William R. Penuel

William “Bill” Penuel is the Distinguished Professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development in the School of Education at University of Colorado Boulder. As a faculty member in the School of Education and the Institute of Cognitive Science and a faculty fellow in the Renée Crown Wellness Institute, Penuel partners closely with educators and communities to design curriculum, assessments and professional learning that support more just and meaningful classroom experiences. His pioneering leadership in the learning science includes influential work on research‑practice partnerships, fostering and studying equitable and engaging STEM learning, and compassion‑centered approaches to schooling. His scholarship has shaped how educators and researchers collaborate to address systemic inequities and create learning environments that honor students’ identities, experiences and well‑being.

With colleagues from across the country, he is developing and testing new models for supporting implementation through long-term partnerships between educators and researchers. Currently, Penuel has partnerships with large school districts and a national association of state science coordinators focused on implementing the vision of science education outlined in a Framework for K-12 Science Education. As a co-Principal Investigator of the Research+Practice Collaboratory, he is developing resources to help people build and sustain research-practice partnerships. Penuel is currently Principal Investigator for the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice, which is focused on how school and district leaders use research. He is one of the developers of an approach to improvement research called Design-Based Implementation Research.

Penuel authored two books on research-practice partnerships, Creating Research-Practice Partnerships in Education and Connecting Research and Practice for Educational Improvement and co-edited a book on improvement research, The Foundational Handbook on Improvement Research in Education.