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Natalie Rae

Natalie Rae

Assistant Professor - Learning and Performance Systems

Phone: 814-863-4364

310C Keller Building
University Park, PA 16802

Department(s)

  • Learning and Performance Systems

Program(s)

  • Learning, Design, and Technology

Education

  • B.S. Bioenvironmental Engineering, Rutgers University
  • M.Ed. Physics Education, Rutgers University
  • Ph.D. Learning, Teaching, and Diversity, Vanderbilt University

Biography

Natalie Rae is an assistant professor of Learning, Design, and Technology at Penn State University. Her research examines the sociopolitical dimensions of science and engineering learning, weaving critical social theory, and science and technology studies to historically situate the conduct of science within movements for justice and collective liberation. Rae’s work explores how drawing on intellectual genealogies of resistance can transform science and engineering learning into a space for critical inquiry, identity affirmation, and collective empowerment.

 

Before joining Penn State, Natalie taught high school physics and engineering in Southern Maryland. Her scholarship has been published in the Journal of Engineering Education, the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, and Science and Children.

 

Rae was recognized as an Emerging Scholar by the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) in 2024. Her work on Black feminist knowledge-making in science was nominated for Best Paper at the ISLS 2025 Annual Meeting in Helsinki and earned her the Otto Bassler Outstanding Dissertation Award from Peabody College’s Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University.

 

Rae Lab Current Research Projects

Actively seeking collaborators for mutually aligned, grant-funded research projects.

Learning Sciences & Science, Technology & Society

AI & Data Infrastructures Learning Lab (AIDILL)

An interdisciplinary research group examining how people learn with and about AI & Data Infrastructures

  1. Pennsylvania Data Centers Project: Examining Public Concerns of AI-Infrastructures (Co-PI: Dylan Paré)
  2. Understanding higher-education students' development of ethical stances towards AI-use (Co-PI: Dylan Paré)
Sociopolitical Dimensions of Science Learning
  1. Black feminist empiricism: Historicizing Black feminist knowledge-making in science
  2. Community and Cultural Learning with Technology (Co-PI: Madison Allen Kuyenga)
Critical Video Methodologies in the Learning Sciences 
  1. Interaction analysis and the sociotechnical politics of video-analyses of learning (Co-PI: Bethany Daniel)
  2. Lead Organizer - VIAL Collective: A collaborative space for studying learning through video  
    https://www.vialcollective.org/ 

Courses Taught 

Methodological Expertise 

  • Qualitative approaches
  • Discourse analytic methods
  • Video interaction analytic methods
  • Black feminist thought and action
  • Sociopolitical perspectives on learning 

Media

Dominant discourses in engineering education (Tufts University School of Engineering News) 

Most Recent Papers

 *Prior publications have been authored with my former last name, De Lucca

  • De Lucca, N., Watkins, J., Swanson, R., Portsmore, M. (2023). Dominant discourses and engineering educational concepts within elementary engineering teachers’ pedagogical reasoning. Journal of Engineering Education. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20563
  • Watkins, J., De Lucca, N., Pao, S. (2023). Fostering expansive and connective sensemaking with preservice secondary science teachers. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. http://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21922 

2024 International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) Emerging Scholar