UCLA
Project Evaluator
Ananda Marin is an Assistant Professor of Social Research Methodology in UCLA’s Department of Education and faculty in American Indian Studies. As a learning scientist, she uses video-ethnographic methods and participatory design research to explore questions about the cultural nature of teaching, learning, and development. A primary goal of her work is to desettle and broaden conceptualizations of cognition and learning in ways that are consequential to the communities she partners with and the field of education. To do this, she draws upon Indigenous ways of knowing and sociocultural theories to: (1) develop research on learning across a variety of activities including the everyday (i.e., forest walks) and the professional (e.g., teaching, ensemble performances) and (2) co-design learning contexts with communities that are in right relations with Indigenous lands/waters. Within both of these strands of research she examines the multiple ways that multigenerational groups of people coordinate attention and observation in order to participate in joint activity, collaborate, and improvise. She also engages in micro-ethnographic analyses of the moment-to-moment unfolding of interaction, accounting for the role of relationality, embodied movement, and place in science-related education and teaching/learning more generally. She has widespread experience designing and learning with Indigenous communities and organizations to cultivate educational contexts that center Indigenous futures. She also applies her expertise to participatory and collaborative evaluation projects.