About

Professor Shelley Goldman is an educational anthropologist interested in the idea that learning takes place when students are actively engaged with each other, their teachers, and others in conversations, activities, content, and technologies. She is very interested in the power of real-world contexts to drive learning, and researches how people learn in and out of school. Goldman’s work focuses on creating opportunities for rich STEM learning, and for understanding how design thinking and technologies can create access and be transformational. Her current work includes broadening participation in STEM via family activities, design-based engagements, and through empathy work with scientists doing outreach.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Internal medicine
• Medicine
• Physical therapy
• Medical emergency
• Mathematics education
• Pedagogy

Selected publications

• Building Bridges with Families for Equitable Learning and Schooling

  2025-06-18

  book-chapter

  The argument is made for meaningful and impactful positive relationships to emerge among parents and educators at all levels of the schooling system. COVID placed many social, economic, and health pressures on families who unexpectedly also were asked to become teachers on the home front. This chapter reviews the ways that parents, depicted throughout the book, showed ingenuity, commitment, and collaboration with their children and teachers to keep children learning. Many of the adaptive strategies and experiences of parents are highlighted. Implications for the future of schooling are suggested: (1) inviting and supporting parents as partners in designs for school learning; (2) creating online systems for education with ubiquitous and equitable access; and (3) engaging school systems in serious repair work with parents through collaborations that design responsive and inclusive system reforms. The future demands an education system forged by resilient schooling networks that mitigate inequalities through research-practice partnerships, sustained parent collaborations, and lasting bonds with non-school educating organizations.

  PublisherDOI

• Same Storm, Different Boats

  2025-06-18

  book-chapter

  Five years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global community continues to reflect on its educational impact, the inequities it exposed, and the need for strategies to build more resilient systems. Families, COVID, and Unequal Schooling in the US contributes to this reflective and forward-looking work by examining the central roles families played in maintaining academic learning and emotional well-being during school closures. This chapter introduces a collection of research-based family and community studies conducted during the early and middle phases of the COVID-19 quarantine. Grounded in contemporary insights from the science of learning and development and informed by an emerging transdisciplinary understanding of system resilience, these studies reveal the adaptive strategies families and communities employed to navigate remote learning. By highlighting the need for dynamic and equitable infrastructures, this volume lays the foundation for exploring how educational systems can be better designed for continual revitalization, expansion, and repair when families and communities are centered as collaborators.

  PublisherDOI

• Families, COVID, and Unequal Schooling in the US

  2025-06-18

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Administrator Work and Parent Responses During COVID School Closures

  2025-06-18

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This case study of one K-8 school district examines administrator work to establish an eventual safe return to in-person schooling during the COVID pandemic and parents’ responses, interactions, and interpretations concerning the processes. The study is largely based on open-ended interviews with a cross-section of stakeholders such as assistant superintendents, principals, teachers, parents, and students. Questions that defined it included: What aims drove administrators in relation to parents and long-standing equity issues? How were administrator efforts communicated, received, responded to, and acted on by families? The findings reveal that the district administrators and principals committed to three facets of work that involved parents: (1) maintaining a working, active, administration that tried to be responsive to the stakeholder needs; (2) establishing and maintaining communication channels with parents; and (3) making the effort to mitigate the persistent inequalities that negatively affected students and families. Findings show that for these vital orientations, administrators showed commitment and good intentions yet some of the efforts were met with confusion or made no progress toward mitigating systemic inequalities. The discussion examines implications for future approaches including possible next steps for administrator efforts.

  PublisherDOI

• Teaching Design Challenges

  2021-08-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Empathizing

  2021-08-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Athlete Enjoyment of Prior Education Moderates change in Concussion-Reporting Intention after Interactive Education

  INQUIRY The Journal of Health Care Organization Provision and Financing · 2021-01-01 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  Undiagnosed concussions increase risk of additional injuries and can prolong recovery. Because of the difficulties recognizing concussive symptoms, concussion education must specifically target improving athlete concussion reporting. Many concussion education programs are designed without significant input from athletes, resulting in a less enjoyable athlete experience, with potential implications on program efficacy. Athlete enjoyment of previous concussion education programs moderates the improvement in concussion-reporting intention after experiencing the research version of CrashCourse (CC) concussion education. Prospective cohort study. Level of evidence: Level IV. Quantitative assessment utilizing ANOVA with moderation analysis of 173 male high school football players, aged 13 to 17, who completed baseline assessments of concussion knowledge, concussion reporting, and attitudes about prior educational interventions. Athletes were subsequently shown CC, before a follow-up assessment was administered assessing the same domains. At baseline, only 58.5% of athletes reported that they enjoyed their previous concussion education. After CC, athletes were significantly more likely to endorse that they would report a suspected concussion (from 69.3% of athletes to 85.6%; P < .01). Enjoyment of previous concussion education moderated concussion-reporting intention after CC ( P = .02), with CC having a greater effect on concussion-reporting intention in athletes with low enjoyment of previous concussion education ( b = 0.21, P = .02), than on individuals with high enjoyment of previous concussion education ( P = .99). Enjoyment of CC did not have a moderating effect on concussion-reporting intention. Athletes who previously did not enjoy concussion education exhibited greater gains in concussion-reporting intention than athletes who enjoyed previous education. Given the potential risks associated with undiagnosed concussions, concussion education has sought to improve concussion reporting. Because most athletes participate in concussion education programs due to league or state mandates, improving concussion-reporting intention in these low-enjoyment athletes is of particular relevance to improving concussion-reporting intention broadly.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Exploring the Problem Space

  2021-08-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  2021-08-16 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Design à la carte

  2021-08-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Molly B. Zielezinski

  17 shared

• Roy D. Pea

  15 shared

• Angela Booker

  University of California, San Diego

  12 shared

• Ross Zafonte

  Brigham and Women's Hospital

  11 shared

• Daniel H. Daneshvar

  Harvard University

  10 shared

• Lee Martin

  8 shared

• Kristen Pilner Blair

  Stanford University

  8 shared

• Maureen Carroll

  University of York

  8 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Education

  Stanford University

  1980

• M.A., Education

  Stanford University

  1976

• B.A., Anthropology

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  1973