Emma Carter

EdTech Researcher & Former K-12 Teacher

Emma Carter is a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy, where her work focuses on the efficacy of AI-assisted tutoring systems and equity in adaptive learning platforms. Before moving into research she spent six years teaching 5th and 8th grade mathematics at Chicago Public Schools' Uplift Community High School, earning the district's Innovative Teacher Award in 2019 for her data-driven differentiation approach — a mastery-based grading system she co-designed with the school's instructional coach and that raised pass rates in grade 8 algebra by 18 percentage points over two years. Her peer-reviewed publications have appeared in the Journal of Educational Technology & Society and Computers & Education. A 2024 co-authored paper on adaptive hint systems in K-12 mathematics platforms was cited by the RAND Corporation in its meta-analysis on AI tutoring outcomes. Emma holds an M.Ed. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (specialisation in Curriculum and Instruction) and a PhD (ABD) in Learning Sciences from Northwestern, where her dissertation examines how low-income students experience AI feedback loops differently from their higher-income peers. She consults for EduBoost on evidence-based feature design and writes about study science, K-12 learning gaps, the real-world pricing and outcomes tradeoffs between AI and human tutors, and how parents can interpret platform progress data. Her pedagogy conviction: the job of a good educational tool is to create productive struggle, not to remove it.