Association for Psychological Science
National Academy of Education
American Psychological Association
American Educational Research Association
American Educational Research Association
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), Stanford
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Faculty/Researcher, Center for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Connecticut
Ann Lesley Brown (1943–1999) was a British-born educational psychologist and learning scientist whose work reshaped how classrooms support thinking and comprehension. She pioneered research on metacognition and co-developed influential practice frameworks such as Reciprocal Teaching and Fostering Communities of Learners (FCL). Brown also advanced design-based research ("design experiments") for studying and improving complex classroom innovations. She was Professor and Evelyn Lois Corey Chair at the University of California, Berkeley, and died on June 4, 1999.
An instructional approach in which teachers and students take turns leading text‐based dialogue using four strategies—predicting, questioning, clarifying, summarizing—to improve comprehension and metacognitive monitoring.
A classroom model that organizes inquiry around research cycles, peer teaching, and consequential tasks to build distributed expertise, deep content understanding, and metacognitive regulation.
A methodology for iteratively designing and studying complex educational innovations in naturalistic settings to generate usable knowledge and theory about learning and instruction.
A framework that makes expert practices visible through modeling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection, and exploration; applied to domains such as reading, writing, and mathematics.
American Psychologist • Journal
Describes research on Fostering Communities of Learners (FCL) implemented in inner-city classrooms (ages 6–12). Grounded in cognitive and developmental theory, FCL improves literacy and domain knowledge (e.g., environmental science, biology) by building on students’ emergent metacognitive strategies and naive theories. Students engage in guided inquiry to uncover deep principles and develop flexible learning and inquiry strategies, with evidence of substantive gains in comprehension and reasoning.
Journal of the Learning Sciences • Journal
Introduces “design experiments” as a methodology for engineering and studying ambitious learning environments in real classrooms. Brown argues that to transform classrooms into communities of learning, researchers must iteratively design, enact, and analyze innovations under naturalistic conditions, coordinating curriculum, roles, discourse, assessment, and technology. The paper outlines rationales, methodological challenges (e.g., control, documentation, scalability), and analytic strategies for producing both practical improvements and theoretical insights from complex classroom interventions.
Cognition and Instruction • Journal
Reports two studies with seventh-grade poor comprehenders trained in four strategies—summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting—using the reciprocal teaching method in which students and teacher take turns leading text-centered dialogue. Compared with typical instruction, reciprocal teaching produced larger and more durable gains on comprehension measures, improved quality of student summaries and questions, showed generalization to classroom tests and transfer to related tasks, and increased standardized comprehension scores. A second study replicated many findings with classroom teachers implementing the approach.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior • Journal
Examines how learners of different ages and expertise summarize expository texts. Brown and Day identify and analyze the development and use of key summarization macrorules (e.g., deletion of trivial/redundant information, superordinate substitution, topic sentence selection or invention). Findings show age-related growth in applying transformational rules and condensing ideas, with novices tending toward copy–delete strategies and more expert readers demonstrating deeper macrostructure operations.
National Academies Press • Book
Edited synthesis linking research on cognition, development, culture, and brain to classroom practice. Core principles emphasize prior knowledge, knowledge organization for transfer, and metacognition, with rich classroom examples and implications for teaching, assessment, and teacher learning. The expanded 2000 edition extends the 1999 report with guidance on bridging research and practice across K–16 settings.
National Academies Press • Book
Expanded the original synthesis with guidance on translating learning sciences principles into practice. Highlights how learning changes the brain, how expertise develops, the role of culture and context, and how classroom design and assessment can promote transfer and deep understanding.
National Academies Press • Book
Synthesizes research on cognition, neuroscience, and learning to show how prior knowledge, expert performance, and metacognition shape learning. The volume outlines implications for curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and teacher development, using case examples to illustrate learner‑, knowledge‑, assessment‑, and community‑centered design principles.
In L. Schauble & R. Glaser (Eds.), Innovations in Learning: New Environments for Education (pp. 289–325). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates • Chapter
Synthesizes principles for designing learning environments that cultivate higher literacy (e.g., inquiry, argumentation, reflection). Using the Fostering Communities of Learners (FCL) program as an exemplar, the chapter details activity structures (research cycles, peer teaching, consequential tasks), design rationales, and assessment approaches that align with theories of metacognition, discourse, and distributed expertise. It frames classroom innovation as a system linking procedures and principles to support deep content learning and adaptive expertise.
In K. McGilly (Ed.), Classroom Lessons: Integrating Cognitive Theory and Classroom Practice (pp. 229–270). MIT Press/Bradford Books • Chapter
Articulates the “guided discovery” approach within Fostering Communities of Learners. The chapter contrasts unguided discovery and didactic instruction, arguing for structured inquiry that distributes expertise, scaffolds discourse, and situates assessment in consequential tasks. Classroom enactments illustrate how students generate research questions, teach one another, synthesize information, and present to authentic audiences, yielding gains in comprehension, critical analysis, and disciplinary understanding.
In P. H. Mussen (Series Ed.), J. H. Flavell & E. M. Markman (Vol. Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 77–166). Wiley • Chapter
A comprehensive synthesis of research on learning, memory, and comprehension in development. The chapter contrasts everyday and academic cognition; reviews strategy development, metacognition, and knowledge effects; and discusses instructional implications for helping learners become self-regulated, strategic, and conceptually grounded. It helped anchor later work linking cognitive theory to design of classroom learning environments.