Patricia Moreira is an Assistant Professor in the Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies Department at the University of Arizona. She started her career as a science teacher graduated from the Universidad de Concepcion, Chile. Later, she received her Ph.D. in Science of Education at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Her experience as a science teacher contributed to an interest in finding ways to better understand and support students’ learning process in science, focusing her research on making students’ reasoning visible when they face tasks related to predicting, arguing, and building explanations. Her research also seeks to characterize how classroom talks influence students’ reasoning and conceptual understanding.
Dr. Moreira currently collaborates on three research projects in Chile focused on enhancing pre-service teachers’ explanations in the classroom and promoting the appropriation of models and modeling as a teaching and learning approach in Chemistry and Physics education at all educational levels. Dr. Moreira continues her research on how classroom interactions shape students reasoning and understanding of phenomena, including challenges of building explanations in bilingual learning environments to inform teacher training programs.