Biographic Sketches of Panelists

Biographic Sketches of Panelists

*Indicates participant is also an author of the Conference book (see link "Writings on Project")

Susan Addington is Associate Professor of Mathematics at California State University, San Bernardino. She is currently (1999-2000) working at the Education Development Center as a curriculum designer and writer. Addington's background is research mathematics (algebraic geometry), and she now works in math education. Her specialities are teacher education (especially elementary teachers), curriculum writing for levels K-college, technology in math education, and ethnomathematics.

Angela Giglio Andrews has a M. Ed. in Early Childhood Education from National Louis University (1982) and is an associate adjunct in the mathematics and early childhood departments of that institution. She taught preschool and kindergarten for 27 years and is currently working in Naperville District #203 as a remedial and accelerated math teacher for first through 5th grade students. She has served on local, state and national mathematics committees and has written several articles on early childhood mathematics. She edited the Early Childhood Corner for the NCTM publication, Teaching Children Mathematics, and served on the editorial panel of that journal. Angela was a member of the Prek-2 writing team for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Principles and Standards For School Mathematics. She is co-author (with Paul Trafton) of Little Kids: Powerful Problem Solvers. Angela has received several awards for her teaching including the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching, The ASCD Excellence in Kindergarten Teaching Award, and the I.C.T.M. Elementary Mathematics Teacher of the Year award.

Robert Balfanz is an associate research scientist, at the Center for Social Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University. He is a co-principal investigator on the NSF supported- Big Math for Little Kids early childhood mathematics project. He was one of the author/developers of the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project (UCSMP) -Everyday Mathematics elementary mathematics curriculum. Currently he is co-director of the Talent Development Middle and High School comprehensive whole school reform models. His interests are mathematics education, urban education, and school reform and he has authored multiple articles and book chapters in these areas.

Art Baroody is a Professor of Curriculum & Instruction (early childhood and elementary mathematics education) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the teaching and learning of basic counting, number, and arithmetic concepts and skills by young children and children with learning difficulties. Art's latest journal publications include: (a) Baroody, A. J., & Benson. A. (2001). Early number instruction. Teaching Children Mathematics, 8(3), 154-158. Invited piece for the "Early Childhood Corner." (b) Isenbarger, L. M., & Baroody, A. J. (2001). Fostering the mathematical power of children with behavioral difficulties: The case of Carter. Teaching Children Mathematics, 7(8), 468-471. (c) Baroody, A. J. (2000). Does mathematics instruction for 3- to 5-year olds really make sense? Young Children, 55(4), 61-67. (d) Baroody, A. J., & Bartels, B. H. (2001). Assessing understanding in mathematics with concept mapping. Mathematics in School, 30(3), 24-27. (e) Baroody, A. J. (1999). The roles of estimation and the commutativity principle in the development of third-graders' mental multiplication. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 74 (special issue on mathematical cognition), 157-193. (f) Baroody, A. J. (1999). Children's relational knowledge of addition and subtraction. Cognition and Instruction, 17(2), 137-175. Art's latest book is: Baroody, A. J. with Coslick, R. T. (1998). Fostering children's mathematical power: An investigative approach to K-8 mathematics instruction. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates. Overall, he currently has over 50 journal articles, 15 chapters, and 7 books. Recent awards include: (a) a College of Education (UIUC) Faculty Fellowship, 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 AY; (b) College of Education (UIUC) Distinguished Senior Scholar, 1998; and (c) a grant ("Foundations of Number and Operation Sense"; BCS-0111829) co-funded by the Developmental & Learning Science and the Research on Learning & Education programs of the National Science Foundation (9/1/01-8/31/04).

Debra Borkovitz is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Wheelock College. She received her Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology in 1992 and her B.S. in Mathematics and B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1984. Her primary focus is pre-service teacher education (especially elementary and early childhood), and she has been involved in many collaborative projects on pre-service teacher education and improving schools. Her mathematical field is combinatorics. Since she was an undergraduate, she has been involved in a variety of social justice and community issues, including over ten years of work in the movement to end domestic violence.

