The Cultural Historical Research Special Interest Group (SIG #30) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) is a diverse group of researchers who approach learning, development and social change from a cultural historical, socio-cultural and/or activity theoretic perspective. Common themes of research and conversation draw on Vygotsky, Luria, Leont’ev, Bakhtin, Mead (among others).

Drawing on these perspectives, members also engage with frameworks that are inclusive of, but not limited to critical, feminist, digital studies, and arts-based approaches to explore sociocultural, educational, pedagogical, and sociopolitical questions at the intersection of theory and practice. 

Chair: Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University

Chair-Elect: Peter Hick, Edge Hill University

Co-Program Chairs: Na Lor, Teachers College, Columbia University, Sharon Chang, Teachers College, Columbia University

Secretary/Treasurer: Yehyang Lee, Syracuse University

Website/Communications Chair: Karlyn Adams-Wiggins, Portland State University

Please see our Officer Profiles Below! 

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Click the link below to read the call for submissions to the 2024 AERA Annual Meeting, from Program Co-Chairs Patricia Martínez-Álvarez and Monica Lemos.

Chair: Shirin Vossoughi

Associate Professor of Learning Sciences

Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence

Northwestern University School of Education & Social Policy

Core Faculty, Middle East & North African Studies Program

Co-Editor in Chief, Cognition & Instruction 

shirinvossoughi@gmail.com

Dr. Shirin Vossoughi is an educator, mother, writer and associate professor of Learning Sciences at Northwestern University, where she draws on ethnographic and interactional methods to study the cultural, socio-political, and ethical dimensions of human learning. Vossoughi’s research centers on learning environments that support young people to develop, question and expand disciplinary and artistic knowledge in ways that nourish educational self-determination. She is particularly concerned with understanding the forms of pedagogical mediation, ethical relations, and developmental trajectories that take shape within these settings. Her current work looks closely at teaching and learning in making/STEAM environments, literacy learning in the context of political education, intergenerational learning within Iranian families with a history of political activism, and the conditions that support justice-oriented educator learning. She takes a collaborative approach to research and design, partnering with teachers, families, and students to study the conditions that foster educational dignity and possibility.

Selected Publications:

Vossoughi, S. (2014). Social analytic artifacts made concrete: A study of learning and political education. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 21(4), 353-373.

Vossoughi, S., Marin, A., & Bang, M. (2023). Toward just and sustainable futures: Human learning and relationality within socio-ecological systems. Review of Research in Education, 47(1), 218-273.

Chair-Elect: Peter Hick

Professor of Inclusive Education, Evaluation & Policy Analysis Unit

Edge Hill University

Visiting Research Fellow, Institute for Children's Futures, MMU

Educational Psychologist CPsychol, AFBPsS, HCPC

Peter.Hick@edgehill.ac.uk

I am honored by the opportunity to contribute to the AERA Cultural Historical Research SIG in the role of Chair-Elect, and I look forward to collaborating with many of you. My current role is as Professor of Inclusive Education at Edge Hill University, in the northwest of England. My funded research focuses on developing approaches to building more inclusive practices at a whole school level across the UK; and on critically evaluating universal design for learning as inclusive pedagogy, in Ireland. I have a particular interest in the racialisation of disability in relation to schooling and disciplinary practices; and am developing this work in a European context. My path to Cultural Historical Activity Theory lay through studying Marx and Vygotsky; practicing as an Educational Psychologist; and teaching and researching in special education at the University of Manchester and at the University of Birmingham. Since meeting many scholars of CHAT at the ISCAR conference in San Diego in 2008, I have always been drawn to this field. I continue to engage with ISCAR and the Cultural Praxis network and feel that cultural historical approaches have much to offer, both as theoretical tools for untangling the complexities of social justice issues, and in relation to other critical theories addressing intersectional experiences. I participate in the editorial team developing a ‘Handbook of Cultural Historical Research: Overcoming Injustices Through Education and Learning’, which will be timely in highlighting the importance of cultural historical research in striving for equity and social justice in education.

Co-Program Chairs: Sharon Chang
Associate Professor of Teaching
Coordinator, Student Teaching/Practicum
Program Director, Bilingual/Bicultural Education
Department of Arts & Humanities
Teachers College, Columbia University
scc2168@tc.columbia.edu

Dr. Sharon Chang is an associate professor of teaching, coordinator of student teaching/practicum, and director in the Bilingual/Bicultural Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Using cultural historical activity theory, Dr. Chang's research investigates the educational inequities in language learning and supports teacher development in multicultural and bilingual settings to promote ethnolinguistic diversity.

