Biography
Clara Mabour is a first year STEM Education PhD student. Prior to starting her studies at Tufts, Clara taught high school science and global studies and research for 5 years in Broward County Public Schools. She ran several afterschool STEM and invention focused programs and summer camps. As an educator, her aim was to provide culturally relevant, challenging, and creative STEM opportunities for her ethnically, culturally, socially, economically, and academically diverse students. Open-ended hands-on teaching techniques were her most used teaching practices to amplify student voice and choice. In the invention education space, Clara has presented on several panels, wrote published lesson plans, and was awarded a US patent with a group of former students. Her experience as a K-12 educator informed her desire to pursue a PhD in STEM education. Clara’s research interests focus on the intersection of culture, learner agency, materials, and community engineering, in informal and formal K-12 STEM learning spaces.
Advised by McDonnell Family Assistant Professor Greses Pérez and Assistant Professor Brian Gravel. Her current research under Assistant Professor Brian Gravel, and member of the STEMCees research group, focuses on hip hop pedagogy as a culturally sustaining way to engage learners and especially historically excluded communities in computational making and STEM.