Sue Bredekamp, Ph.D. is currently the Director of Research at the Council for Early Childhood Professional Recognition and is a consultant to the Head Start Bureau. She is developer and on-air faculty for a satellite distance-learning course on early literacy entitled, HeadsUp! Reading. From 1984-1998, she served as Director of Professional Development of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. She co-authored Learning to read and write: Developmentally appropriate practices for young children, the 1998 joint position statement of the International Reading Association and NAEYC. Her major contributions to the work of NAEYC were developing and directing a national, voluntary accreditation system for which she wrote three editions of Accreditation Criteria and Procedures and Guide to Accreditation. She is the primary author of NAEYC’s highly-influential and best-selling publication, Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs, the 1987 and 1997 editions. She also researched and wrote NAEYC position statements on standardized testing, and curriculum and assessment, and edited the two-volume, Reaching Potentials: Appropriate Curriculum and Assessment for Young Children. Dr. Bredekamp is author of numerous articles related to standards for professional practice and professional development, and has coordinated development of training videotapes as well as videoconferencing. Dr. Bredekamp holds a Ph.D. in Early Childhood Education from the University of Maryland. Her professional experience includes teaching and directing child care and preschool programs for children ages 2 through 6, training child care personnel at a community college, and serving on the faculty of the Human Development/Childhood Education program at Mount Vernon College in Washington, DC.

Beth Casey, Ph.D., received her undergraduate honors degree in Psychology at the University of Michigan in 1965. She was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1965. Her masters and doctoral degrees were in Developmental Psychology from Brown University, and she received her doctorate in 1972. She has been on the faculty in the School of Education at Boston College since 1976, and has been a Full Professor since 1992. She is Principal Investigator of a four-year National Science Foundation Instructional Materials Development Grant Project that is producing 6 supplementary mathematics books that use oral story-telling to teach mathematics and spatial thinking to early learners. This NSF project brings together Dr. Casey's expertise and research interests in spatial and math skills, early childhood education, and methods for the teaching of problem-solving. For the past 24 years, she has developed a teacher education program which focuses on facilitating children's critical thinking skills. In this capacity, she was coordinator of the Early Childhood masters and undergraduate programs at Boston College until 1998, as well as coordinater of a Preschool Collaborative for 7 years which focused on developing critical thinking skills. Her research interests have centered on understanding how individuals differ in their patterns of thinking and the influence of these differences on both mathematics and early learning. She has focused in particular on gender differences in spatial ability and the impact of these differences on success at mathematics. She has also examined the development of problem-solving and planning skills in young children.

