The field of the Learning Sciences has experienced generational shifts, from regarding conceptualizations of learning as an individual phenomenon to recognizing learning as a process mediated by dynamic histories, cultures, and social relations. Researchers are now drawing on a history of work in Critical Theory to foreground issues of power, politics, and ethics within education research. These leading scholars commit to designing and studying dignity-affirming and expansive educational contexts that resist narrow conceptions of learning that reproduce hegemonic systems. In line with these scholars, I understand equity, diversity, and inclusion in education to be illuminated by an interrogation of political and ethical commitments which serve as concrete actions towards dismantling oppressive systems and imagining and building humanizing worlds. Thus in this statement I articulate my commitments to engage identities as opportunities for praxis, privilege artistic ways of knowing, and foster collectivity and care.

As a sociocultural theorist of learning, I am acutely aware of the ways (felt and perceived) identities shape how we see, understand, and engage in the world. My multifacated identities as a white, straight, cis-genedered, able-bodied, Jewish, female (to name a few) influence not only how I approach research, teaching, and service, but also how my actions are received by others as either reproducing or challenging harmful social hierarchies. Thus, I intentionally create opportunities to interrogate and learn from collaborators', students, and my own subjective positionalities to create more dignifying worlds.

For example, in my second writing sample my colleagues and I use an analytic lens that combines prolepsis and telos to help bring into focus how educators' ideologies of race, class, and gender influence what experiences from the past they draw on, which shapes their imagined futures for youth and ultimately is reflected in how they mediate learning in the present (Sengupta-Irving, Vogelstein, Brady, & Phillips-Galloway, JLS, accepted). This analysis has led me to reflect on my own positionality as a white scholar and educator. While it is inevitable to draw on our past lived experiences in interaction, as a white female this means it is important to make visible structures of white supremacy in my history and future imaginings. For example, as an enthusiastic child I had a habit of blurting out answers in school. I was never harshly reprimanded for this and was told it was a positive trait. However, similar or even the same forms of participation by black girls have been documented to lead to harsh and dangerous reprimands, including being labeled as unruly children and forced out of classrooms. While as an adult I am still an enthusiastic learner, I now have a more nuanced understanding of my positionality. While enthusiasm for learning can be infectious and wonderful, taking up too much space is not a virtue. As a researcher and educator, it is important to make sure many voices and perspectives are included (knowing when to step in and step out) and to not read quietness or hesitancy as a lack of enthusiasm, as interpreting speaking out as enthusiasm (instead of say, disrespect for others' participation), has been shaped by my whiteness. Thus, it is important to continually reflect and question what I read as productive, good, and desirable to make visible how white supremacy influences their social construction.

Additionally, I have taken up the practice of continuously returning to data with others to illuminate norms and social dynamics that are obscured by my own positionality. When co-analyzing data with dancer collaborators, we recognized an interaction with four young boys as an episode needing to be reframed by racialized systems of participation. Although we first noticed these boys' position near the teacher as consistent with the gendered dynamics in the movement space (boys in closer proximity to the teacher than girls) we then realized that these boys often stayed out of the teacher's line of sight. This nuance was salient to us as a group including one black male queer dance artist and one white female queer dance artist, because marganilized students (especially students of color) often protect themselves from harmful stereotypes by participating in educational spaces at the periphery. We then understood the teacher's invitation to participate as a move that allowed these boys to contribute movements on their own terms. By centering an intersectional framework of race and gender, we saw the complexities young students of color navigated in our own design and the impactful ways this teacher helped steer this interaction towards a meaningful, empowering learning experience (manuscript in preparation).

My history and identity as a dance artist informs my political commitment to positioning dance as a form of research and dancers as collaborative research partners. Dance has too often been cast as an artistic and physical pursuit separate from the superior, thinking brain. However, how we move and feel in our bodies is an important part of learning and sensemaking, and cutting off these resources limits what and how we can learn in STEM and other learning environments. In my research, I explore choreographic practices as processes of inquiry to challenge social narratives that cast embodied and artistic ways of knowing as antithetical to rigorous, scientific methods of knowledge production. For example, my colleagues and I show how a group of four 8th grade girls manipulating a large square sheet of Mylar developed a complex conceptualization of reflections as consisting of the coordination of two pairs of pairs (Vogelstein et al., ZDM, 2019, writing sample 1). They came to this understanding by attending to how their choreography looked and felt; by privileging these girls' aesthetic sensibilities and axiology, we illuminate the novel sensemaking approaches dance afforded these girls in their mathematics learning. I carry this commitment to privileging artistic ways of knowing into my own pedagogy. For example, in leading a discussion on gender in a course on Critical Discourse Analysis, I showed a work of dance performed by my collaborators entitled “Girls,” which explored and challenged female stereotypes. Grounding this discussion in art pushed the group's ideas to include embodiment and movement as communicating sociopolitical discourses. I am excited to expand this pedagogical practice by including works of art as texts in my syllabi in the future.

In centering choreographic inquiry processes such as the practice of “physical research” that the dancers I collaborate with engage in (Vogelstein, ISLS, 2021), I also center collective practices in my research. For example, my dance collaborators and I have been thinking through a phenomenon we are calling “choreographies of care,” where small groups demonstrate their care for each other in a larger group context by moving and responding to each other's movements (manuscript in preparation). This is important in STEM learning environments where what counts as learning can often center hyper-individualism, normative and simplified views of correct thinking, and competitiveness. Such STEM environments typically ignore potential resources and cultural assets for creative production.

Leveraging collectivity and fostering care in STEM learning environments is a central commitment in my research, mentorship and service. In mentoring Learning & Design master's students in their capstone projects, I started each year by meeting as a group to collectively workshop each student's nascent design wondering. Similarly to how middle schoolers enacting computational movement rules saw each others' contributions as proposals to respond to, capstone students began to see each other's ideas as proposals to supportively build on. In turn, this helped create a community in which students' saw each others' heterogeneous experiences as generative resources to seek out. In addition, throughout my time at Vanderbilt I have been an active member of our department's doctoral community through the Doctoral Student Association (DSA). I have held almost every position in the DSA from social chair, to president, to first year liaison when I implemented a new first year buddy system to more wholly integrate first year students into our community. I was honored with the Jasmine Ma Award by my peers for service to our doctoral student community. As one nomination read, “Lauren takes the doctoral student community more seriously than anyone I know. ...She listens carefully and gives thoughtful feedback - above and beyond what is expected. She is intentionally present to celebrate our successes or grieve our losses. She is a powerful uniting force, and the DSA would not be what it is without her.”