Dr. Krist’s work focuses on making science learning meaningful for students and teachers, especially in the context of current reforms such as the NGSS. Her research explores how science classroom communities develop forms of engagement in disciplinary practices, such as modeling and argumentation, that are meaningful to them. In particular, she examines the epistemologies guiding students’ work, how students are positioned with respect to knowledge, and the relationship between positioning and epistemological development. She also studies how teachers learn to create and sustain environments that foster students’ epistemic agency in building science knowledge.

Dr. Krist completed her doctoral work at Northwestern University in 2016 and her postdoctoral work at the University of Maryland, College Park in 2017.

Dr. Krist’s work focuses on making science learning more meaningful for students and teachers, especially in the context of current reforms such as the NGSS. Her research explores how science classroom communities develop forms of engagement in disciplinary practices, such as modeling and argumentation, that are meaningful to them. In particular, she examines the epistemologies guiding students’ work, how students are positioned with respect to knowledge, and the relationship between positioning and epistemological development. She also studies how teachers learn to create and sustain environments that foster students’ epistemic agency in building science knowledge.

Dr. Krist primarily uses video records of interactions in science classrooms and in professional development settings to conduct both microgenetic and longitudinal analyses of learning in practice. Her current projects include:
- investigating how teachers navigate instructional tensions and trade-offs in creating opportunities for students’ epistemic agency while aligning instruction to NGSS
- exploring the role of trust in developing rigorous knowledge-building classroom communities
- using gender performativity as a lens to examine and expand possibilities for participation in scientific argumentation
- examining the effect of computational thinking as an entry point to NGSS on teachers’ conceptions and implementations of inquiry