Kristiina Kumpulainen

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Bio and Research Interests

Dr. Kristiina Kumpulainen is a Professor and Head of the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada. She earned her PhD in Education from the University of Exeter in the UK. Prior to her current role, she served as a Professor and Associate Dean of Academic and Faculty Development at Simon Fraser University, and as a Professor and Associate Dean of Research at the University of Helsinki in Finland. She has led numerous research projects, centers, and networks, including the Playful Learning Center, the Nordic research network on Digitalizing Childhoods (DigiChild), and the CICERO Learning Network at the University of Helsinki.

Professor Kumpulainen’s internationally recognized research examines how sociopolitical and digital contexts shape social interaction and learning. She is particularly known for her contributions to understanding how children and youth engage in learning across diverse formal and informal settings, such as schools, museums, and digital environments, and how these experiences are influenced by culture, technology, and power. Her scholarly work has advanced interdisciplinary knowledge in areas such as STEAM education, multiliteracies, health literacies, children’s ecological literacies, and climate change education. She has made significant methodological contributions to educational research through the development and use of multimodal, visual and participatory approaches in studies conducted with and for children and educators.

Her research has received several competitive grants from the Academy of Finland, the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, Kone Foundation, the Cultural Foundation of Finland, The Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS), EU Horizon, the Australian Research Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Dr. Kumpulainen has been recognized as one of the world's top 2% most-cited scientists, according to Stanford University's 2024 database.

She currently serves as Co-Editor of Learning, Culture and Social Interaction (Elsevier) and sits on the boards of several international organizations and panels focused on education, technology, and the learning sciences.

PhD

Education, University of Exeter, UK

Honors and Awards

Fellow, Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2019

Wiley Top Cited Article, 2021–2022

Immersive Learning Pedagogy Award, the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN), 2022

BJET Editors’ Choice Award, British Journal of Educational Technology, 2019

Outstanding Publication Award, European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI), 2002

Selected Publications

Books

Kumpulainen, K., Kajamaa, A., Erstad, O., Mäkitalo, Å., Drotner, K., & Jakobsdóttir, S. (Eds.) (2022). Nordic childhoods in the digital age: Insights into contemporary research on communication, learning and education. Routledge.

Kumpulainen, K., & Sefton-Green, J. (2020). Multiliteracies and early years innovation: Perspectives from Finland and beyond. Routledge.

Whitebread, D., Grau, V., Kumpulainen, K., McClelland, M., Berry, N., & Pino-Pasternak, D. (2019). The SAGE Handbook of Developmental Psychology and Early Childhood Education. SAGE Publishing.

Book chapters

Kumpulainen, K., Byman, J. Renlund, J., & Wong, C. C. (2023). Dialogic learning with the ‘more-than-human world’: Insights from posthuman theorising. In C. Damşa, A. Rajala, G. Ritella, & J. Brouwer (Eds.), Re-theorizing learning and research methods in learning research (pp. 47-64). Routledge.

Kumpulainen K. (2022). Bridging dichotomies between children, nature and digital technologies. In K. Kumpulainen,, A. Kajamaa, O. Erstad, Å. Mäkitalo, K. Drotner, & S. Jakobsdóttir (Eds.), Nordic childhoods in the digital age: Insights into contemporary research on communication, learning and education (pp. 41-50). Routledge.

Kumpulainen, K., & Kajamaa, A. (2021). Makerspaces as tertiary artifacts? The meaning of material artifacts in students’ social interaction during technology-rich creative learning. In N. Muller Mirza, & M. Dos Santos Mamed (Eds.), Dialogical approaches and tensions in learning and development: At the frontiers of the mind (pp. 105-121). Springer International Publishing.

Kumpulainen, K., & Gillen, J. (2019). Young children’s digital literacy practices in homes: Past, present and future research directions. In R. Flewitt, O. Erstad, B. Kuemmerling-Melbauer, & I. Pereira (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Digital Literacies in Early Childhood (pp. 95–108). Routledge.

Kumpulainen, K., Rajala, A., & Kajamaa, A. (2019). Researching the materiality of communication in an educational makerspace: The meaning of social objects. In N. Mercer, R. Wegerif, & L. Major (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Research on Dialogic Education (pp. 439-453). Routledge.

Kumpulainen, K. (2018). A principled, personalised, trusting and child-centric ECEC system in Finland. In S. Kagan (Ed.), The early advantage 1: Early childhood systems that lead by example - A comparative focus on international early childhood education (pp. 72–98). Teachers College Press.

Articles

Kumpulainen, K., Wong, C.-C., Byman, J., Renlund, J., & Vadeboncoeur, J. A. (2023). Fostering children’s ecological imagination with augmented storying. The Journal of Environmental Education, 54(1), 33-45.

Kajamaa, A., & Kumpulainen, K. (2020). Students' multimodal knowledge practices in makerspace learning environment. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 15(4), 411-444.

Kajamaa, A., Kumpulainen, K., & Olkinuora, H.-R. (2020). Teacher interventions in students’ collaborative work in a technology-rich educational makerspace. British Journal of Educational Technology, 51(2), 371-386.

Kumpulainen, K., & Rajala, A. (2017). Dialogic teaching and students’ discursive identity negotiation in the learning of science. Learning and Instruction, 48, 23–31.

Kumpulainen, K., Karttunen, M., Juurola, L., & Mikkola, A. (2014). Towards children’s creative museum engagement and collaborative sense-making. Digital Creativity, 25(2), 233-246.

Kumpulainen, K. & Sefton-Green, J. (2014). What is connected learning and how to research it? International Journal of Learning and Media, 4(2), 7-18.

Kumpulainen, K. (2013). The legacy of productive disciplinary engagement. International Journal of Educational Research, 64, 215-220.