Kris D. Gutiérrez is the Carol Liu Distinguished Professor and former Associate Dean at the Berkeley School of Education, University of California, Berkeley. Gutiérrez’s expertise is in the learning sciences, literacy, policy, and qualitative and design-based approaches to inquiry.
Gutiérrez is an elected member of the National Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the British Academy; she is an ISLS and AERA Fellow, an Osher Fellow of the Exploratorium, as well as of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. She serves on the ISLS Executive Committee and Board and is past president of the American Educational Research Association and vice-chair of the National Board for the Institute of Education Sciences. Gutiérrez’s research examines learning in designed environments, with attention to culture, historicity, and ecological resilience, and the affordances of syncretic approaches to literacy and STEM learning with immigrant and translingual student populations. Her work in social design-based experiments foregrounds issues of equity in learning and design (Equity by Design). Gutiérrez’s research has published widely on learning in premier academic journals and is a co-author of Learning and Expanding With Activity Theory. Gutiérrez has won numerous awards: the AERA Division C Sylvia Scribner Award for influencing the field of learning and instruction, the 2016 Oscar Causey award for influencing the field of literacy, the 2014 Distinguished Contributions to Social Contexts in Education Research – Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2014 Trueba Award for Research Leading to the Transformation of the Social Contexts of Education Division G, AERA), the 2005 AERA Division C Sylvia Scribner Award for influencing the field of learning and instruction, the 2016 Medal of Excellence from the Columbia University/Teachers College, and the Spencer Foundation Mentorship award, and the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, for example. Gutiérrez received the AERA Hispanic Research in Elementary, Secondary, or Postsecondary Education Award and the Inaugural Award for Innovations in Research on Diversity in Teacher Education, Division K (AERA). Her empirical studies are funded by the Spencer Foundation, NSF, the Sloan, and the MacArthur Foundation (Connected Learning Research Network). Key examples of longstanding collaborations with immigrant and migrant communities include Las Redes, a 15-year long after-school afterschool program that privileged hybrid language practices for youth, grades K-5, El Pueblo Mágico, a STEM-oriented after-school program, and the UCLA Migrant Student Leadership Program for California youth from migrant farmworker backgrounds.
Gutiérrez served on the National Research Council Committee on Strengthening Science Education through a Teacher Learning Continuum and on the Guiding the Implementation of PreK-12 Engineering Education Committee, National Academy of Engineering. Her empirical studies are funded by Spencer, NSF, the Sloane Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation as co-pi on the MacArthur Funded Connected Learning Research Network. She served on the U.S. Department of Education Reading First Advisory Committee and was a member of President Obama’s Education Policy Transition Team.
