted on implications from brain science regarding human adaptability and on core fi…
Rethinking Learning
Theories of learning developed in education and psychology for the past 100 years are woefully inadequate to support the design of schools and classrooms that foster deep learning and equity. Needed is learning theory that can guide us in creating schools and classrooms where deep learning occurs, where learners’ full selves are engaged, and that disrupt existing patterns of inequality and oppression. In this article, we build on recent research …
Soaring Above the Clouds, Delving the Ocean’s Depths
This article was originally the presidential address for the 2010 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. It offers three orienting ideas drawn from across human development, neuroscience, cognition, and cultural psychology, as well as studies of biological systems: (1) the intertwining of culture and biology in human development, (2) adaptation through multiple pathways, and (3) interdependence across levels of context. …
Why We Need to Re-Think Race and Ethnicity in Educational Research
This introduction describes the rationale for a special theme issue, “Reconceptualizing Race and Ethnicity in Educational Research.” The rationale includes the historical and contemporary ways that cultural differences have been positioned in educational research and the need for more nuanced and complex analyses of ethnicity and race
Profile of an Independent Black Institution
Carol D. Lee, Profile of an Independent Black Institution: African-Centered Education at Work, The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 61, No. 2, African Americans and Independent Schools: Status, Attainment, and Issues (Spring, 1992), pp. 160-177
Literacy, Cultural Diversiiy, and Instruction
Big Picture Talkers/Words Walking Without Masters
Carol D. Lee, Big Picture Talkers/Words Walking Without Masters: The Instructional Implications of Ethnic Voices for an Expanded Literacy, The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 60, No. 3, Socialization Forces Affecting the Education of African American Youth in the 1990s (Summer, 1991), pp. 291-304
Signifying as a Scaffold for Literary Interpretation
This study investigated the efficacy of signifying, a form of social discourse in the African American community, as a scaffold for teaching skills in literary interpretation. Specifically, the hypotheses of this study were that skill in signifying and prior knowledge about social conventions, themes, and values on which the instructional texts were based would positively influence skill in interpreting fiction. Prior to instruction, two tests we…
Assessing Literary Reasoning
This article addresses 3 broad challenges of assessment in reading comprehension: (a) explicitly articulating the knowledge and skills students need to recognize and be able to use in comprehending complex texts; (b) understanding how knowledge and skills progress and successively deepen and develop over repeated opportunities to engage in tasks that require critical thinking and interpretation; and (c) how to approach text selection and sequenci…
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Performance-Based Assessment
A major challenge facing instruction and assessment is lack of evidence of their efficacy for students of color, excluding certain high-achieving Asian American groups, and poor students. This article considers authenticity of performance-based assessments (PBAs), exploring their relationship to pedagogical practices that address ethnic and linguistic diversity. It details author's efforts to transform English instruction and assessment in ways t…
Examining Conceptions of How People Learn Over the Decades Through Aera Presidential Addresses
The mission statement of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) articulates the following goals: “improving the educational process,” “advancing knowledge about education,” “[encouraging] scholarly inquiry related to education,” and “[promoting] the use of research . . . to serve the public good.” I examine AERA presidential addresses from 1948 to 2010 as windows into how the research community has conceptualized learning and explor…
What the Sciences of Human Learning and Development Tell Us about Civic Reasoning and Discourse
There is perhaps no more important skill to cultivate in today's students than civic reasoning: the ability to think about social issues in complex ways. Civic reasoning involves the integration of knowledge, epistemological orientations, and ethics, and this integration is influenced by individuals' perceptions of themselves and others, and by the problems they seek to address in the civic domain. We synthesize research from psychology, learning…
Big Picture Talkers/Words Walking Without Masters
Carol D. Lee, Big Picture Talkers/Words Walking Without Masters: The Instructional Implications of Ethnic Voices for an Expanded Literacy, The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 60, No. 3, Socialization Forces Affecting the Education of African American Youth in the 1990s (Summer, 1991), pp. 291-304
Literacy, Cultural Diversiiy, and Instruction
Profile of an Independent Black Institution
Carol D. Lee, Profile of an Independent Black Institution: African-Centered Education at Work, The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 61, No. 2, African Americans and Independent Schools: Status, Attainment, and Issues (Spring, 1992), pp. 160-177
Signifying as a scaffold for literary interpretation
A Culturally Based Cognitive Apprenticeship
Carol D. Lee, A Culturally Based Cognitive Apprenticeship: Teaching African American High School Students Skills in Literary Interpretation, Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Oct. - Nov. - Dec., 1995), pp. 608-630
Signifying as a Scaffold for Literary Interpretation
Signifying as a Scaffold for Literary Interpretation
This study investigated the efficacy of signifying, a form of social discourse in the African American community, as a scaffold for teaching skills in literary interpretation. Specifically, the hypotheses of this study were that skill in signifying and prior knowledge about social conventions, themes, and values on which the instructional texts were based would positively influence skill in interpreting fiction. Prior to instruction, two tests we…
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Performance-Based Assessment
