Diana Arya is an assocaite professor in the Department of Education. Arya’s research interests focus on the literacy practices and processes within K-12 science classroom and professional scientific communities. Through her investigations of text-based (data, simulations, co-constructions, etc.) and inquiry-based activities in third grade, middle school, high school, and professional contexts, she explores what counts as science and scientific discourse across these learning communities. As such, Diana’s research is focused on language in use within the intersections of school science curricula, the varied genres of scientific texts, classroom interactions, and how disciplinary knowledge is constructed within the context of the discursive practices of scientists across disciplines. 

Diana’s current research focuses on the observed gap between the literacy practices (i.e., discourse, reading, writing, and engagement in inquiry-based practices) of scientists and literacy activities designed for secondary science school curricula. She hopes that her work contributes to closing this gap. Within a multifaceted design grounded in a discourse base, Diana attempts to make visible the layered interpretations of standards-driven proscriptions for STEM-related classroom practices, and what is made available for teachers and their students in order to engage with the kinds of work that scientists actually do. As such, she has engaged in a variety of research practices with fellow scholars, researchers and graduate students, including classroom observations, cognitive interviews, narrative analysis, regression-based modeling, and the design and evaluation of assessments using Rasch modeling. 

Diana J. Arya joined the GGSE faculty within the Department of Education in 2014. Prior to her current position, she was a post doctoral scholar at the University of Oslo in Norway, and most recently a research associate in the School of Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She received her Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, Society and Culture (LLSC) from the University of California, Berkeley, and holds M.A. degrees in education-related subjects from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (literacy and special education) and the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (applied linguistics). 

Prior to her graduate work at Berkeley, Diana was a school reading specialist and classroom science teacher for urban middle school students. She has a total of 20 years of classroom teaching and coaching experience.