About

Brian Reiser is the Orrington Lunt Professor of Learning Sciences in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. His work explores how to make science learning more meaningful in K-12 classrooms by enabling students to investigate questions and problems they identify. Reiser's research examines the cognitive and social interaction aspects of scientific inquiry, principles for scaffolding practices in software and curriculum materials, teaching practices, and curriculum design frameworks. He heads the NextGen Scien initiative, focusing on supporting students in science knowledge-building practices through storyline curriculum materials and teaching approaches, as well as understanding how teachers learn as they enact these reforms.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Pedagogy
• Mathematics education
• Sociology
• Engineering
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Chemistry
• Mathematics
• Physics
• Public relations
• Human–computer interaction
• Engineering ethics
• Cognitive science
• Statistics

Selected publications

• Developing Science Classroom Expectations That Encourage Risk‐Taking for Learning Science Together

  Science Education · 2025-06-18

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  ABSTRACT Reform‐oriented science classrooms encourage environments in which students engage in a collective enterprise of making sense of their science ideas together. Teachers who strive for these sorts of environments support students in collaboratively constructing and answering their own questions about phenomena and making sense of competing ideas together. However, to engage with one another productively, students must ask questions, share incomplete thoughts, and comment on each other's ideas, all of which can be seen as risky and unfamiliar behavior that may result in feelings of uncertainty or other negative classroom consequences. We conduct an explanatory case study using student and teacher interviews, teacher surveys, and classroom video collected over 2 years to investigate how one teacher used classroom norms to establish and maintain a culture in which students appeared committed to taking risks to improve their collective knowledge‐building. We found that norms were one practical tool the teacher used to encourage students to take risks and that also seemed helpful for negotiating individual and group uncertainty. Norms were also tools the teacher used to ensure that she and her students had similar expectations for classroom engagement. This study practically addresses some key challenges teachers face in enacting reform‐oriented science teaching and offers suggestions for how continued research regarding norms and uncertainty can continue to further science reform efforts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Centering Students' Resources

  IGI Global eBooks · 2025-07-02

  book-chapter

  Teachers play a pivotal role in developing culturally responsive science instruction, yet often need support in shifting their classrooms' culture and epistemic power structures. This chapter focuses on research from three different professional learning communities (PLCs) that developed and used an equity-centered curricular customization model with teachers to support their enactments of middle school science curriculum materials. Specifically, the customization model consisted of four stages: (1) (Re)establish an equity goal with student data; (2) Analyze curricular materials to plan customization; (3) Enact and collect student data; and (4) Reflect on the equity goal and enactment. The chapter shares examples from each PLC focused on a different equity goals: supporting emergent multilingual learners, increasing relevance and encouraging more voices and perspectives. By centering their work on their students, the teachers were able to develop more responsive and expansive science classrooms that looked significantly different depending on their equity goal.

  PublisherDOI

• Learning Practical Design Knowledge through Co-Designing Storyline Science Curriculum Units

  2025-09-11

  book-chapterOpen access

  In this paper, we explore how co-design creates opportunities to learn practical design knowledge related to clarifying and balancing goals for a particular class of design contexts: developing materials that meet ambitious, externally defined disciplinary learning goals that also connect to the interests and priorities of students from minoritized groups and communities. University-based researchers, classroom teachers, and district-level science leaders co-designed high school chemistry units over a two-year period. A collaborative analysis of the tools and processes used in workshops showed that engaging in co-design and reflection supported the team in clarifying and balancing goals, and it led all participants to call for refinements to the co-design process. Interactions during co-design and reflections on them highlight tensions that arose during co-design as well as the tools and strategies for working through them. These findings point to both the possibilities and limits of co-design for clarifying and balancing multiple goals and the need to consider key constraints on co-design within the current infrastructures of schools and educational research. They also illustrate how studying co-design teams as a collective can help identify design principles and processes that can support the learning of other teams seeking to balance a focus on standards with a focus on student interests and community priorities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Characterizing variations in the figured worlds of teachers and students in science class

  Journal of Research in Science Teaching · 2024-12-27 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract This article explores the challenges of enacting reform‐oriented curriculum in science classrooms. We use the concept of figured worlds to analyze a case study of an eighth‐grade science class where the teacher reported that the students were resistant to changes she was trying to make. By examining stimulated recall interviews with the teacher (including the associated classroom episodes) and post‐unit interviews with a subset of the students, we found that the students and the teacher constructed different figured worlds about the science learning in the classroom. These differences centered on the goals that students and teachers had for the class and the roles of the teacher and students in the learning environment. Specifically, we found that there was a lack of alignment around how students and the teacher viewed the purpose of student agency and collaboration and therefore they had different ideas about how they should interact with one another in the classroom. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for science education. We believe that the concept of figured worlds allows researchers and teachers to better understand the challenges of implementing reform‐oriented practices in science classrooms. This understanding can help teachers and professional development providers to create strategies for bridging the gap between different figured worlds and creating more collaborative and productive learning environments for all students.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Creating a Science Classroom Culture where Teachers and Students Care about Learning Science Together