A major challenge facing instruction and assessment is lack of evidence of their efficacy for students of color, excluding certain high-achieving Asian American groups, and poor students. This article considers authenticity of performance-based assessments (PBAs), exploring their relationship to pedagogical practices that address ethnic and linguistic diversity. It details author's efforts to transform English instruction and assessment in ways t…
Is October Brown Chinese? A Cultural Modeling Activity System for Underachieving Students
This article analyzes the quality of intellectual reasoning of a class of high school students with standardized reading scores in the bottom quartile. The analysis situates the intellectual work on 1 day of instruction in terms of the history of the activity system out of which the dispositions of these students were constructed over time. The analysis deconstructs the historical dimensions of the cultural practices these students learned to acq…
Interrogating Race and Ethnicity as Constructs in the Examination of Cultural Processes in Developmental Research
This article examines the limitations of the construct of race in the study of the diversity of human development. The author proposes that a focus on ethnicity as relates to people of African descent in the United States offers greater explanatory power. The article acknowledges the value of moving away from social address registers in the study of human development, but cautions that this emerging theoretical orientation should not diminish the…
Toward A Framework for Culturally Responsive Design in Multimedia Computer Environments
This article offers a framework for the design of learning environments that takes culture explicitly into account. This article situates a rationale for the framework based on research in the learning sciences, cultural psychology, and cultural-historical-activity theory. The Cultural Modeling Framework is of-fered as an example of a culturally responsive approach to design. This article makes an explicit argu-ment for the function of culturally…
Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep”
We call for the integration of cultural socialization and identity processes in learning as a goal of educational research. Our aim is to improve educational outcomes for racial and ethnic minority youth and for youth facing persistent intergenerational poverty. This requires that educational researchers understand the cultural niches in which young people develop. We illustrate this claim through the lenses of the Cultural Modeling Framework and…
Why We Need to Re-Think Race and Ethnicity in Educational Research
This introduction describes the rationale for a special theme issue, “Reconceptualizing Race and Ethnicity in Educational Research.” The rationale includes the historical and contemporary ways that cultural differences have been positioned in educational research and the need for more nuanced and complex analyses of ethnicity and race
Remembering Barbara Ann Sizemore (1927–2004)
Learning as a Cultural Process
In this chapter, we argue that learning and teaching are fundamentally cultural processes (Cole, 1996; Erickson, 2002; Lee, Spencer, & Harpalani, 2003; Rogoff, 2003). The learning sciences have not yet adequately addressed the ways that culture is integral to learning. By "culture," we mean the constellations of practices historically developed and dynamically shaped by communities in order to accomplish the purposes they value. Such practices ar…
Every good‐bye ain’t gone’
This article explicates the Cultural Modeling Framework for designing robust learning environments that leverage everyday knowledge of culturally diverse students to support subject‐matter‐specific learning. It reports a study of Cultural Modeling in the teaching of response to literature in an urban underachieving high school serving African‐American students from low‐income communities who are also speakers of African‐American English. The stud…
Making visible the invisible logic of inquiry
Book reviewed in this article: Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy Events: A Microethnographic Perspective . David Bloome, Stephanie Power Carter, Beth Morton Christian, Sheila Otto, and Nora Shuart‐Faris. 2005
Wallace Foundation Distinguished Lecture—The Centrality of Culture to the Scientific Study of Learning and Development
This article was presented as the 2008 Wallace Foundation Distinguished Lecture at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York City. It argues that, to generate robust and generative theories of human learning and development, researchers must address the range of diversity within human cultural communities. The argument is warranted on implications from brain science regarding human adaptability and on core fi…
Soaring Above the Clouds, Delving the Ocean’s Depths
This article was originally the presidential address for the 2010 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. It offers three orienting ideas drawn from across human development, neuroscience, cognition, and cultural psychology, as well as studies of biological systems: (1) the intertwining of culture and biology in human development, (2) adaptation through multiple pathways, and (3) interdependence across levels of context. …
From the Desk of the President
Literacy and Bidialectalism
In K‐12 education, language acquisition and variation often address bilingualism. However, for native speakers, dialect differences can influence opportunities to learn.
Contents Vol. 55, 2012
Conceptualizing Cultural and Racialized Process in Learning
A Voyeuristic View of Possibilities and Threats
Let me first offer a humble forewarning that I approach this topic as a voyeur, enticed by the possibilities of the neurosciences for discovering insights into the complexities of human learning and development, and yet disturbed by both its uptake in the world of practice, and equally disturbed by what I think are serious conundrums in its use in related research circles. In this commentary, I discuss what I see as generative opportunities that …
The Multi-Dimensional Demands of Reading in the Disciplines
Sociology (31 works) · Psychology (29 works) · Pedagogy (21 works) · Mathematics education (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Linguistics (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy (8 works) · Anthropology (7 works)