Mathematical Behavior
Carolyn A. Maher is Professor II of Mathematics Education and the Director of the Robert B. Davis Institute for Learning at the Graduate School of Education, Rutgers. She is Editor of the Journal of Mathematical Behavior and has served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Research in Mathematics Education. Her research, consisting of both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, has focused on the development of mathematical ideas and mathematical reasoning in learners over time. Most noteworthy is the longitudinal study that followed the mathematical thinking of a cohort group of students doing mathematics in and out of classrooms, now in its 21st year and tracking the subjects as young professionals. This longitudinal study is featured in the Private Universe Project in Mathematics, a series of six video workshops for teacher professional development that was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The documentary, Surprises in Mind, published by RiverRun Media, features her long-term study. Recent research includes a three-year study of middle school students' informal mathematics learning in an after-school setting in an urban NJ school district. With the current Discovery Research K-12 grant from National Science Foundation, Maher and colleagues are now focusing on teacher education and how studying video episodes of children's learning from prior research potentially can improve teachers' abilities to reason mathematically. This latest NSF research project builds upon her current REESE Synthesis grant that selected video episodes on children's mathematical reasoning as representative samples from prior studies for inclusion in a prototype of a searchable database accessible via the Internet. Professor Maher has published over 60 refereed journal articles and book chapters, and has given over 30 invited lectures, plenary sessions, and keynote addresses. She was invited co-chair of the Topic Study Group for "New Trends in Mathematics Education Research" at the Eleventh International Congress on Mathematics Education, held in July 2008. She gave the invited keynote lecture Critical Thinking Skills in Schools and Museums at the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies in June 2007. She was a plenary speaker at the 26th PME in Norwich, England, 2002, Senior Lecturer at the International Congress for Mathematics Education in Copenhagen, Denmark, 2004, and Plenary Speaker at the University of Helsinki Conference in Finland, 2004.
To access Carolyn A. Maher's publications, Research Gate, Google Scholar
Arthur B. Powell, Jr. is Associate Professor of Mathematics Education in the Department of Urban Education at the Newark campus of Rutgers University, New Jersey, and Faculty Research Scientist and Associate Director of the Robert B. Davis Institute for Learning of the Graduate School of Education in New Brunswick. He received his B.A. in mathematics and statistics from Hampshire College, Amherst, MA; M.A. in mathematics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI; and Ph.D. in mathematics education from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick. His research interests focus in the following areas where he has published extensively: writing and mathematics learning; ethnomathematics; development of mathematical ideas, reasoning, and heuristics; teacher professional development in the mathematics for teaching; and collaborative problem solving in mathematics with technology. At present, he co-chairs SIG/Research in Mathematics Education of the American Educational Research Association. Also, he directs the Research Group on Communication, Technology, and Mathematics Learning that is engaged in an investigative and instructional project, called eMath. To fund his collaborative research, Dr. Powell has garnered funding from local, national, and international agencies.
In service to the mathematics education community, Dr. Powell is the co-author with Beatrice Lumpkin of Math: A Rich Heritage (1995); co-editor and co-author with Marilyn Frankenstein of Ethnomathematics Challenging Eurocentrism in Mathematics Education (1997); and co-author with Marcelo A. Bairral of A Escrita e o Pensamento Matemático: Interações e Potencialidades [Writing and Mathematical Thinking: Interactions and Potentialities] (2006); co-editor with Carolyn Maher and Elizabeth Uptegrove of Combinatorics and Reasoning: Representations, Justifying and Building Isomorphisms (2010); co-author with Brian Greer, Swapna Mukhopadhyay, and Sharon Nelson-Barber Culturally Responsive Mathematics Education (2009). Dr. Powell is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Mathematical Behavior; Boletim GEPEM: O Boletim do Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas em Educao Matemática [The Bulletin of the Study and Research Group in Mathematics Education, published in Brazil]; and BOLEMA: O Boletim de Educação Matemática [BOLEMA: The Bulletin of Mathematics Education, published in Brazil]. He is the past vice president of the International Study Group for Ethnomathematics and, with Marilyn Frankenstein and John Volmink, co-founder and co-editor of the Criticalmathematics Educator Newsletter. Moreover, he has forged international collaborations between mathematics educators at Rutgers University and those in the Southern Hemisphere&mdashin Mozambique, South Africa, and Brazil&mdashand in the Caribbean&mdashin Haiti. In Haiti, last year, along with a graduate of Rutgers University-Newark, he developed a professional development project for teachers of elementary schools, focused on the materials and pedagogy developed and popularized by the Egyptian-born psychologist and mathematician, Caleb Gattegno.
In the United States, Dr. Powell works to further Gattegno's ideas on the subordination of teaching to learning. In collaboration with a small group of other educators, in 2003, he co-founded the Bronx Charter School for Better Learning, where Gattegno's approach to the teaching of reading, world languages, social studies, science, and mathematics are practiced and where he directs the professional development of teachers in mathematics.
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Alice S. Alston is currently a part-time faculty member of the Department of Learning and Teaching of the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University and a Research Associate at the Robert B. Davis Institute for Learning. Earlier professional experiences include teaching in both public and independent middle and secondary schools, and chairing a middle school mathematics department, before assuming a central staff role in both professional development and research projects of the Rutgers University Center for Mathematics, Science and Computer Education and the Robert B. Davis Institute of Learning from its inception. Subsequently, as a full-time faculty member, Dr. Alston regularly taught both graduate and undergraduate courses in mathematics education at the GSE as a Visiting Associate Professor in Mathematics Education and continues to actively advise graduate students in their research endeavors.
With a background in mathematics and experience teaching in middle and high school, her particular expertise in professional development is for teachers of grades 5 through 12 using a modified Lesson Study approach that is classroom-based and focuses on teachers' deepening knowledge of the mathematics they are responsible for teaching and their ability to recognize and encourage their students mathematical reasoning. She has served as consultant for the Davis Institute in university-school partnership activities for professional development facilitating this model in a number of urban school districts in New Jersey.
Recent research interests include fine-grained studies of children's mathematical reasoning, the implications of students affect on their mathematical behavior and analyses of teachers' attention to their students' mathematical reasoning within Lesson Study activities.
Judith H. Landis is a Research Associate at the Robert B. Davis Institute for Learning at Rutgers University, and a part-time faculty member of the Rutgers Graduate School of Education. Her expertise is in mathematics education, with special attention to improving teaching and learning. Her extensive experience includes teaching mathematics at elementary, middle, high school, and university levels; teaching teachers in pre- and inservice environments, supervisor of mathematics, school principal, and assistant superintendent of schools
Dr. Landis currently works with teachers in several New Jersey school districts, as a component of two NSF funded research projects. The work with teachers makes use of a major video collection of children learning mathematics that is currently being prepared for storage at the Rutgers Repository. The professional development work involves helping teachers to build mathematics instruction that elicits students' reasoning and justification of solutions to problems.
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