Biography
Dr. Tess Bernhard is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. She studies how the work of teaching unfolds in today’s K–12 classrooms—public spaces that are increasingly governed by technology pushed from the private sector. Her research critically questions how the proliferation of commercial education technologies in K–12 classrooms has altered the nature of teachers’ instructional and professional practice. Across her work, she investigates how educators critically engage with digital platforms whose designs attempt to automate and surveil the relational work they do with students.
Her research employs qualitative research methodologies borrowed from scholars of media studies and science and technology studies to describe the modern classroom condition. Her dissertation project, which was awarded a National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship in 2024, illustrated how urban secondary science teachers experience digital platforms as adding complicated layers of administrative work to their plates, contrary to popular narratives of technology ushering in ease and efficiency. In her postdoctoral research, she is expanding this work to understand how commercial digital platforms like ClassDojo and Google Classroom have come to serve as intermediaries in how students, teachers, parents, and administrators build relationships in elementary school communities.
As a teacher educator, Bernhard has extensive experience as an instructor of both pre-service and in-service teachers. Her teacher education practice is guided by a desire to not only get teachers to think differently and more expansively about teaching, but to guide opportunities for teachers to both experience and try out equitable teaching practices they may have never encountered as students. As a science educator, she is particularly interested in supporting teachers to better align their instruction to the goals and practices set forth in the Next Generation Science Standards.
Prior to earning her Ph.D., Bernhard was a biology teacher and instructional coach in Boston, MA. Her scholarship is grounded in her experience as a high school teacher in the years leading up to and through the early months of the pandemic, as a constellation of digital platforms came to govern her work life. Her work can be found published in journals such as Learning, Media, and Technology, Journal of Science Teacher Education, and Teaching and Teacher Education. She is a proud product of the vibrant and diverse public school system in Allentown, PA.
Research Interests and Current Projects
Dr. Bernhard currently serves as both a co-PI and postdoctoral researcher on a project titled “Collaborating Towards Transformational Visions for Digital School Systems” alongside PIs Dr. Sarah Kavanagh and Dr. Katie Danielson. This project is generously supported by a large grant from the Spencer Foundation. In this work, she is conducting surveys, interviews, observations, and focus groups across three urban elementary school communities that serve communities of varying racial and socioeconomic demographics. She is working in partnership with school stakeholders (teachers, parents, students, and administrators) to leverage the project’s research data as iterative feedback to support schools’ ongoing adaptations of how they employ digital systems to symbiotically support students and families.