Molly B. Zielezinski is a doctoral candidate at the Stanford Graduate School of Education with dual specialization in Learning Sciences & Technology Design and Curriculum & Teacher Education. As a former teacher, she is deeply committed to identifying and interrogating innovative practices that support the development of critical thinking, collaboration, and content knowledge in K-12 classrooms. As part of this agenda, Molly researches learning associated with the integration of digital technologies into K-12 curriculum, mapping these within the myriad of interconnected contextual factors at play in modern classrooms. In other work, she researches design thinking as a pedagogical tool, presenting evidence that design can be a vehicle for authentic problem solving which promotes creative confidence and scaffolds empathy driven solution finding. A central theme emerging from both strands of this work is the criticality of intentional alignment, specifically that opportunities for meaningful learning are strengthened considerably when innovative pedagogical tools and practices are leveraged deliberately because of their strong alignment with specific learning objectives, contextual features at play in the learning environment, and a deep knowledge of the learners involved.