Douglas H. Clements is Professor of Early Childhood, Mathematics, and Computer Education at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Previously a kindergarten teacher for five years and a preschool teacher for one year, he has conducted research and published widely in the areas of the learning and teaching of geometry, computer applications in mathematics education, the early development of mathematical ideas, and the effects of social interactions on learning. He has published over 90 referred research studies, 6 books, 50 chapters, and 250 additional publications. He has directed several National Science Foundation (NSF) grants. In Building Blocks—Foundations for Mathematical Thinking, Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 2: Research-based Materials Development (http://www.gse.buffalo.edu/org/buildingblocks/), he and Julie Sarama have developed mathematics software and activities; the first product from that project has recently been published by SRA/McGraw-Hill (DLM Express, 2003). He is also presently co-PI on “A Longitudinal study of the Effects of a Pre-Kindergarten Mathematics Curriculum on Low-Income Children’s Mathematical Knowledge” (OERI). Previously, he ran a historic, national Conference on Standards for Preschool and Kindergarten Mathematics Education (co-funded by NSF and ExxonMobil Foundation, http://www.gse.buffalo.edu/org/conference), which is resulting in a book. In addition, based on the conference, he proposed and chaired a joint committee that is producing a joint National Association for the Education of Young children and National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) position statement on early childhood mathematics. He is conducting research with colleagues studying Technology- Enhanced Learning of Geometry in Elementary Schools. In previous projects, he co-developed an elementary geometry curriculum based on Logo, Logo Geometry, published by Silver Burdett & Ginn. In a related NSF research project, he conducted research on the teaching and learning of geometry with and without computers resulting in Logo and Geometry, a Journal for Research in Mathematics Education monograph. He also completed two addition NSF projects with several colleagues. The first developed a K-5 mathematics curriculum, Investigations in Number, Data, and Space (published by Dale Seymour Publications). In that context, he has developed several constructivist-oriented software packages (with he and colleague Julie Sarama performing all the design, programming, and implementation), including their own version of Logo and Logo-based software activities to complement the curriculum (this software environment was also published as a stand-alone product, including activities that integrate Logo into the geometry curriculum, under the name Turtle Math™, which was awarded Technology & Learning Software of the Year award, 1995, in the category "Math"), a computer-based manipulative software environment (Shapes) and several others (Trips, Tumbling Tetrominoes). He is one of the authors of the recent McGraw-Hill mathematics textbook series. He is active in the NCTM, is editor and author of the NCTM Addenda (to the Standards) materials and coauthored NCTM's Principals and Standards for School Mathematics. He was chair of the Editorial Panel of NCTM's research journal, the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education. His e-mail address is clements@buffalo.edu; additional information can be found at http://www.gse.buffalo.edu/FAS/Clements.

Juanita Copley is an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Houston, where she currently serves as the program coordinator for the early childhood program. She is currently the Principal Investigator/Developer for :”TEXTEAMS- Mathematics Professional Development Institute Pre-Kindergarten-Kindergarten,” a grant funded by Eisenhower Funds through the Texas State Systemic Initiative and has recently edited Mathematics in the Early Years, a joint publication of NAEYC and NCTM. She is also the director of the Early Childhood Collaborative for Mathematics Teaching, which is a program that involves more than 200 undergraduates, graduate, and early childhood teachers in Houston area public schools in professional development. She has extensive administrative and teaching experience in early childhood classrooms in urban classrooms in the United States. She also served as a consultant for the Lower Primary Mathematics Program in the country of Indonesia. She has written more than 25 articles, completed 13 chapters, served as the Principal Investigator for seven state grants involving mathematics professional development and was the Co-Principal Investigator of a three year national Department of Education grant involving calculator use in middle schools.

Carol Copple is early childhood specialist and publications editor at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). She has taught in and directed preschool programs and conducted research on children's cognition and language. For over 20 years Dr. Copple has served as consultant to national organizations and agencies in education. She has coauthored Educating the Young Thinker: Classroom Strategies for Cognitive Growth (Erlbaum 1984), Developmentally Appropriate Practice for Early Childhood Programs (NAEYC 1997), and Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children (NAEYC 2000). Dr. Copple served as a member of the writing team for the NAEYC-NCTM joint position statement, “Early Childhood Mathematics: Promoting Good Beginnings” (2002).

Ann-Marie DiBiase, Conference Coordinator, received her Ph.D in early childhood education at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She coordinated a national Conference on Standards for Preschool and Kindergarten Mathematics Education (co-funded by NSF and ExxonMobil Foundation, which is resulting in a book. She has taught undergraduate child development courses and is also a certified elementary school teacher. She has conducted and published research in the areas of constructivism, moral development and mathematics education.

Rachelle Feiler is currently an assistant professor of mathematics education at San Diego State University. Previously an assistant professor of early childhood education at Vanderbilt University, her research draws upon knowledge from both fields to investigate how early mathematics instruction shapes children’s conceptions of and about mathematics. Her research also examines early childhood teachers' beliefs about mathematics and mathematics instruction, and the ways that professional development can be structured to promote change in early childhood mathematics instruction.

