Kris Gutiérrez

Kris D. Gutiérrez is Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley and holds the Carol Liu Chair.  Gutiérrez is a learning scientist with research interests in literacy, educational policy, and qualitative, design-based approaches to inquiry. Gutiérrez’s research examines learning in designed environments, with attention to students from nondominant communities and Dual Language Learners. Her work on Third Spaces examines the affordances of syncretic approaches to literacy and learning, new media literacies, STEM learning, and the re-mediation of functional systems of learning.   She is past president of the American Educational Research Association and was appointed by President Obama to the National Board for the Institute of Education Sciences, for which she served as vice-chair.  Gutiérrez’s research has been published widely in premier academic journals, and is a co-author of Learning and Expanding With Activity Theory.

Gutiérrez has won numerous scholarly awards, including the Literacy Research Association Oscar Causey Award for outstanding contributions to literacy research, AERA Division C Sylvia Scribner Award for influencing the field of learning and instruction (2005), the Medal of Excellence from the Columbia University/Teachers College (2016), the AERA Division G Distinguished Contributions to Social Contexts in Education Research-Lifetime Achievement Award (2014) and the Henry T. Trueba Award for Research Leading to the Transformation of the Social Contexts of Education (2014). 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). She was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, served on the U.S. Department of Education Reading First Advisory Committee, and was a member of President Obama’s Education Policy Transition Team.