Blake Peterson

About Me (Bio)
Blake Peterson is a professor of mathematics education at Brigham Young University. His research centers on how preservice teachers learn to teach mathematics. More specifically, he has studied student teaching in the United States and in Japan and how the structure of that experience influences the opportunity for preservice teachers to learn. As a result of his work with student teaching in Japan he collaborated with his colleague, Keith Leatham, to restructure student teaching at BYU. This restructuring led to an interest in and focus on understanding how to teach preservice mathematics teachers to recognize and effectively use student mathematical thinking as a standard method for teaching mathematics.
Citations of DRK-12 or Related Work (DRK-12 work is denoted by *)
  • Stockero, S. L., Leatham, K. R., Ochieng, M. A., Van Zoest, L. R., & Peterson, B. E. (2019). Teachers' orientations toward using student mathematical thinking as a resource during whole-class discussion. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-018-09421-0.*
  • Stockero, S. L., Freeburn, B., Van Zoest, L. R., Peterson, B. E., & Leatham, K. R. (2018). Teachers' responses to instances of student mathematical thinking with varied potential to support student learning. In T. E. Hodges, G. J. Roy, & A. M. Tyminski (Eds.), Proceedings of the 40th annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (pp. 1076-1083). Greenville, SC: University of South Carolina & Clemson University.*
  • Stockero, S. L., Peterson, B. E., Ochieng, M. A., Ruk, J. R., Van Zoest, L. R., & Leatham, K. R. (2019). Teachers' Initial Responses to High Leverage Instances of Student Mathematical Thinking. In Graven, M., Venkat, H., Eissen, A. A., & Vale, P (Eds.), Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (pp. 335-342). University of Pretoria: Pretoria, South Africa.*
  • Peterson, B. E., Van Zoest, L. R., Rougée, A. O. T., Freeburn, B., Stockero, S. L., & Leatham, K. R. (2017). Beyond the "move": A scheme for coding teachers' responses to student mathematical thinking. In B. Kaur, W. K. Ho, T. L. Toh, & B. H. Choy. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 41st annual meeting of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Vol. 4 (pp. 17–24). Singapore: International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education.*
  • Stockero, S. L., Van Zoest, L. R., Peterson, B. E., Leatham, K. R., & Rougée, A. O. T. (2017). Teachers' responses to a common set of high potential instances of student mathematical thinking. In E. Galindo, & J. Newton (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (pp. 1178–1185). Indianapolis, IN: Hoosier Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators.*
Brigham Young University (BYU)
07/01/2017

This project focuses on the teaching practice of building on student thinking, a practice in which teachers engage students in making sense of their peers' mathematical ideas in ways that help the whole class move forward in their mathematical understanding. The study examines how teachers incorporate this practice into mathematics discussions in secondary classrooms by designing tasks that generate opportunities for teachers to build on students' thinking and by studying teachers' orchestration of whole class discussions around student responses to these tasks.

Brigham Young University (BYU)
10/01/2012

The core research questions of the project are: (1) What is the nature of high-leverage student thinking that teachers have available to them in their classrooms? (2) How do teachers use student thinking during instruction and what goals, orientations and resources underlie that use? (3) What is the learning trajectory for the teaching practice of productively using student thinking? and (4) What supports can be provided to move teachers along that learning trajectory?