Brendan A. Schuetze, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, University of Utah

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Fall 2026 Update

Career News: I was recently elected Junior Co-Chair of the Early Career Researchers Committee for AERA's Motivation SIG. I'm excited to help organize events for the SIG and foster a welcoming community for early-career researchers. I will also be coordinating my department's Learning Sciences Seminar in Spring 2027, where we host outside researchers for virtual talks. If you are a post-PhD early-career researcher and would be interested in presenting in the seminar, please reach out!

Prospective Students: This has been a year of growth for the lab, with a postdoc, two PhD students, and a master's student joining within the past 12 months. As a result, I am unlikely to recruit new graduate students for a Fall 2027 start.

Howdy, I'm Brendan. 🤠
Three graphs showing a scatterplot with time-on-task and task performance on the x and y axes respectively. The other two graphs show the density plots of these two variables.

I'm a learning scientist, using formal modeling, experiments (in-lab and in the classroom), and survey data to better understand how and why we learn.

My ongoing research has focused on using computational models to better anticipate where, when, and how learning strategy and motivational interventions might be tailored for different individual, technological, and school contexts.

Through these efforts, I aim to develop the contextually rich intervention theory needed to support the creation of effective and equitable educational environments.

SOLAR Lab

In collaboration with Anne Cooke, I direct the SOLAR Lab (Science of Learning and Reading) at the University of Utah. Our work examines how people learn, remember, and regulate their learning across classroom, digital, and informal educational contexts.

Current projects span learning strategies and memory, self-regulated learning, motivation, educational technology and AI, and the design of interventions that are sensitive to differences among learners and contexts.

Interested in collaborating, presenting to our group, or learning more about an ongoing project? Get in touch.

Recent Work

Schuetze, B. A. (2025, July). The self-regulated learning paradox: Or, one reason why educational interventions might fail. In D. Barner, N. R. Bramley, A. Ruggeri, & C. M. Walker (Eds.), Proceedings of the 47th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 3156–3163). Cognitive Science Society. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2ms8v453

Schuetze, B. A. & Yan, V. X. (2025). Choosing what to study: Do internal judgments predict study-time allocation intentions over and above external agendas? Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance Online Publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000989

von Hippel, P. T. & Schuetze, B. A. (2025). How not to fool ourselves about heterogeneity of treatment effects. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/25152459241304347

Schuetze, B. A. (2024). A computational model of school achievement. Educational Psychology Review 36, Article 18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09853-6

* Editor's Choice * Yan, V. X., & Schuetze, B. A. (2023). What is meant by “growth mindset”? Current theory, measurement practices, and empirical results leave much open to interpretation: Commentary on Macnamara and Burgoyne (2023) and Burnette et al. (2023). Psychological Bulletin, 149(3-4), 206–219. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000370

In my free time, you can find me drawing up plans for the heterogeneity revolution. I grew up primarily in Lancaster (PA), but have called many places home including Hanover (NH), Austin (TX), and Potsdam, Germany.