Transdisciplinarity and the Dangers and Opportunities of STEM Education: An Interview with Dr. Pratim Sengupta

Dr. Pratim Sengupta is a professor of learning sciences, and a member of the Graduate Faculty of Computational Media Design at the University of Calgary, where he has also served as Research Chair of STEM Education. Prior to joining the University of Calgary, Dr. Sengupta was a professor at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College, where he co-founded and chaired the Learning Sciences PhD program. He is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2012) for his research on developing agent-based programming languages and integrating computational modeling in K12 science and math classrooms, and a Paul D. Fleck Award from the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity for his work on public computing. He is a Fellow of the International Society for Design and Development in Education. Significant editorial roles include executive editor of Cognition and Instruction (2017 – 2025), and senior editor for Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education (2018 – ongoing). Prior to completing his PhD in learning sciences at Northwestern University, Dr. Sengupta attended Presidency College, Kolkata (India), the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (India) and Northwestern University (USA), where he received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Physics. I first encountered Pratim’s work about five years ago while researching scholarship on transdisciplinarity in STEM and STEM education. At that time, and still today, there was a challenge in finding work that was truly transdisciplinary. Pratim’s conceptualization of coding as a participatory and embodied process aligned closely with my own view of transdisciplinary STEM. This interview is a slightly modified transcript of our conversation about transdisciplinarity and the dangers and opportunities of STEM education.