The Teaching Actually Does Matter

Reimagining how science is taught—and who belongs

Carrie Tzou (PhD08) had always been into school and science, but when she struggled for the first time in college, she went to her adviser and asked why the teaching wasn't better. His answer was surprisingly honest.

"He said that in college, 'the teaching doesn't matter—just your research,'" Tzou recalls. "That was my aha moment. It helped me understand the power of teaching." Tzou left the conversation with a new mission. She wanted to be both a researcher and a teacher who could help students connect classroom learning to their lives.

After graduating from Stanford University, she spent two years teaching middle school science in the Bay Area. She earned a master's degree from Vanderbilt University, then came to Northwestern in 2000 to pursue her doctorate in learning sciences. Now, more than two decades later, she has returned to SESP as a professor of learning sciences and associate dean. Her research examines how place, community, and social context shape the way people experience science—and who gets to feel like they belong in the science field.

"My own science education never addressed science's ties to power, historical oppression, or the promise of just futures," she says. "The work I'm doing now lets us design for those connections."

At SESP, Tzou reunited with Megan Bang, the James Johnson Professor of Learning Sciences, whom she had met as a fellow doctoral student. Their work has produced two National Science Foundation grants—a $1.8 million award to better prepare elementary school educators to teach STEM topics, and a grant supporting Learning in Places, a project that builds pre-K through fifth grade hands-on science curricula.

For the past 15 years, Tzou has also worked to bring learning sciences—the interdisciplinary study of how people learn—into teacher preparation.

"We often emphasize how to teach, but not why we teach in certain ways based on what we know about learning," she says. "Reconnecting with theories of human learning explains both what we do and why we do it."

Reflecting on her own early teaching, Tzou says she would approach it differently now: "I'd be more intentional about balancing an appreciation for how science helps us explore the natural world with a critical awareness of how it's often narrowly defined in schools."

Before coming to SESP, Tzou was professor of science education in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell and director of the Goodlad Institute for Educational Renewal. A national leader in her field, she has served on two committees of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's science education board.

Beyond the classroom, Tzou will play a key role in SESP's Office of Community Partnerships, working closely with Evanston/Skokie School District 65 as it confronts budget deficits and school closures. The work, Tzou says, depends on humility and long-term relationships.

"We don't know everything," she says. "If we see ourselves as separate from the natural world or from each other, we miss the systems of support that allow us to thrive."

By Julie Deardorff