Rate My Professor Sadhana Puntambekar

Puntambekar’s research specializes in the design and implementation of interactive technologies and curricula to scaffold middle school students’ science learning, enabling them to grasp connections between science ideas, central concepts, and networks of relationships rather than discrete facts. Her contributions to scaffolding and Design-Based Research are widely recognized through edited volumes including Handbook of Design in Educational Technology (2012, Taylor & Francis) and Analyzing Interactions in CSCL: Methods, Issues and Approaches (2010, Springer), as well as publications such as “Fading distributed scaffolds: The interplay between teacher and material scaffolds” (Instructional Science, 2019), “Middle school students’ learning of mechanics concepts through engagement in different sequences of physical and virtual experiments” (International Journal of Science Education, 2017), “Design based research: Moving forward” (Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2009), “Tools for scaffolding students in a complex environment: What have we gained and what have we missed?” (Educational Psychologist, 2005), and “Comparing classroom enactments of an inquiry curriculum: Lessons learned from two teachers” (Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2007). She has received the NSF Early CAREER Award (2000), Fellowship in the International Society of the Learning Sciences (2018), and Vilas Associate Award (2020), and held editorial positions as Co-Editor of the American Educational Research Journal (2015-2019) and Associate Editor for the Design-Based Research strand of the Journal of the Learning Sciences.