Currently, I am engaging in a research partnership with the University of Washington to explore instructional practices that strengthen students’ access to and understanding of grade-level mathematics. Through this research, we are working with in-service elementary and middle school teachers to help strengthen their awareness of and ability to design student-centered learning experiences that facilitate productive struggle and collaborative talk. We are also working with students (grades 1-8) to understand how students with diverse learning needs make sense of math tasks, aiming to identify resources, strategies, and supports that enhance their learning experiences.
Additionally, my research over the last several years focuses on supporting math and science teachers embrace uncertainty, both personally and pedagogically. Research highlights that students grappling with uncertainty can increase sense-making skills, deepen their learning and understanding, and enhance creative problem-solving strategies. However, research is less extensive on how teachers purposefully use uncertainty to support students’ inquiry practices, let alone how teachers’ own orientations and perceptions of uncertainty impact their pedagogical decisions.
To that end, I work with in-service math and science teachers exploring how they perceive student uncertainty and utilize it as a teaching tool in the classroom. I collaborate with interdisciplinary teams to design professional development programs aimed to support teachers’ change in both perceptions and practice. I have also designed and taught a math methods course for elementary pre-service teachers (PSTs) to explore how purposefully embedding assignments and discussions that center personal, pedagogical, and mathematical uncertainties can impact the PSTs’ sources and perceptions of uncertainty.