Yasmin B Kafai
Professor, Graduate School of Education
Graduate Group Affiliations
Contact information
3700 Walnut St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Education:
Diplompsychologie Technische Universität, Berlin , 1987.
Ed.D.
Harvard University , 1993.
Permanent linkDiplompsychologie Technische Universität, Berlin , 1987.
Ed.D.
Harvard University , 1993.
Description of Research Expertise
Areas of Expertise
Learning sciences
Constructionism
Games and virtual worlds
Gender
Professional Biography
Born in Germany, Dr. Kafai undertook her studies on learning theories and technologies in France, Germany, and the United States. She received her doctorate from Harvard University while working with Seymour Papert at the MIT Media Laboratory. From 1994 to 2008, she was on the faculty of the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.
Her research on children’s learning as designers of games, simulations, and virtual worlds has received generous funding from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. She was one of the first educators to receive an Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation in addition to a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Academy of Education.
As part of her policy work, she wrote Under the Microscope: A Decade of Gender Equity Interventions in the Sciences (2004) and worked on Tech-Savvy Girls: Educating Girls in the Computer Age (2000), a report for the American Association of University Women. At the National Academy of Sciences, she briefed the Telecommunication and Computer Science Board for Being Fluent with Information Technology (1999) and is currently on the steering committee for the workshop series Computational Thinking for Everyone.
A past president of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS), she is now the executive editor of the Journal of the Learning Sciences, together with Cindy Hmelo-Silver.
Research Interests and Current Projects
As a learning scientist, Dr. Kafai examines technology designs and cultures through the lens of constructionist theory. Her early work, published in Minds in Play: Computer Game Design as a Context for Children’s Learning (1995), set the foundation for programmatic initiatives on games and learning in the United States and Europe. Her recent book edition of Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming (2008) presented new developments in gender and gaming.
Dr. Kafai’s recent collaborations with colleagues from the MIT Media Laboratory have resulted in the design and study of the media-rich programming environment Scratch (scratch.mit.edu) for Computer Clubhouses, a worldwide network of community technology centers. Dr. Kafai is currently investigating how media arts design and programming can become part of curricular activities in school and in after-school programs.
With support of the National Science Foundation and now the MacArthur Foundation, Dr. Kafai is studying daily life and learning opportunities in Whyville.net, a virtual world that is home to over 3.3 million players ages 8-16 years. An upcoming special issue edited for Games & Culture will present findings on collaborative play, representations of race, cheating practices, economic interactions, and involvement in virtual epidemics. Current investigations focus on tweens’ gender play, romantic relationships, and transgressive practices.
Selected Publications
Kafai, Y. B., Peppler, K. A., & Chapman, R. N. (Eds.): The Computer Clubhouse: Constructionism and Creativity in Youth Communities. New York: Teachers College Press 2009.Kafai, Y. B. & Fields, D. A. : Cheating in Virtual Worlds: Transgressive Designs for Learning On the Horizon 17(1): 12-20, 2009.
Fields, D. & Kafai, Y. B. : A connective ethnography of peer knowledge sharing and diffusion in a tween virtual world International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 4(1): 47-68, 2009.
Kafai, Y. B., Heeter, C., Denner, J., & Sun, J. (Eds.): Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Peppler, K., & Kafai, Y. B.: From SuperGoo to Scratch: Exploring creative digital media production in informal learning. Learning, Media, and Technology 32(2): 149–166, 2007.
Kafai, Y. B.: Constructionism. Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. K. Sawyer (eds.). New York: Cambridge University Press, Page: pp. 35–46, 2006.
Kafai, Y. B.: Playing and making games for learning: Instructionist and constructionist perspectives for game studies. Games and Culture 1(1): 34-40, 2006.
Kafai, Y. B., Franke, M., Ching, C., & Shih, J.: Games as interactive learning environments fostering teachers’ and students’ mathematical thinking. International Journal of Computers for Mathematical Learning 3(2): 149–193, 1998.
Kafai, Y. B., & Resnick, M. (Eds.): Constructionism in practice: Designing, Thinking, and Learning in a Digital World. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996.
Kafai, Y. B.: Minds in play: Computer game design as a context for children’s learning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995.