Dr. Lama Jaber

Dr. Lama Jaber joined Florida State University as an assistant professor of science education in the School of Teacher Education in August 2015. She also joined as core faculty in the FSU-Teach program where she teaches preservice science and mathematics teachers. Her research explores learners' disciplinary engagement in science in various contexts, focusing on the affective and epistemological dynamics within that engagement both in face-to-face and online learning environments. For that purpose, she has collaborated on a project with colleagues from Tufts University to develop case studies of students’ disciplinary engagement and persistence in science. Moreover, Dr. Jaber is interested in the study and design of responsive teaching classrooms that promote students’ engagement and agency. To that end, she works with pre-service and in-service teachers to develop instructional practices that are responsive to students' ideas, experiences, and emotions, and she studies how teachers’ epistemic empathy can support such work.

Dr. Jaber’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, including an NSF-CAREER grant aimed at studying and cultivating teachers’ epistemic empathy, and another NSF-funded project with colleagues at FSU to support teachers in their efforts to promote productive epistemic discourse in the classroom. Her work has been published in a number of peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of the Learning Sciences, Science Education, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, and Cognition & Instruction, as well as at multiple national and international conferences. In addition, Dr. Jaber was recently awarded the NARST 2021 Early Career Research Award from NARST, A Global Organization for Improving Science Education.

Dr. Jaber serves as an Associate Editor on the Journal of Research in Science Teaching and on the Editorial Board of Science Education, as well as a guest reviewer for multiple journals including the Journal of the Learning Sciences, Cognition & Instruction, and Educational Researcher. Dr. Jaber has taught a variety of graduate and undergraduate education courses on topics related to the nature of disciplinary engagement in science, the epistemological foundations of education research, and knowing and learning in science and mathematics. Prior to her appointment at FSU, she has also co-designed and co-taught a series of blended online professional development courses for upper elementary and middle school science teachers.

Dr. Jaber trained as a postdoctoral research associate at the Department of Education at Tufts University where she earned her Ph.D. in science education. She holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, a teaching diploma, and a master’s degree in science education from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon where she taught elementary, middle, and high school science prior to coming to the United States.