  Proceedings. · 2024-06-10

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Reform-oriented science classrooms emphasize students acting as epistemic agents and working collaboratively to make sense of ideas.Establishing classroom cultures in which students adopt such efforts can be challenging.We consider how one teacher initiated such a classroom culture and investigate how she invited students to join her in the development and maintenance of that culture.Results suggest that student partnership in community-oriented classroom culture can support students in sensemaking about science.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Customization of Curriculum Materials as a Site for Identifying and Taking Action on Shared Problems of Practice

  Proceedings. · 2024-06-10 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Science learning reforms require shifting epistemic and power structures so students and teachers build knowledge together within the context of meaningful questions and problems.Curricular customization allows teachers to preserve these reform-oriented goals while adapting for their specific contexts and students.This paper presents three cases from professional learning communities (PLCs) who followed the same curriculum customization model, but with different equity goals: supporting bi/multilingual learners' ownership of learning, increasing the relevance of curriculum for students, and encouraging more student voices and multiple perspectives.Together, these cases highlight how the collaborative customization model facilitated productive tensions that lead to teacher learning.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Helping Students Use Crosscutting Concepts to Guide Sensemaking of Anchoring Phenomena

  The Science Teacher · 2024 · 1 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Psychology
  • Computer Science
  PublisherDOI

• Reflective Inquiry: Enabling Group Self-regulation in Inquiry-based Science Using the Progress Portfolio Tool

  2023-01-10

  book-chapter

  This paper discusses how an inquiry-support software, the Progress Portfolio, can help students engage in reflective inquiry. We argue that self-regulation is one of the most critical components of reflective inquiry and present an empirical case of how the Progress Portfolio tool was designed to enable students to become self-regulated in their learning. Even though there is a rich literature on self-regulation, little has been written about group self-regulation in inquiry-based science. Preliminary results from a study with middle school students show that students do use the Progress Portfolio tool to engage in self-regulating cognitive activities, such as setting goals, planning, and monitoring their work.

  PublisherDOI

• Why Scaffolding Should Sometimes Make Tasks More Difficult for Learners

  2023-01-10 · 12 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  There has been much interest in using software tools to scaffold learners in complex tasks, that is, to provide supports that enable students to deal with more complex content and skill demands than they could otherwise handle. Many different approaches to scaffolding techniques have been presented in a broad range of software tools. I discuss two mechanisms to explain how software tools can scaffold learners. Software tools can help structure the learning task, guiding learners through key components and supporting their planning and performance. In addition, tools can shape students’ performance and understanding of the task in terms of key disciplinary content and strategies, thereby problematizing this important content. While making the task more difficult in the short term, by forcing learners to address these ideas, such scaffolded tools make this work more productive opportunities for learning.

  PublisherDOI

• Learning Practical Design Knowledge through Co-Designing Storyline Science Curriculum Units

  Cognition and Instruction · 2022-01-02 · 43 citations

  articleOpen access

  In this paper, we explore how co-design creates opportunities to learn practical design knowledge related to clarifying and balancing goals for a particular class of design contexts: developing materials that meet ambitious, externally defined disciplinary learning goals that also connect to the interests and priorities of students from minoritized groups and communities. University-based researchers, classroom teachers, and district-level science leaders co-designed high school chemistry units over a two-year period. A collaborative analysis of the tools and processes used in workshops showed that engaging in co-design and reflection supported the team in clarifying and balancing goals, and it led all participants to call for refinements to the co-design process. Interactions during co-design and reflections on them highlight tensions that arose during co-design as well as the tools and strategies for working through them. These findings point to both the possibilities and limits of co-design for clarifying and balancing multiple goals and the need to consider key constraints on co-design within the current infrastructures of schools and educational research. They also illustrate how studying co-design teams as a collective can help identify design principles and processes that can support the learning of other teams seeking to balance a focus on standards with a focus on student interests and community priorities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• A Learning Progression for Scientific Modeling

  NSF · $3.0M · 2006–2011

• Collaborative Research: Developing the Next Generation of Middle School Science Materials--Investigating and Questioning Our World through Science and Technology

  NSF · $1.7M · 2004–2010

• Supporting Scientific Practices in Elementary and Middle School Classrooms

  NSF · $3.5M · 2010–2017

Frequent coauthors

• Daniel C. Edelson

  13 shared

• Iris Tabak

  11 shared

• William R. Penuel

  University of Colorado Boulder

  11 shared

• Lisa Kenyon

  8 shared

• Kelsey Edwards

  7 shared

• John R. Anderson

  Carnegie Mellon University

  7 shared

• Stephen M. Kosslyn

  7 shared

• John B. Black

  Columbia University

  7 shared

Education

• Cognitive Science, Psychology

  Yale University

  1983