Faculty Research Projects

The word cloud illustrates the research interests of our faculty at a glance!

Faculty Research Projects

Designing an Equitable Approach to Multiplicative Reasoning through Dynamic Measurement for Area (DYME-A)

This project uses technology as both a pedagogical tool and a democratizing force to expand student access to the mathematics of area measurement and multiplication and support meaningful connections between these topics and students’ everyday lives. The project builds on prior work with Dynamic Measurement for Area (DYME-A), a reimagined approach that engages students in exploring models of area as a dynamic sweep of a line segment over a distance. This approach showed to support students’ multiplicative reasoning about area as a continuous quantity that can dynamically change based on two linear measures: length and width. Findings also showed DYME- A’s potential for supporting students’ reasoning of multiplication and division. To make the DYME-A approach accessible to a diverse population of students, this project aims to expand it to multiplication of whole numbers in fourth grade through the design of dynamic area models that honors students’ culturally relevant and context-appropriate learning experiences.

Balancing Acts

The Balancing Acts routine is an approach to teaching the concepts of equality and equivalence, which span K-16 education and are fundamental to mathematics and the sciences. The Balancing Acts approach leverages a familiar and ancient technology – the balance scale –as a tool for embodied learning that teachers can use to teach the relational sense of the equal sign. The relational sense of the equal sign promotes a view of an equation as a comparison of two equivalent quantities, as in the equation “8 + 5 = x + 7,” which means that 8 + 5 is the same as an unknown number added to 7. While a variety of tools can and should be used to support students’ learning of equivalence, Dr. Panorkou and Dr. Greenstein hypothesized that the singular use of the balance model across multiple instances of equivalence in the curriculum gives students an “object to think with” that they can rely on to recognize equivalence as a big idea of math and science throughout their K-12 coursework.

Wipro Science Education Fellowship

Five local school districts have been selected to participate in the Wipro Science Education Fellowship (SEF) program at Montclair State University. The Wipro SEF program is a teacher-leadership program that supports experienced K to 12 science teachers to deepen their practice while staying in the classroom. The program uses a model of teacher support and development to increase the capacity of teacher- leadership in their respective districts. This model includes a comprehensive set of activities designed to enhance teachers’ abilities to increase achievement in science for underperforming students. Research on the program will contribute to an increased understanding of models of professional development for experienced teachers. Funded by Wipro Technologies, based in Bangalore India. In partnership with University of Massachusetts Boston and Mercy College.

Building A Teacher Knowledge Base for the Implementation of High-quality Instructional Resources Through the Collaborative Investigation of Video Cases

This NSF-funded project investigates the ways in which teachers learn within communities of practice centered on the collective investigation of video-cases grounded in high-quality instructional materials. In addition, we explore how teacher participation in such communities impact their use of these high-quality materials in their classrooms.

Investigating Perseverance across Diverse Mathematical Environments

This ongoing research concerns investigating students’ perseverance in problem-solving across a variety of diverse mathematical environments. Specific contexts include individual and collaborative problem-solving, bilingual collaborative activity, early-childhood education, non-formal STEM environments, and more. Through mixed methodologies, this work seeks to better understand the tumultuous nature of in-the-moment perseverance across diverse settings and posit features of learning environments that can help nurture it. Thus, this research has both theoretical and practical impacts on the effective practices by which mathematics can be taught and learned.

Stretchy Minds

Guided by the question, “What new worlds arise when children come to understand that qualitative difference is a foundational dimension of learning for creative change?” my collaborators and I are taking a design-based approach to developing experiences that teach children “deep creativity” through qualitative geometric games that illuminate distinctions between non-metric differences in kind and metric differences in degree. By providing a medium for creativity, playfulness and aesthetic appreciation (C. Thi Nguyen, Games: Agency as Art), these collaborative games develop children’s agency and autonomy as they come to understand these ideas.  A white paper that articulates our conceptual framework is available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.23519.47528

The ACMES project: Assimilating Computational and Mathematical Thinking into Earth and Environmental Science

This project will design, develop, and study the effects of instructional modules that integrate computational and mathematical thinking with the Earth and environmental sciences in grades 5-7. The project will pursue the following objectives:

1. Design and implement instructional modules that integrate computational and mathematical thinking into the Earth and environmental sciences in Grades 5, 6 and 7
2. Study and refine the instructional modules to monitor effects on student learning
3. Develop and conduct teacher professional development activities that support the integration of computational and mathematical thinking into the Earth and environmental sciences
4. Investigate teacher experiences and perceptions of integrating computational thinking into instruction for the purpose of learning how to support teachers in implementing these instructional practices
5. Build a digital support platform to facilitate the development and use of the instructional modules and professional development and the proposed research.

This project was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Preparing to Teach with Technology – Examining Student Practices

This project aimed to 1) create technology-based curricular units for undergraduate mathematics education students to examine secondary students’ mathematical practices, 2) implement and test the materials in undergraduate mathematics education courses, and 3) disseminate the curricular materials and research how undergraduate mathematics education students deepen their mathematical knowledge for teaching by engaging with the materials.

Making for Mathematical Learning

This project incorporates a novel Making-oriented experience into the preparation of pre-service K-6 teachers of mathematics (PSTs), and documents influences to the PSTs’ knowledge and identities. The experience will enable the PSTs to design and print out new tools, using digital 3-D fabrication technologies, that support mathematics teaching and learning. Research objectives include: (1) describing the forms of knowledge invoked as the PSTs design and make new manipulatives to support mathematics teaching and learning, (2) tracing and elaborating the development of the PSTs’ technological, mathematical, pedagogical, and curricular knowledge as they engage in this work, and (3) documenting what the PSTs’ discourse reveals about the nature of the figured world of the design space and about the identities of those within it.

Creativity in Mathematics and Science

The project seeks to develop, implement, assess, revise, and transfer an innovative model of STEM undergraduate education that highlights creativity in STEM at Montclair State University (MSU), New Jersey. This project includes (i) course modules on creative thinking in STEM for science and non-science majors, (ii) a 2-year engaged student research experience for selected CMS Scholars; (iii) research on the impact of the CMS project on student achievement and changes to students’ perceptions about STEM learning; and (iv) transfer of successful elements to Bergen Community College—MSU’s largest feeder school—and local high schools. The specific aim is to design learning materials and instructional innovations related to creativity in the sciences. The CMS project will address the documented need for STEM students to understand the process of scientific inquiry and will address the role of creativity in scientific endeavors. The three-year cycle of development, implementation, evaluation, reflection, and refinement will promote institutionalization of the instructional practices, and dissemination of project results, and adoption at other institutions. The Creativity in Mathematics and Science (CMS) Project is funded by the National Science Foundation, Award #1611876

Noyce at Montclair: Preparing the Effective Elementary Mathematics Teacher

This NSF-funded project provides exemplary preparation to students for effective elementary mathematics teaching in high-need K-12 schools. Scholars obtain an undergraduate degree in mathematics along with a K-6 elementary teaching certification, and each scholar receives a $13,000 scholarship and a $660 stipend each year for two years with additional funding available for local conference travel. In return for the funds, Scholars agree to work two years in a high-needs school for each year of funding received (i.e., a scholar who receives funds for both years would work four years in a high-need school).