Dr. Iris Tabak is a lecturer in the Department of Education at Ben Gurion University of the Negev (Israel), with a joint appointment in the Unit for Science and Technology Teaching. She is currently a recipient of the Rashi-Guastela Fellowship for the Advancement of Science Education (2001-2003). Her teaching includes courses on cognitive approaches to science education, on the design of computer-based learning environments, and on classroom discourse.

Dr. Tabak's research integrates technology design with the application of cognitive and sociocultural theory to the study of learning and teaching. In particular, she examines how to develop technological supports for complex reasoning, and how to integrate these tools with ongoing teaching and learning practices in K-12 classrooms. Her main methodological approach is design experimentation - iterative design of innovations and the study of the enactment of these innovations in context, with a continual emphasis, throughout design, enactment and analysis phases, on addressing the myriad of local goals and needs. Within the design experimentation paradigm, she employs mixed-method designs, combining both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The quantitative measures she uses consist mostly of surveys and similar instruments used to select cases and to setup contrasts, and of pre/post tests used to measure learning and attitudinal changes. The qualitative methods she uses consist mostly of interpretive microethnography, interactional analysis and discourse analysis, these qualitative methods enable her to describe the processes through which learning-changes occur, and to articulate models that describe the interdependence and complementary contribution of distributed sources of scaffolding in the classroom.

Dr. Tabak received a Ph.D. in the Learning Sciences from Northwestern University in 1999. She holds a B.S.E in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan, and was a Senior Research Assistant developing Intelligent Tutoring Systems at Educational Testing Service (ETS) prior to her graduate studies. As part of her doctoral research, she developed a computer-based learning environment, The Galapagos Finches. This software incorporates a pedagogical framework that draws on discipline-specific knowledge to structure students' analysis and synthesis of primary data. The Galapagos Finches software was adopted by the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (LeTUS), and is currently being used in a number of Chicago public schools as part of the center's broad-based reform initiative. The software will appear in Volume VI of the BioQuest Library (2001), a peer reviewed, published CD-ROM library of biology education software. Academic distinctions include: NARST Outstanding Dissertation Award (2001), NIMH Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA (1999-2000), Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow (1998-1999), Educational Testing Service Predoctoral Fellow (Summer 1996).