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Carrie Tzou

Carrie Tzou

she/her/hers
  • Professor and Associate Dean
  • Faculty director, Office of Community Education Partnerships

Contact

carrietehli.tzou@northwestern.edu
Room #4429, 2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208

Organization or Lab

Learning in Places

Goodlad Institute for Education Renewal: Expansive STEM Education

Academic Area

Learning Sciences

Research Interests

Design-based research, Science teaching and learning, Family learning, Culture and cognition, Identity, Equity

Biography

Carrie Tzou is a professor of the Learning Sciences and Associate Dean in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She also serves as the faculty director of the Office of Community Education Partnerships within the school, supporting community-engaged research and practice between SESP and local, regional, and national partnerships. Her work applies sociocultural theories of learning and methods from anthropology, psychology, and design-based research to center learners’ cultural and linguistic knowledges and practices within K-16 science and place-based learning environments. She focuses on designing for and studying multiplicities of knowledge systems in and across learning settings.

Education

  • Ph.D., Learning Sciences, Northwestern University, 2008
  • M.S., Science Education, Vanderbilt University, 2000
  • B.S. in Biology and B.A. in English, Stanford University, 1996

Selected Publications

Starr, M., Sherry-Wagner, J., Tzou, C., Bang, M., Vossoughi, S., & Lees, A. (2026). Place Matters: Learning science as a part of the natural world. Science and Children, 63(2), 27–31.

 Gyles, S. A., Starks, E., McGowan, V. C., White, B., & Tzou, C. (2026). Designing Expansive Science and Engineering Learning for Heterogeneity, Justice, and More Sustainable Futures. InScience Education and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Research, Practices, and Critical Reflections(pp. 103-138). IGI Global Scientific Publishing.

Cassone McGowan, V., & Tzou, C. (2025). Self-documentation as culturally relevant assessment for attunement to onto-epistemic heterogeneity in preservice teacher education. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 34(4), 571–617. 

Cassone McGowan, V., & Tzou, C. (2025). Self-Documentation: An instructional strategy for centering student voices in elementary education. Science and Children, 62(5), 48–55.

 Sherry-Wagner, J., Starr, M., Haverly, C., Bang, M., & Tzou, C. (2025). Centering Children’s Voices While Learning in Places: Field-Based Science Wondering That Cultivates Inquiry. Science and Children, 62(5), 19–25.