Dr. Laura Larke is a qualitative researcher and social theorist interested in equity and power in K-12 computer science education. She is a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and associate editor at Policy & Internet.
She was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute and completed her DPhil and MSc at the University of Oxford’s Learning & New Technologies Research Group. She is also a proponent of public education, former community college student, and graduate of University of California, Santa Cruz.
During the 2020-21 academic year, Dr. Larke will be guiding two National Science Foundation-funded projects at the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, both focused on broadening participation and success in K-12 computer science education. She will be supporting teacher-educators’ authoring of digital clinical simulations of challenging equity-related teaching scenarios for use in pre-service and in-service computer science teacher training. Additionally, she will be shepherding a researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP) between five public school districts, the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents (M.A.S.S.), MIT, and CSforMA to rework internal systems and practices in order for schools to move towards our shared goal of CSforAll.