Steve Zuiker is an associate professor of the learning sciences in the division of educational innovation and leadership. His research is broadly based on the notion that ideas are only as important as what we can do with them. Learning environments, like school gardens and video games, as well as research findings, like scholarly journal articles, can each be both useful and used to create value in educational and local communities. Dr. Zuiker's research agenda explores how to design activities, resources, and projects that interconnect classrooms and schoolyards, digital video games and real-world activities, and ultimately, educational research and educational practice.
His scholarship and publications advance two goals related to what we can all do with ideas. First, through design-based research, he develops and improves learning and teaching systems in K-12 science education, often utilizing digital technologies. For example, environmental sensor networks in gardens and virtual environmental scenarios in video games can be tools to support students' meaningful engagement with science in a classroom, on campus, and with the local community. Second, he investigates how educational research itself is a system of learning and teaching in which research reports remain one among many means of sharing ideas and doing things with them. In this way, Dr. Zuiker considers how educational practitioners and researchers organize these systems of learning and teaching and how digital technologies can enhance the social relationships through which education stakeholders inspire and enable insight and mutual understanding.
How can practical connections between schools, local neighborhoods, and professional disciplinary communities enhance learning and teaching activities in science education?
How can educational activities inspire and enable students, educators, and researchers, respectively, to expand the reach and impact of what they learn to other settings and contexts?
Current Research Projects:
Zuiker is the principal investigator for the Step Outside teacher professional development program. Step Outside involves K-12 Arizona teachers in co-designing teaching strategies that connect indoor classrooms and outdoor campuses using shorter-term activities and longer-term projects. Step Outside organizes networked learning for 200 teachers across 37 schools, 9 districts, and 3 level III ecoregions in order to explore how school campuses can enhance learning and teaching. Specifically, the Step Outside program enables researchers and practitioners to put ideas to work in two ways. First, program participants engage in peer learning and professional development about outdoor education in real-time and over time. Second, they connect Step Outside teaching tools to their local schools campus in order to provide students with strategic opportunities to learn outside and, in turn, to share personal insights from their own local classroom-campus contexts with program peers.
Zuiker is also co-prinicipal investigator on a multi-national, team-based project entitled Participatory Design for Climate Change Adaptation. Scholars across 8 universities in Canada, South Africa, and the United States are working in partnership with nine local schools and communities across three level III ecoregions in South Africa. Partners will co-develop intergenerational gardening projects at each locale and an intergenerational gardening network across them. Local and networked learning will support community goals for food security and climate literacy grounded in indigenous and local ecological knowledge.
Zuiker, S. J., & Riske*, A. (2021). Designing for garden-based learning: Mapping practical and theoretical work through design. Environmental Education Research, 27(8), 1152-1171. doi: 10.1080/13504622.2021.1888886
Jordan, M., Zuiker, S. J., Wakefield*, W., & De La Rosa@, M. (2021). Real work with real consequences: Enlisting community energy engineering as an approach to envisioning engineering in context. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research, 11(1), 1-26. doi: 10.7771/2157-9288.1294
Merritt, E., Peterson, A., Evans, S., Marston, S., & Zuiker, S. J. (2021). Learning about culture and sustainable harvesting of native plants. Science & Children, 58(4), 69-73.
Zuiker, S. J., & Anderson, K. T. (2019). Fostering peer dialogic engagement in science classrooms with an educational videogame. Research in Science Education. DOI: 10.1007/s11165-019-9842-z
Zuiker, S. J., Jordan, M., and the Learning Landscapes Team*. (2019). Inter-organizational design thinking in education: Joint work between learning sciences courses and a zoo education program. Open Education Studies. doi: 10.1515/edu-2019-0001
Zuiker, S. J., Piepgrass*, N., Tefera, A., Anderson, K. T., Fischman, G., & Winn*, K. (2019). Recognizing and transforming knowledge mobilization in colleges of education. International Journal of Educational Policy & Leadership, 15(1), 1-19. DOI: 10.22230/ijepl.2018v15n1a808
Fischman, G., Anderson, K. T., Tefera, A., & Zuiker, S. J. (2018). If mobilizing educational research is the answer, who can afford to ask the question? An analysis of knowledge mobilization for scholarship in education. AERA Open, 4(1), 1-17. DOI: 10.1177/2332858417750133 [all authors contributed equally]
Zuiker, S. J., Piepgrass*, N., & Evans*, M. D. (2017). Expanding approaches to design research from researcher “ego-systems” to stakeholder ecosystems. In J. M. Spector, B. B. Lockee, & M. D. Childress (Eds.) Learning, Design, and Technology. An International Compendium of Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. New York: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-17727-4_74-1
Zuiker, S. J., Anderson, K., Jordan, M., & Stewart*, O. (2016). Complementary lenses: Using theories of situativity and complexity to understand collaborative learning as systems-level social activity. Learning, Culture, & Social Interaction, 9, 80-94. DOI: 10.1016/j.lcsi.2016.02.003
Zuiker, S. J., & Wright*, K. (2015). Learning in and beyond school gardens with cyber-physical systems. Interactive Learning Environments, 23 (5), 556-577. doi:10.1080/10494820.2015.1063512
Research Activity
Nxumbalo, F., Madkins, T., Nkonki-Madleni, B., Zuiker, S. J., Lanza, K., Maddalena, D., Li, Y., & Ayisi, K. K. (2024-2026). Participatory design for climate change adaptation: Intergenerational climate responsive school gardening as an approach to food security and climate literacy in South African communities. Canada Research Coordinating Committee New Frontiers in Research Fund, International Joint Initiative for Research in Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation.
Zuiker, S. J., Early, J., & Cloutier, S. (2023-2024). Teachers Connecting Campuses and Core Curricula. Arizona Governor’s Office, Negative Economic Impacts: Educational Disparities and Teacher Professional Development Grant Program - Award GR-ARPA-EDPD-ABORASU-05 ($783,021).
Jordan, M., Zuiker, S. J., & Miller, C. (2020-2022). Co-Developing Community Energy Engineering After-School Programing with Latinx Youth. Spencer Foundation Small Grant 202000196.
Zuiker, S. J., Merritt, E., and Marston, S. (2019-2021). The School Gardeners' Southwest Desert Almanac: A Conference for Supporting, Sustaining, and Spreading Garden-Based Science Teaching. National Science Foundation Grant, Education and Human Resources Directorate – DRK-12 Program Award 1908886.
Fischman, G., Zuiker, S. J., Teferas, A., & Anderson, K. T. (2014-2016). For whom and to what end is educational research ultimately directed: An analysis of knowledge mobilization strategies. Spencer Foundation Organizational Learning Grant 10003022.