Greta Fein is currently Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland. She holds a masters degree from Bank Street College of Education and a Ph.D in psychology from Yale University. Her early research dealt with young children's understanding of relationships (e.g. size) and their ability to execute LOGO commands; more recently her research deals with young children's mental activity in play and story telling.

Francis (Skip) Fennell is a professor of education at Western Maryland College; soon to be officially renamed McDaniel College. He has served as department chair, coordinator of undergraduate programs in teacher education, and acting dean of graduate studies (twice) during his over twenty-six years. Fennell has had experience as an elementary and middle grade classroom teacher, principal and supervisor of instruction. He has published articles in the Arithmetic Teacher, Teaching Children Mathematics, The Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Focus, School Science and Mathematics, and NCTM Yearbooks and Resource Books. He has also written textbooks and materials for students and teachers of mathematics. Dr. Fennell is a past member of the Board of Directors of the NCTM. He is currently president of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE). He is a writer of the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 2000). In 1990 Fennell, was selected by the Maryland Council of Teachers of Mathematics as their Outstanding Mathematics Educator. In 1997 he was honored by Western Maryland College by being selected Professor of the Year. In addition, he was the CASE — Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year, for the state of Maryland, in 1997. In April of 2000, he was honored by the NCSM as the Glenn Gilbert Award winner for service as a leader in mathematics education. From 1997-1999 Fennell served as Program Officer in the area of instructional materials development and teacher enhancement for K-8 mathematics within the Division of Elementary, Secondary, and Informal Education at the NSF. In his spare time, Fennell enjoys his children, grandchildren, reading, and running.

Karen C. Fuson recently retired as a professor of learning sciences at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy. She has been a principal investigator on 10 major grants totaling $5 million from the National Science Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Department of Education, and other funding organizations. Her research has concentrated on learning and teaching issues in early mathematics, especially from age 2 through 10. This research has combined basic research and development of theories concerning children’s learning in the areas of counting, single-digit addition and subtraction, and multidigit addition and subtraction. This basic research has been integrated with classroom intervention studies examining powerful methods of teaching in these areas. A major theme has been equity and learning by all children, and cross-cultural research has formed a backdrop for the research in U.S. classrooms. Her teaching experience includes certified inner-city high school mathematics teaching, co-teaching in preschool and elementary classrooms as part of the research process, teaching of pre-service elementary teachers, and a range of undergraduate and graduate courses involving cognitive and developmental theories and research as well as mathematics education and cognitive science.

Rochel Gelman received her Ph.D. from UCLA (with specializations in Development and Learning). She held an appointment in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania for 21 years before moving to Psychology at UCLA. She will join Rutgers Psychology and Cognitive Science this summer. Dr. Rochel Gelman, a cognitive and developmental psychologist, does seminal work on learning and attention in adults and children. Her innovative procedures, one suited to research with young children, has led to impressive findings on what young children do know, as opposed to what they do not know. She has shown that preschoolers' understand principles of counting and addition and subtraction, the difference between animate and inanimate objects, causality, and perspectives other than their own. Gelman's analyses of early conceptual competencies is paired with her work on the nature of informal learning. These combined efforts have helped transform the field of cognitive development. It no longer can be said that infants and preschoolers are fundamentally incapable of forming abstract concepts and making inferences. Gelman (and her collaborators) have contributed significantly to a domain-specific account of cognitive development and learning. Young learners are granted some skeletal mental structures with which to actively find and engage social and physical environments that can nurture learning about specific domains. The interest in acquisition mechanism has led Gelman to join her basic research on numeracy, causal reasoning and language to collaborative efforts to enhance scientific and mathematical literacy. Her current lines of research on numerical reasoning, causal understanding, and learning have been funded continuously by NSF for more than 20 years. Gelman is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science and a Guggenheim Fellow. Her awards include the young and senior Distinguished Scientist Contribution Awards from the American Psychological Association; fellowships to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; and the William Smith Term Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Herbert P. Ginsburg holds the Jacob H. Schiff Chair at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he is Professor of Psychology and Education. For the past 30 years he has conducted research on cognitive development, particularly the development of children's mathematical thinking, both within the U. S. and in various cultures around the world. He has used the knowledge gained from research to develop several kinds of educational applications. He has created video workshops to enhance teachers' understanding of their children's learning of mathematics. He has contributed to the Silver Burdett & Ginn mathematics textbook series. He has developed tests of mathematical thinking and has explored how the "clinical interview" method for assessing children's mathematical knowledge can be used by teachers in their classrooms. Currently, with support from the Spencer Foundation, he is engaged in research on young children's mathematical competence. With support of the National Science Foundation and with the collaboration of Robert Balfanz and Carole Greenes, he is developing a new mathematics curriculum for 4- and 5-year-old children.

