Carrie D. Allen

Dr. Carrie D. Allen is an Associate Professor of Learning Sciences at the University of North Texas. She specializes in research-practice partnerships, with a focus on supporting improvement efforts in STEM education. Working alongside educators and school leaders, Dr. Allen collaboratively investigates complex challenges in practice and designs solutions that bring about meaningful change.

Her research uses design-based, participatory, and co-design methodologies to promote actionable change within schools and to develop learning ecosystems that foster both educator and student learning, along with feelings of mattering and belonging in workplace and learning contexts. Dr. Allen’s scholarship explores relationships among learning, policy, and design across both macro and micro systems, surfacing what works, for whom, and under what conditions.

Dr. Allen’s work spans a range of scales—from collaborations with middle and high school educators around science education, STEM learning, and data science, to youth-led action research on schooling experiences. She has also led larger-scale initiatives, including a statewide study in partnership with the California Department of Education, which examined continuous quality improvement, organizational culture change, and STEAM learning opportunities in afterschool programs.

Her areas of expertise include research-practice partnerships, design-based and implementation research, qualitative and ethnographic research methods, teacher co-design, continuous quality improvement, organizational change, student identity development, youth voice, and community engagement.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Learning Sciences

• MAT (Master of Arts in Teaching)

Specializations:

• Research-Practice Partnerships (RPPs)

• STEM Education

• Teacher Learning and Professional Development

• Youth Learning, Identity, and Belonging

• Qualitative, Design-Based, and Participatory Research

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