Teacher Planning Using Generative AI
Developing and studying AI-supported frameworks for teacher curriculum planning and adaptation, asking what generative AI can contribute to planning without flattening teachers' contextual knowledge.
// research
Research
My work sits at the intersection of science education, STEM equity, and computational methods: how teachers adapt curriculum, how classrooms talk, and how AI tools can support both — without displacing teacher judgment.
// dissertation
Pedagogical design capacity along a multicultural science continuum
My dissertation examines how high school science teachers exercise pedagogical design capacity as they adapt curriculum materials along a multicultural science continuum — from surface-level inclusion toward curricula that are genuinely culturally sustaining and justice-centered.
Because that adaptation work is demanding and often invisible, I am also designing and studying AI-assisted tools — retrieval-augmented generation systems and agentic workflows — that scaffold teachers' adaptation decisions while keeping teachers as the designers, not the recipients, of curriculum change.
Methods: mixed methods, computational grounded theory, discourse analysis, and design-based research.
// current projects
Current projects
Professional development for curriculum adaptation
A professional development model for high school teachers to adapt curricula toward students' knowledges and resources — co-designing PD frameworks for culturally sustaining adaptation and analyzing teacher implementation across multiple school contexts.
EMPOWER
Enacting Materials to Promote Ownership, Engagement, and Relevance for high school science teachers — co-developing curricular materials that enhance student ownership in science learning, with mixed-methods analysis of implementation and outcomes.
T(CA)² — Theory-based Computational Analysis of Classroom Audiovisual Data
Applying machine learning and NLP to large-scale classroom audiovisual datasets to model classroom interactions and discourse patterns in theoretically grounded ways.
Community Catalysts
Empowering Rantoul's youth and parents through a community-centered approach to educational transformation — designing and facilitating Participatory Action Research training for parent mentor groups.
// earlier work
Earlier projects
Chancellor's Call to Action to Address Racism & Social Injustice (2022–2024) — computational analysis of systemic racism in educational settings, in partnership with communities.
PAGES (2020–2023) — Progressing through the Ages: global change, evolution, and societal well-being in science curricula.
Connected Spaces (2020–2022) — ethnographic research on STEM engagement among Black youth in makerspaces, and equity-centered program design.
FAAST (2020–2022) — Formative, Automated Assessment of Student Thinking: AI-powered feedback on student epistemic views.
CT-STEM (2016–2019, Northwestern University) — directed curriculum development integrating computational thinking into high school science across three schools, with a 16-teacher co-design team.