Carole Greenes is Professor of Mathematics Education and Associate Dean for Research, Development, and Graduate Programs in the School of Education at Boston University. Principally interested in mathematical problem solving, mathematics learning, and special needs students, Dr. Greenes has written and collaborated on more than 200 books, monographs, and articles in these areas for grades preK through 12 and college mathematics. She is senior author of numerous programs and books including, Navigating through Algebra, Prekindergarten through Grade 2; Groundworks: Algebraic Thinking; Hot Math Topics; Mega Projects; REACH, Spotlight on Mathematics; It’s Logical; Awesome Problems; Houghton Mifflin Mathematics and the TOPS Problem Solving Program. She is also author of three mathematical musical mysteries and a musical history of mathematics education in the 1900’s. Dr. Greenes is co-investigator of the National Science Foundation funded project that developed a comprehensive mathematics program (Big Math for Little Kids) for Pre-K and Kindergarten children. Dr. Greenes is President of the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics; a member of the Steering Committee for the NCTM Navigations Series; a member of the Boston University-Chelsea Project Management Team; and a frequent speaker at national and international meetings of mathematicians and mathematics educators.

Sharon Griffin is an associate professor of education and an adjunct associate professor of psychology at Clark University. She is co-author of "Number Worlds", a research-based K-2 mathematics program for young children, co-author of "What develops in Emotional Development?" (Plenum), and author of several articles on cognitive development and mathematics education. For the past ten years, as Co-Investigator or Principal Investigator of a series of grants from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, she has sought to improve mathematics learning and achievement for young children by developing and evaluating programs to "Provide the central conceptual prerequisites for success in school math to children at risk for school failure", "Teach Number Sense", and "Foster the development of professional teachers of young children". She is currently participating in an advisory capacity on national projects, in Canada and the United States, to enhance the cognitive, mathematical and language development of "high-need" preschool children, from birth to 5 years.

Roger Howe has been teaching and doing research in mathematics at Yale University for over 25 years. He has been involved in issues of K-12 mathematics education since 1990. He has served on MSEB, and on the board of directors of the Connecticut Academy for Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology. He was chair of the American Mathematics Society committee to provide input to the NCTM Standards 2000. He currently serves on several committees of CBMS and the NRC to study issues in mathematics education, and is consulting with commercial publishers to improve their elementary mathematics programs.

Robert P. Hunting received his Ed.D. in mathematics education from the University of Georgia in 1980. He is currently Professor of Mathematics Education at East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina. His research work has been focused on studies of fraction learning by children aged 3 to 8 years. He has also published in the areas of clinical assessment methods, early mathematics learning, teacher-focused curriculum change, constructivist research methodologies, language aspects of mathematics learning, curriculum and teacher education issues, and ethnomathematics of Australian aborigines. He has taught undergraduate and graduate level mathematics and mathematics education pre-service and in-service courses for early childhood, elementary, and middle grades teachers both in Australia and the US. He is currently leading a project to develop Internet-based mathematics materials for preschool children and their caregivers.

