Kim Gomez

Kimberley Gomez is a Professor in the Urban Schooling Division in the Department of Education at UCLA, and is jointly appointed in the Information Studies Department at UCLA. She is the Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation Computer Science for All: Researcher-Practitioner Partnership (RPP) grant that focuses on how to effectively teach problem solving practices in 3rd – 4th grade computer science classes, in low-income communities. In particular, the focus is on how to build students’ capacities to articulate their problem-solving process, understand how different strategies advance problem solving, and develop and enact new strategies for problem solving. Professor Gomez is leading understanding in how to effectively integrate technology into teaching and learning with an emphasis less on the designed tool as the catalyst, and more towards pedagogy and lesson design enhanced with technology. More broadly, her research aims to deeply understand the contribution of literate practices to STEM teaching and learning with the aim of supporting more socially just and equitably focused designed tools and contexts.

Professor Gomez leverages design-based and impact-based research methodologies and employs a relational approach to research, design, and scholarship. She places context at the center of the design of learning environments (tools, routines and interventions). To engage in her collaborative research and design efforts, Gomez partners with local community-based organizations, after-school programs, and K-16 schools to design new learning environments, primarily in research-practice partnerships (RPPs) and networked-improvement communities (NICs) with schools, teachers, and community-based organizations designing and studying the impact of new technologies, to solve problems within these RPP and NIC settings.

Professor Gomez has been awarded funding from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Joyce Family Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation among others. She is the author of over 60 publications. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed research journals, two books, and in blogs. She is the recipient of numerous awards in recognition of her outstanding career including the Bobbie and Mark Greenfield Faculty Award for Applied Research in Learning and Achievement and the Distinguished Teaching Award from UCLA’s Graduate School of Education, and the Harold A. and Lois Haytin Faculty Award, from Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, UCLA for her collaborative work with practitioners. Professor Gomez is an Osher Fellowship recipient (awarded by the Exploratorium), and a Sudikoff Family Institute for Education & New Media fellow (2013-14).

Gomez received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She served as a postdoctoral fellow and a research associate in the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (LeTUS) NSF-funded study at Northwestern, in Northwestern University’s Learning Sciences program. Since 2011, Gomez has been the lead language and literacy fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Gomez has been a tenured faculty member at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Pittsburgh, and is currently a tenured Professor of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles.