Learning Conference 2009: Main Speaker Announcement

Kris Gutiérrez is a Professor of Social Research Methodology at the University of California Los Angeles, USA. Professor Gutierrez was the 2005 recipient of the AERA Division C Sylvia Scribner Award and is a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences 2006-07. She was also the Noted Scholar in Residence, Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, July 23-August 10, 2006. She has a Ph.D., in English/Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Her current research interests include a study of the sociocultural contexts of literacy development, particularly the study of the acquisition of academic literacy for language minority students. Her research also focuses on understanding the relationship between language, culture, development, and pedagogies of empowerment.

Her current research projects include UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families: An Alfred P. Sloan Center on Working Families, The Role of Education in Middle Class Families (Co-PI); Studying the development of literacy and problem-solving competencies in an after-school computer program: The effects of auxiliary mediational means in the 5th Dimension (PI); The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Learning: Examining Writing, Digital Story Telling, and Teatro as Tools for Learning for Migrant Students (PI); and Examining the social organization of helping and learning in children's small group interactions in the U.S. and Mexico (Co-PI).