Janice Ellen Jackson was born and raised in Washington, D. C. At the present time she is an assistant professor in a tenure track position with the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. She is jointly appointed to the Department of Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction and the Department of Administration and Higher Education. Prior to this role she was the Deputy Superintendent for the Boston Public Schools. During the first term of the Clinton Administration she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education for the U. S. Department of Education. She also served as Acting Assistant Secretary for the same organization. Dr. Jackson has held several positions with the Milwaukee Public Schools in Wisconsin. Her last position with them was the Coordinator of School-based Management. The other positions she held were human relations coordinator, personnel analyst, and substitute teacher. Her professional career has included two positions with the Archdiocese of Milwaukee- the Director of the Office for Black Catholics and elementary school teacher; and positions as an instructor of Education for a graduate level course at Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI) and for an undergraduate course at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has been a consultant on issues related to the reform of urban schools. Dr. Jackson holds a B.A. in Sociology with a minor in Elementary Education from Marquette University, a M.Th. in Black Catholic Studies from Xavier University in New Orleans, an M.S. in Administrative Leadership from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and an M.Ed. in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from Harvard University. She completed her doctoral studies in Harvard University’s Urban Superintendents Program. Dr. Jackson has been the recipient of numerous civic and professional awards and has served on a variety of boards and committees on the local and national levels.

Jeane M. Joyner is a Senior Consultant in the Evaluation Section at the Department of Public Instruction. After serving as Elementary Mathematics Consultant for the Department of Public Instruction more than ten years, Joyner is currently heading a state initiative on classroom assessment. She is a graduate of Mary Baldwin College and earned a M.A. at North Carolina Central University. She has been a principal investigator for a number of National Science Foundation funded projects. Joyner has worked with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics as Chair of the PreK-2 Writing Group for Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, a member of the writing team for the Assessment Standards for School Mathematics, and a member of the writing team for the elementary Addenda series. She has classroom teaching experience from preschool through preservice teacher education, experience as a school administrator, and has been involved in professional development as a major function of her position for the past fifteen years.

Constance Kamii is professor of early childhood education at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She studied under Piaget on and off for 15 years to develop an early-childhood curriculum based on his theory. This work can be seen in Physical Knowledge in Preschool Education (1978) and Group Games in Early Education (1980), which she wrote with Rheta Devries, and Number in Preschool and Kindergarten (1982). Since 1980, she has been developing a primary arithmetic program based on Piaget's theory and is now continuing this work with fourth-grade teachers in a constructivist "school within a school."

Lilian G. Katz is Professor Emerita of Early Childhood Education at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) where she is also Director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary & Early Childhood Education. She is a Past President of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and is Editor of the first on-line peer reviewed early childhood journal, Early childhood Research & Practice. Professor Katz is author of more than one hundred publications including articles, chapters, and books about early childhood education, teacher education, child development, and parenting. For thirteen years she wrote a monthly column for parents of three- and four-year-olds for Parents Magazine. Dr. Katz was founding editor of the Early Childhood Research Quarterly, and served as Editor-in-Chief during its first six years. She is currently Chair of the Editorial board of the International Journal of the Early Years published in the UK. Her most recent book, Talks with Teachers of Young Children (1995), is a collection of her best known early essays and several recent ones. In 1989 she wrote Engaging Children's Minds: The Project Approach (with S. C. Chard) Dr. Katz has lectured in all 50 US states and in 43 countries. She has held visiting posts at universities in Australia, Canada, England, Germany, India, Israel, the West Indies (Barbados campus) and many parts of the USA. Dr. Katz is the recipient of many honors, including two Fulbright Awards (India & New Zealand), and an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree (DLitt.) from Whittier College, Whittier, California. In 1997 she served as Nehru Professor at the University of Baroda in India. Professor Katz, was born and raised in England. Her Ph.D. in Child Development from Stanford University in 1968. She and her husband Boris Katz have three grown children, four grandsons and one granddaughter.