Selected Publications:

Chang, S. (2024). Developing bilingual preservice teachers' transformative agency. Teaching and Teacher Education, 137. Article Number 104405. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2023.104405
Chang, S. (2024). Bilingual teachers' personal theorizing through art-mediated visual metaphors. Cogent Education, 11(1), 1- 16. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2024.2380629

Co-Program Chairs: Na Lor

Assistant Professor of Sociology and Education
Department of Education Policy and Social Analysis
Teachers College, Columbia University
nl2831@tc.columbia.edu

Dr. Na Lor is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she teaches Qualitative Inquiry, Multi and Mixed Methods Research, Sociology of Knowledge, and Sociology of Higher Education. Lor’s research leverages multiple methods and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to examine education policies, practices, and pedagogies. Her most recent project “Shifting Spaces and Places” examines how white students and students of color navigate, negotiate, and make meaning of ethnic studies when required as part of the core college curriculum with the aim of (a) improving ethnic studies teaching and learning and (b) measuring ethnic studies curricular contents, classroom contexts, and student backgrounds prior to (c) assessing ethnic studies policy impact. In this line of inquiry, Lor draws upon sociocultural concepts, such as collective memory, collective remembering, and prolepsis to frame her work, anchoring her research in CHAT perspectives to bring forth transformation of self, society, and educational systems in service to equity.

Select Publications:

Lor, N, Gonzalez, T., Pacheco, M., Hong, J., & Roberts, K. (Forthcoming). Revisiting, Rewriting, and Re-imagining Education Across Spatial and Temporal Systems. Bloomsbury Handbook of Cultural Historical Research.

Pacheco, M., Gonzalez, T., Lor, N., Hong, J., & Roberts, K. (2025). Reimagining social futures: Sociocritical literacies among bi/multilingual youth. Journal of Literacy Research.

Secretary/Treasurer: Yehyang Lee

Assistant Professor of Inclusive Special Education

Syracuse University

ylee147@syr.edu

Dr. Yehyang Lee is an Assistant Professor of Inclusive Special Education in the School of Education at Syracuse University. A first-generation immigrant scholar, she examines the intersectional oppressions faced by students at the crossroads of disability, race, language, culture, and other social markers. Her research seeks to challenge systemic invisibility and foster the transformative agency of students with disabilities experiencing homelessness through collaborative research-practice partnerships. As a teacher educator, she is dedicated to preparing future educators to serve as historical actors and changemakers within the public education system.

Selected Publications 

Lee, Y., Ko, D., & Lim, S. (2024). Marginalization at the intersection of language, culture, and disability: Systemic contradictions perceived by special education teachers in serving culturally and linguistically diverse students with disabilities in South Korea. Peabody Journal of Education.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2024.2307800

Ko, D., & Lee, Y. (2023). Culturally sustaining inclusive systemic design to address overrepresentation of students of color with and without dis/abilities in school discipline. Published Online First in Equity & Excellence in Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2023.2248482

Communications Chair: Karlyn R. Adams-Wiggins, Ph.D.

Portland State University

karlyn@pdx.edu

Dr. Karlyn R. Adams-Wiggins is an associate professor and critical developmental psychologist in the Applied Developmental Psychology program. Karlyn’s research focuses on the intersection of academic achievement motivation and identity, with a specific focus on how marginal identities are constructed in social interactions in science learning environments. This involves two major strands: 1) achievement motivation and science identity from a situative perspective in science learning environments in secondary and postsecondary contexts and 2) a decolonial perspective on Black/African diaspora youths’ construction of identities in context. Across projects, Karlyn employs a critical and sociohistorical psychology lens in service of addressing social justice aims. This work has primarily involved microgenetic analysis of video-recorded observations, ethnographic fieldwork, and qualitative interviewing. They currently are an editorial collective member for the journal Mind, Culture, and Activity and its related outlet Cultural Praxis. She previously served as past-president of the Scholarly Consortium for Innovative Psychology in Education (SCIPIE) and was in the 2021 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation postdoctoral fellowship cohort.

Selected Publications

Adams-Wiggins, K.R., Adeoye Olenloa, T.F., Lira., A.K., Rivera Ramirez, A., Cerda-Lezama, S.D. (In press, 2026). Exploring the promise of decolonial perspectives for advancing racial equity-oriented projects inside the field (Chapter 12). In F.A. López, J. DeCuir-Gunby, & D. Gray (Eds.), Handbook of Race, Equity, and Asset-based Research in Educational Psychology.

Rogat, T. K., Adams-Wiggins, K. R., Tan, D., & Adeoye Olenloa, T. F. (2024). Students’ Constructions of Mastery-Approach Goals Contextualized in Inquiry-Based and Traditional Science Curricula. The Journal of Experimental Education, 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220973.2024.2351953

Adams-Wiggins, K. R. (2024). Coloniality and anti-Black racism in Black adolescent girls’ lived experiences. In K. L. Clay & K. L. Lawrence (Eds.), The Promise of Youth Anti-citizenship: Race and Revolt in Education (pp. 85–108). University of Minnesota Press.

Adams-Wiggins, K. R., & Dancis, J. S. (2023). Marginality in inquiry-based science learning contexts: The role of exclusion cascades. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 29(4), 356–373. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2023.2178014

Adams-Wiggins, K. R., & Taylor-García, D. V. (2020). The Manichean division in children’s experience: Developmental psychology in an anti-Black world. Theory & Psychology, 30(4), 485–506. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354320940049