Jennifer Noll

Research has shown that the emotions elementary school teachers and their students experience when engaging in mathematics activities play an important role in mathematics teaching and learning. Yet, the field lacks mathematics-specific professional learning opportunities for elementary teachers that focus on the role of teachers’ and learners’ emotions in the way they experience mathematics in the classroom. This project will address these gaps by developing and testing the Orienting Positive Emotions in New Teachers for Mathematics (OPEN for Math) professional learning program.

This project will improve STEM education by studying the various strategies taught to and used by students for solving multi-digit multiplication and division to develop a more cohesive understanding of children's multiplicative reasoning. The work will also support teachers’ ability to better support students’ multiplicative reasoning strategies via professional development videos that help them learn about students’ strategies.

The goal of the project is to understand the current conditions, challenges, and resources that pertain to mathematics education in rural areas in the United States.

The goal of the project is to understand the current conditions, challenges, and resources that pertain to mathematics education in rural areas in the United States.

The goal of the project is to understand the current conditions, challenges, and resources that pertain to mathematics education in rural areas in the United States.

Research has shown that when teachers have strong content and pedagogical content knowledge that they can provide better quality mathematics instruction to their students and improve student outcomes. The goal of this project is to enhance elementary school teachers’ capacity to improve students’ mathematics learning through a scaled professional development program that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create a personalized, active learning environment for teachers.

While research has identified some features of professional development that impact teacher and student outcomes, there is still much mathematics education researchers do not know regarding which design features are most impactful to learning and how specific features of professional development connect to teacher learning. This project will investigate six prior NSF-funded professional development projects looking for features of the professional development associated with teacher uptake and learning, such as how the establishment of community or norms of collaboration support teachers’ long-term classroom practice.

This project will build an interactive and integrated curricular and professional development technological system: the Building Blocks Toolset (BBToolset). The BBToolset is designed to benefit all early childhood educators and their students. Young children will learn from engaging, effective digital educational games and face-to-face activities. Teachers will receive just-in-time professional development related to their students' development and guidance on curricular choices and culturally sensitive pedagogical strategies.

Young children thrive when strong relationships exist between their home and school environments. Early home and school experiences support the development of mathematical skills. Often, schools and teachers struggle to establish these strong relationships; therefore, Math Partners will work with teachers and teaching assistants in classroom design teams to help teachers establish healthy, positive relationships with families that center families’ knowledge and experiences in the context of mathematics.