Tanner Vea

Learning Sciences & Human Development

Tanner Vea is a critical sociocultural learning scientist with a focus on emotion, social relations, and social change. Vea's research and teaching focus on politics, ethics, and design. Politics concerns the struggle over the definition and distribution of social goods. Ethics involves questions over what ends are good and what means of achieving them are right. In exploring these intersections, Vea's research and teaching reflect two overlapping lines of inquiry: (1) emotion and relation as learning processes and outcomes and (2) how design can expand political possibilities for learning and living. He examines these topics in social movements, as well as within disciplinary-focused learning contexts.

This work has been published in journals including the Journal of the Learning Sciences, Information and Learning Sciences, and British Journal of Educational Technology, and Vea has translated this work for broader audiences as part of a volume of learning sciences and social movements comics he co-edited, published in the comics journal Sequentials.

Vea currently serves as Secretary of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) and as a member of the ISLS Communications Committee.

Education

Ph.D., 2018, Stanford University, Learning Sciences and Human Development

M.A., 2012, Teachers College Columbia University, Instructional Technology and Media

B.A., 2007, Bard College, Media and Culture (Multidisciplinary Studies)

Expertise

Learning in social movements

Emotion and learning

Learning sciences

Politics and ethics of learning

Fellowships, honors and awards

2024 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow

Publications

Classen, J., Vea, T., Kijima, R., & Yang-Yoshihara, M. (2023). Interactional role negotiation among co-facilitators in an online design workshop. Classroom Discourse. https://doi.org/10.1080/19463014.2023.2240907

Vea, T. (2021). Guided emotion participation. Sequentials, 2(1). https://www.sequentialsjournal.net/issues/issue2.1/vea.html

Curnow, J., & Vea, T. (2021). Introduction: Learning to Engage. Sequentials, 2(1). https://www.sequentialsjournal.net/issues/issue2.1/edintro.html

Curnow, J., & Vea, T. (2020). Emotional configurations of politicization in social justice movements. Information and Learning Sciences, 121(9/10), 729-747. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-01-2020-0017

Goldman, S., Luce, M. R., & Vea, T. (2020). Opportunities and tensions in family science: Challenging dominant paradigms in science education. Cultural Studies of Science Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-020-09998-0

Vea, T. (2020). The learning of emotion in/as sociocultural practice: The case of animal rights activism. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 29(3), 311-346. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2020.1748036

Vea, T. (2019). The ethical sensations of im-mediacy: Embodiment and multiple literacies in animal rights activists’ learning with media technologies. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(4), 1589-1602. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12809

Luce, M.R., Goldman, S., & Vea, T. (2017). Designing for family science explorations anytime, anywhere. Science Education, 101(2), 251-277. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21259