Carol D. Lee is associate professor of learning sciences and of African American studies. She earned a doctorate in education from the University of Chicago. Her research interests include urban education, cultural supports for literacy, classroom discourse, and instructional design. Her research focuses on the design of curriculum to support literate problem solving in response to literature.

The design principles that undergird her research involve ways of drawing on forms of cultural capital, especially in terms of community language practices, of African American adolescents who are speakers of African American English Vernacular. Her work also incorporates uses of technology to support literate problem solving. Professor Lee has developed a theory of cultural modeling that provides a framework for the design and enactment of curriculum that draws on forms of prior knowledge that traditionally underserved students bring to classrooms.

She is the author of Signifying as a Scaffold for Literary Interpretation: The Pedagogical Implications of an African American Discourse Genre. She is co-editor, with Peter Smagorinsky, of Vygotskian Perspectives on Literacy Research, published by Cambridge University Press. Professor Lee is active in the school reform movement in Chicago Public Schools and has worked as a teacher in both public and private schools before assuming a university career.