Megan Bang

Northwestern University

Professor

Megan Bang (Ojibwe and Italian descent) is a Professor of the Learning Sciences and Psychology at Northwestern University and the outgoing Senior Vice President at the Spencer Foundation. Dr. Bang studies dynamics of culture, learning, and development across the life course. She is particularly interested in knowledge organization, reasoning, and decision-making about complex socio-ecological systems and their intersections with identity, cultural variation, history and power. She conducts research in schools, informal learning environments, and everyday community contexts with people and places across the life course. She engages in foundational cognitive studies as well as participatory design experiments that aim to create and implement more effective and just learning environments, especially focused on science. Dr. Bang's design work has been focused on inter-generational place based (field-based) learning environments that aim to support Indigenous resurgence through STEAM and has studied teacher practice and student learning in such environments. Further, Dr. Bang has engaged in a range of scholarship with respect to family and community engagement and leadership. She is a teacher educator and engages in the professional development of education leaders. She is former preschool teacher, middle-school and high-school teacher. Dr. Bang serves on the Board of Science Education at the National Academy of Sciences, and NSF's Education and Human Resources Advisory Committee and NSF's Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education. She is a mother, auntie, grandmother, sister, and daughter.