Name: Rishi Krishnamoorthy
Title: Assistant Professor of Education (Science Education)
Department: Curriculum and Instruction
Phone:
Email: rkrish@psu.edu
Office address: 180 Chambers Building
Directory entry: https://ed.psu.edu/directory/dr-rishi-krishnamoorthy
Rishi Krishnamoorthy (who uses they/them pronouns) joins the College of Education at Penn State as an assistant professor of education (science education) from Rutgers University where they served as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Teaching and Learning. They are a former middle and high school science teacher who received an MSc. (master of science degree) in medical biophysics from the University of Western Ontario and a doctorate in science education from New York University.
As a science educator and learning scientist, Krishnamoorthy’s work draws on critical, Indigenous, feminist new materialist and postcolonial theories to investigate how power dynamics structure learning environments and science phenomena in and outside of classroom settings. They examine this through two strands of research: 1) a focus on the ways in which ideologies from larger social worlds shape how inequities are (re)produced through everyday science teaching interactions and 2) designing school science curricula that explicitly recognizes science teaching and learning as political towards creating solutions for resisting and fighting systems of oppression in learning environments.
Across both strands of research, they trace the ways in which race, caste, religion, gender and sexuality-based forms of discrimination emerge in and through everyday science teaching and learning using interaction analysis methods. In doing so, Krishnamoorthy works toward de-settling Eurocentric approaches to science education where precolonial and Indigenous ways of knowing are valued in science education research, teaching and learning.
Krishnamoorthy desires to be part of building a future where all youth are recognized as successful learners through science teaching and curriculum that values multiple epistemologies and better reflects minoritized communities’ ways of knowing and being.