College of Education and Human Development

Department of Educational Psychology

People

David DeLiema

  • Pronouns: he, him, his

  • Program coordinator, psychological foundations of education; McKnight Presidential Fellow; associate professor

My research emphasis is on how students and teachers collaboratively navigate moments of failure when learning computer science, mathematics, and science.

    DEGREES

    Postdoctoral researcher, University of California, Berkeley, 2016-2019
    PhD, University of California, Los Angeles, 2015
    BA, University of California, Los Angeles, 2008

      AREAS OF INTEREST
      • Productive failure
      • Playful learning
      • Embodied cognition
      • Spatial reasoning
      • Social interaction
        BIOGRAPHY

        My research emphasis is on how students and teachers collaboratively navigate moments of failure when learning computer science, mathematics, and science. In particular, I study how teachers and students respond to failure productively with plans for improvement and confidence to enact new routes toward learning. This practice of “Debugging Failure” often involves collaboration, reflection, and storytelling as vital supports for learning. In complementary research threads, I study how students immerse creatively in the first-person viewpoint of concepts, reason about spatial dynamics, and learn through play. Through design-based research and sustained research-practice partnerships with educators, I aim to anchor these inquiries in the context of the moment-to-moment dynamics of talk, gesture, and action in the classroom.

        Personal website: www.david-deliema.com

          PUBLICATIONS

          DeLiema, D., Hufnagle, A. S., Ovies-Bocanegra, M. (2025). Contrasting stances at the crossroads of debugging learning opportunities. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(1), 73-91.

          DeLiema, D., Bye, J., & Marupudi, V. (2024). Debugging pathways: Open-ended discrepancy noticing, causal reasoning, and intervening. ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 24(2), 1-34.

          Carpenter, Z., & DeLiema, D. (2024). Linking epistemic stance and problem-solving with self-confidence during play in a puzzle-based video game. Computers and Education, 216, 105042. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2024.105042

          Fong, M. M., DeLiema, D., Flood, V. J., & Walker-van Aalst, O. (2023). Contesting sociocomputational norms: Computer programming instructors and students’ co-operative stance-taking around refactoring. International Journal of Computer-supported Collaborative Learning. DOI: 10.1007/s11412-023-09392-2

          DeLiema, D., Hufnagle, A. S., Rao, V. N. V., Baker, J., Valerie, J., & Kim, J. (2023). Methodological innovations at the intersection of video-based educational research traditions: Reflections on relevance, data selection, and phenomena of interest. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 46(1), 19-36.

          DeLiema, D., Kwon, Y., Chisholm, A., Williams, I., Dahn, M., Flood, V., Abrahamson, D., & Steen, F. (2023). A multi-dimensional framework for documenting students’ heterogeneous experiences with programming bugs. Cognition & Instruction, 41(2), 158-200.

          Lindgren, R., & DeLiema, D. (2022). Viewpoint, embodiment, and roles in STEM learning technologies. Educational Technology Research and Development, 70, 1009–1034.

          DeLiema, D., Enyedy, N., Steen, F., Danish, J. A. (2021). Integrating viewpoint and space: How lamination across gesture, body movement, language, and material resources shapes learning. Cognition and Instruction. DOI: 10.1080/07370008.2021.1928133.

          Dahn, M., DeLiema., D. & Enyedy, N. (2020). Art as a point of departure for storytelling about the experience of learning to code. Teachers College Record, 122(8), 1-42.

          DeLiema, D., Enyedy, N., & Danish, J. A. (2019). Roles, rules, and keys: How different play configurations shape collaborative science inquiry. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 28(4-5), 513-555.

            PRESENTATIONS

            Anderson, C. G., Hussein, B., Carpenter, Z., & DeLiema, D. (2024). Show or tell? A comparison of direct instruction tutorial and learn by doing increased impasse versions of initial levels of a puzzle game. In proceedings of the conference on Foundations of Digital Games 2024. Massachusetts, USA: ACM.

            Wilson Vasquez, A., DeLiema, D., Goeke, M., & Bye, J. (2023). Debugging debugging pathways: A research-practice partnership in K-8 computer science education. In 17th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2023 (pp. 2276-2279). Montreal, Canada: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

            Chen, B., Bartucz, J., Scharber, C., Rao, V. V., & DeLiema, D. (2023, April). Toward a framework for justice-oriented data science education in K–12 schools. Paper presented as part of a structured poster session at The American Educational Research Association, Chicago, Illinois.

            DeLiema, D., Goeke, M., Hussein, B., Valerie, J., Anderson, C. G., Varma, K., Chen, B., Salehi, S., & Bernacki, M. (2022). Playful learning following deviations: A mixture of tinkering, causal explanations, and revision rationales. In C. Chinn, D. Tan, C. Chan, & Y. Kali (Eds.), 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2022 (pp. 1421-1424). Hiroshima, Japan: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

            Elliott, C. H., Radke, S., DeLiema, D., Silvis, D., Vogelstein, L. (2020). Whose video?: Surveying implications for participants’ engagement in video recording practices in ethnographic research. In M. Gresalfi, M. & I. S. Horn (Eds.), The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences, 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020, Volume 2 (pp. 414-421). Nashville, TN: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

            Kafai, Y., DeLiema, D., Fields, D. A., Lewandowski, G., & Lewis, C. (2019). Rethinking debugging as productive failure for CS education. In Proceedings of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (pp. 169-170). Minneapolis, MN: ACM.

            Flood, V. J., DeLiema, D., & Abrahamson, D. (2018). Bringing static code to life: The instructional work of animating computer programs with the body. In J. Kay & R. Luckin (Eds.), "Rethinking learning in the digital age: Making the Learning Sciences count," Proceedings of the 13th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (Vol. 2, pp. 1085-1088). London: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

            Flood, V. J., DeLiema, D., Harrer, B. W., & Abrahamson, D. (2018). Enskilment in the digital age: The interactional work of learning to debug. In J. Kay & R. Luckin (Eds.), "Rethinking learning in the digital age: Making the Learning Sciences count," Proceedings of the 13th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (Vol. 3, pp. 1405-1406). London: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

            DeLiema, D., Saleh, A., Lee, C., Enyedy, N., Danish, J. A., Illum, R., Dahn, M., Humburg, M., & Mahoney, C. (2016). Blending play and inquiry in augmented reality: A comparison of playing a video game to playing within a participatory model. In C-K. Looi, J. Polman, U. Cress, & P. Reimann (Eds.) Transforming Learning, Empowering Learners: The International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2016, Volume 2 (pp. 450-457). Singapore: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

            Abrahamson, D., Petrick, C., DeLiema, D., Johnson–Glenberg, M., Birchfield, D., Koziupa, T. Savio-Ramos, C., Cruse, J., Lindgren, R., Fadjo, C., Black, J., & Eisenberg, M. (2012). You're it! Body, action, and object in STEM learning. In. J. van Aalst, K. Thompson, M. J. Jacobson, & P. Reimann, (Eds.) The Future of Learning: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2012) – Volume 2 (pp. 99-109). Sydney, NSW, Australia: International Society of the Learning Sciences.