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 work can be found published in journals such as Review of Educational Research, Educational Researcher, Science Education, and Learning, Media, and Technology.
Her research employs qualitative research methodologies borrowed from scholars of media studies and science and technology studies to describe tensions around technology integration in the modern classroom. 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 current postdoctoral research, she is working to understand how commercial digital platforms like ClassDojo, Google Classroom, and GoGuardian have come to serve as intermediaries as students, teachers, parents, and administrators build relationships in elementary school communities.
A highlight of her work at Penn GSE has been teaching and coaching with the Urban Teaching Apprenticeship program. 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. She is a proud product of the vibrant and diverse public school system in Allentown, PA.
Education
- Ph.D. (Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education) University of Pennsylvania, 2025
- A.B. (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) Princeton University, 2014
Areas of Expertise
- Educational technology
- Critical platform studies
- Teachers' work
- Teacher education
- Science education
Links
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 her work leading this project, she is conducting surveys, interviews, observations, and focus groups across three urban elementary school communities that serve communities of varying racial and socioeconomic demographics. As digital technologies become increasingly contested terrain in schools, she is working to leverage the project's research data as iterative feedback to help teachers and school leaders to be responsive to community concerns around how edtech and AI are shaping children’s learning.