Contributor

April Luehmann

April Luehmann is an associate professor of teaching and curriculum at the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester.

April Luehmann joined the Warner School community in 2002 as a science educator, teaching in the science teacher preparation and doctoral programs. She completed graduate degrees in science education and industrial and operations engineering, and previously taught mathematics and science to secondary school students in Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana.

Luehmann is the lead designer and researcher for the Warner School innovative teacher education program that merges learning to teach in out-of-school settings as a complement to and scaffold for learning to teach in in-school (high-stakes) settings. Each year of the program, the science education master’s students work with University faculty to run an environmental action camp and a science inquiry club for local urban teens, the latter of which serves as a second focus for Luehmann’s scholarship. In the context of this club, called Science STARS, she studies questions, such as How can long-term inquiry into science questions that intrigue us and the construction of multimedia representations of this scientific work including film nurture positive and transformative disciplinary identities for traditionally marginalized youth? A third focus of design-based research for Luehmann centers on the use of new media literacies, such as blogging to support learning. The book that she and Warner School Dean Raffaella Borasi edited in 2012 compiles a series of studies, conducted by Luehmann, that looked at both how teachers blog for their own professional identity development and how classrooms blog to transform norms of participation.

Luehmann’s scholarly work and teaching have received recognition. In 2011, she was awarded a National Science Foundation Full-Scale Development Grant, titled Science STARS - Nurturing urban girls’ identities through inquiry-based science ($1.25 million; August 2011-July 2015). In 2008, she was presented with the University of Rochester’s G. Graydon ‘58 and Jane W. Curtis Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Nontenured Member of the Faculty.

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