Richard Lehrer

Richard Lehrer is Professor Emeritus of Education at Vanderbilt University. A former high school science teacher, he received a Ph.D. in educational psychology and statistics from the State University of New York, Albany and a B.S. in Biology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Working in concert with teachers, he designs and analyzes the impacts on learning of classroom learning ecologies that induct students in signature epistemic practices in sciences, such as modeling, and in mathematics, such as defining and explaining why (proving). Contemporary research investigates how to incorporate teacher’s judgments about students’ ways of thinking about mathematics, generated as students participate in carefully crafted classroom learning ecologies, into innovative psychometric models that meld formative and summative estimates of learning. This effort, conducted with Mark Wilson, mines the potential of assessment for informing instruction and creates opportunities to transform the current climate of accountability assessment into one more responsive to teaching and learning.