Sharing in Chicago! PME-NA 2013

So tomorrow I’m off to PME-NA 2013 in Chicago which is one of my most favorite conferences for mathematics education research.  I will be presenting my research findings from my dissertation on Saturday morning and I’m so lucky to be going.  I’ve posted my PMENA handout  for anyone interested in having it.  I’m also posting  the […]

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Buyer Beware…when using rubrics for critical thinking skills

One of my goals in my work is often to help classroom mathematics teachers to be more deliberate in the ways in which they assess problem solving.  Although many people can be cynical about rubrics, I think that students can find them at least helpful to know what a teacher expects of them.  I have […]

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30-Year-Old Wisdom, Not Recent Rhetoric

Recently, the Exeter Bulletin published an amazing Memorial Minute in honor of Rick Parris just this past week which I believe was wonderfully written.  In it they use a quote that Rick stated back in 1984 which shows his wisdom and insight into student learning of mathematics and the basis of my interest in PBL. […]

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Minimizing Shame in the PBL Classroom…and maybe Daring Greatly?

I recently read a blogpost by one of my favorite authors, Brene Brown, of TED talk fame, and the author of a great book about vulnerability called Daring Greatly.  In her blogpost Brene wrote about some reactions to a comment she made on Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday show where she talked about shame in […]

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Get Comfortable with Uncertainty: A Short Dialogue

And so it begins.   The students are flustered. The emails are coming at night.  The faces stare at me, scared to death.  Although I repeat numerous times, “You do not have to come to class with each problem done and correct” students are totally freaking out about the fact that they can’t “do their homework” […]

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A New Year…Now What Do You Do?

OK, Carmel, enough with the summer of blogging about all this theory and ideas about teaching.  School is starting, we’ve committed to teaching with PBL – ack, things are starting to come into focus, huh?  I’m getting all these emails with questions about writing journals and dealing with parents and how to put things into […]

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The Downside of Naming “Feminine” Traits

I recently read this article from the Harvard Business Review stating that “Feminine” Values Can Give Tomorrow’s Leaders an Edge.   A study was done asking 64,000 people from over 13 countries all over the world for the traits, skills and competencies that were perceived to be appreciated in leaders in the world of business and […]

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Teaching Students to Become Better “Dancers”

So the other day I read a tweet by Justin Lanier that really sparked my interest.  We all know the scenario in classroom discourse where a student asks a question – a really great question – and you know the answer, but you hedge and you say something like, “That’s a great question! I wonder […]

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So How Do We Shift Gears?

OK, OK, I get the idea – not everything on the Internet is true and, for sure, not everything on the Internet is meaningful or helpful.  Since April of this year I have started following a bunch of people on Twitter (before that I really didn’t even know what it was or care) and thought […]

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Be the Change You Want to See

I just finished listening to a great “blogcast” that Tony Wagner gave as an interview for Blogtalkradio about his new book “Creating Innovators:The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World.” Kind of a neat idea for a book in which he has done some great research looking into how some new ideas got started […]

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