Failure, Learning, and Play
David DeLiema is an educational researcher who studies the conversations, designs, and processes that shape how learning emerges from moments of impasse. In research-practice partnerships that foreground the knowledge and voices of teachers, students, and parents, his research examines cognitive and psychological processes in the context of social interaction, technology-rich settings, play-based activities, and embodied movement. In studies of children pretend-playing as bees trying to find nectar, middle schoolers debugging broken code, and youth working on challenging puzzle-based video games, his work provokes reflection on the open-ended, power-laden, and everyday nature of turning impasses into learning.