Paula Laurel Jackson, PhD

Paula Laurel Jackson is an education researcher, writer, and teacher whose work asks how learning environments shape who comes to experience themselves as capable of thinking with others, contributing to shared understanding, and participating in a more interconnected world.

We are often taught to see pieces rather than patterns: facts without history, performance without an account of what shaped it, individuals apart from the relationships and circumstances that make learning possible. Relational Cartography is one way of naming and studying that larger field.

She is a Research Fellow at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and an Adjunct Lecturer at HGSE. Her research has involved observing classrooms and learning environments across 56 countries and five continents, examining how cultural and institutional contexts shape students' experiences of participation, recognition, and intellectual life.

Across research, writing, and public scholarship, her work asks how learning environments shape who comes to experience themselves as capable of thinking with others, contributing to shared understanding, and participating in a more interconnected world.

Relational Cartography grows from that larger concern. It offers a framework for seeing the structure of learning environments more clearly — and for asking what schools would look like if that structure were brought fully into view.