Measurement in Mathematics Education​

One would think measurement in mathematics education is a sound field.  However, many of our top-tier research journals do not publish or consider publishing the development and validation studies of instrumentation.  This has forced the field in my opinion to more qualitative inquiry methods due to the lack of quantitative tools researchers can use.  Seeing this gap and need, we have developed two nationally validate instruments specifically designed to fill gaps in the field.

The MCOP2 was developed for Project IMPACT and presents a national validated instrument that is open-resource for research and evaluation (see CV for publications).

The TPACK for secondary mathematics education preservice teachers survey was designed around program need in assessing teacher beliefs about content, pedagogy, and technology (see CV for publications).

Recently, a group of 40 national scholars begin working validity evidence and instrumentation in mathematics education.  I have been invited and accepted a leadership role for the Teacher Education instrument strand with VM2ED.

Programmatic Design in Mathematics Teacher Education

In 2008, I arrived at UA to a teacher preparation program with some low Praxis math scores and very primitive mathematics teaching beliefs by preservice teachers.  In my first class, 90% of preservice teachers said they did not use a graphing calculator at ALL in high school mathematics.  Immediately, a research need was developed specifically to fuel the program evaluation and research.  By 2011, the TPACK instrument was underway, a new capstone course created by Dr. Jim Gleason (mathematics), and three sequenced math teaching methods curses and clinical experiences began to take shape.  In 2012, we launched a six-year research project on the effect sizes of program design, components, and assessments on external licensure exams (edTPA, Praxis II).  This paper is under review in JRME.

Multiple publications (see CV) have stemmed from our partnership team in the APLU’s MTEP, including publications on programmatic analysis and impact on high stakes examinations.

​As part of the ongoing programmatic evaluation, research has developed that is supported in the literature and strengthens the field’s knowledge to improve program design and teach

Mathematical College-readiness: Policy & Practice

When I began my research as a doctoral student, my experiences of teaching high school mathematics and college mathematics set the stage for examining policy and practice about getting students ready for college, mathematically speaking.  While I continue to read the literature, my research agenda has shifted to almost exclusively to these two areas to the left on this page. Some of my early career work helped distinguish the differences between college-ready and college-eligible, whether block-scheduling or period-scheduling is more appropriate preparing students for college, and the best enrollment factors/patterns for taking mathematics classes to maximize readiness and completion of bachelor’s degrees.

Overall, this was a very early passion of my research agenda as it was very pressing on research questions I wanted to learn about given my teaching.  Now, those research questions are directly related to my current teaching and national impact on mathematics teacher education.

Studying Computer Science and Mathematics Education Integration in Schools and Teacher Preparation

Recently, through an USDOE funded $4M grant with the UA Computer Science Dept and Alabama State Department of Education, a large look at integrating Bootstrap into Algebra will begin statewide in 2020.
We finished a 3-year pilot study funded by NSF dually certifying our SEMA teacher candidates in Math plus Computer Science.  It has led to a six institution partnership with JSU, ASU, USA, UAB, UAH, and UA in Alabama in which any secondary teacher candidate can add-on CS teaching endorsement through our NSF grant.