Dr. D Teo Keifert
D Teo Keifert (they/them) is a learning scientist, researcher, and educator in the College of Education at the University of North Texas studying young children’s brilliance. They do this through (a) understanding children’s brilliance and (b) developing and studying designs that cultivate children’s dignity as learners. Both of these efforts require methodological innovation and axiological commitment to humanizing children, parents, teachers, and researchers. Their work draws on critical sociocultural theory to understand the role of power, ideology, knowledge systems (i.e. epistemology, ontology, axiology), and historicity in teaching and learning.
Teo centers family as a fundamental context of children’s learning. Their work explores participants’ activity in their own terms (e.g., children’s interests, family idioculture, knowledge systems) to foreground the full diversity of human sensemaking and avoid evaluating children’s sensemaking through the lens of Western conceptualizations of science as doing so normalizes European-heritage white-supremacist-cis-hetero-ableist norms.
Teo’s research recognizes children’s brilliance to expand learning theory and inform more equitable learning environments that cultivate and sustain an array of cultural inquiry practices. Dr. Keifert contributes to designs for children’s learning in preschool and early-elementary classrooms, K-5 teachers engaged in professional learning, and pre-service teachers (K-12) preparing to draw upon learning theory for equitable and just practice. While K-5 settings focus on science and STEM, K-12 pre-service teacher preparation focuses broadly on learning and developmental theories. All of these designs meet at the intersection of theory x practice to recognize and cultivate children’s brilliance across diverse cultural, linguistic, and disability communities. The ultimate goal of their work is to cultivate children’s dignity as learners.
Background
Teo received a BA from Swarthmore College with a special major in Astronomy Education (advisors Drs. Lisa Smulyan and Eric Jensen). While at Swarthmore College, Teo worked in the field of public science education at the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia Fels Planetarium, and contributed public astronomy nights hosted by the Physics and Astronomy Department at Swarthmore College.
After graduating college, they moved to New York City and taught middle school math and science for five years. Teo then earned a PhD from the Learning Sciences program at Northwestern University and a certificate in Educational Sciences as a fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Educational Sciences (MPES), an Institute for Education Sciences training program at Northwestern University. During their 3rd year of graduate school, Teo won a Best Student Paper award from the International Conference of the Learning Sciences in Sydney (2012).
Prior to becoming faculty, Teo worked as a learning scientist/post-doctoral researcher for the Exploratorium (2015-2016), and as a post-doctoral researcher with Dr. Noel Enyedy first at the University of California Los Angeles (2016-2018), and then at Vanderbilt University (2018-2019).
Teo is currently an assistant professor on the faculty of Educational Psychology in the College of Education at the University of North Texas. Dr. Keifert has developed a new Learning Sciences graduate program and created undergraduate pre-service teacher courses that orient students to critical soiocultural learning theory. Teo is also the delighted human of a sweet Tijuana rescue pup who keeps Teo company during analysis and writing binges, and reminds Teo to stop and take a break on the regular!
Further Information
Please explore this website for information about Teo’s research interests and current projects, teaching at University of North Texas, recent and upcoming presentations, CV, and contact information. On occasion, visitors might also find information relevant to current conference presentations.
drkeifert.com 