Alice Klein is a research psychologist in the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley. She has a Ph. D. in developmental psychology and has been conducting research on young children’s mathematical thinking for more than 15 years. Her recent research focuses on early mathematical development and the learning environments that support it. She is currently Co-Principal Investigator on two federally funded research projects, “The Early Development of Mathematical Cognition in Socioeconomic and Cultural Contexts” (Interagency Education Research Initiative, NSF-OERI-NIH), and “A Longitudinal study of the Effects of a Pre-Kindergarten Mathematics Curriculum on Low-Income Children’s Mathematical Knowledge” (OERI). Klein also served as an expert panelist in early childhood mathematics for the Pre-Kindergarten Learning and Development Guidelines published by the California Department of Education. She has co-authored numerous publications, including "The development of children's mathematical thinking: From research to practice" (with H. Ginsburg and P. Starkey) in the Handbook of Child Psychology. She and Prentice Starkey are the authors of Pre-K Mathematics Curriculum, a book of mathematics activities for teachers and parents, published by Scott Foresman.

Richard Lehrer is Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Rich began his study of education as a high school science teacher and went on to earn his Ph.D. at the University of New York at Albany. Since then, he has worked with classroom teachers to systematically design classroom learning environments that support the development of children’s reasoning about the mathematics of space and geometry. He also conducts related research in science education, with the aim of designing learning environments where children use mathematical models to reason about natural events, like growth and diversity. His interests include the use of electronic technologies to mediate learning, and the long-term development of children’s understanding of mathematics and science.

Mary M. Lindquist is the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Mathematics Education, Columbus (Georgia) State University. Previously, she was on the graduate faculty at the National College of Education, an associate researcher at the University of Wisconsin Research and Development Center, and an assistant professor of mathematics at Mary Washington College. Additionally, she has taught mathematics in junior and senior high and has been a senior member of major elementary curriculum projects. Presently, Lindquist is Chair of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Commission on the Future of the Standards; Chair of Advisory Board for the National Center for Improvement of Mathematics and Science Education (University of Wisconsin); and a member of the Mathematics and Science Steering Board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the US Mathematics and Science Advisory Board of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Previously, she has served as President of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM); on the Advisory Board of NSF Human Resources and Education Directorate, Chair of the Alliance for Curriculum Reform, and Vice Chair of the Mathematical Sciences Education Board (MSEB); Chair of the Committee on the Mathematics Education of Teachers (MAA); and member of the Board on International Studies of Comparative Education of the National Academy of Science.

Carol Midgett is a National Board Certified Teacher who has taught first through eighth grades for 20 years. She holds certifications in elementary education, gifted education, and mentoring. She has authored and co-authored articles in juried mathematics and research journals. She has contributed to numerous publications on assessment, process writing, cognitive coaching, professional development and mathematics texts. Carol is a Presidential Awardee in Elementary Mathematics. She currently serves on the NCTM Illuminations Advisory Panel and Illuminations Development Team. She served on the NCTM Standards 2000 prek-2 Writing Team, on the Assessment Addenda Writing Team and participated in the NCTM project to implement the Geometry Standards. She has served on state curriculum development projects and organized, coordinated and directed numerous teacher enhancement projects in both mathematics and science. She has held offices in the North Carolina Council of Teachers of mathematics and currently serves on the Implementation Team of the Professional Development System at UNC-Wilmington.

Kevin Miller is associate professor of Psychology, Educational Psychology, and the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the effects on thinking of symbol systems, such as number names, calendars, and writing systems. He primarily studies this question by comparing cognitive development of children who speak two very different languages, Chinese and English, and attempts to determine the role language structures play in cognitive development. He is a Fellow the American Psychological Association and his research has been supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation, National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Mental Health.

Kenneth Millett is professor of mathematics at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He is the Regional Director of the California Alliance for Minority Participation and the Director of the Community Teaching Fellowship in Mathematics and Science program. For his papers on mathematics, Dr. Millett received the Chauvenet Prize and the Allendoerfer Award from the Mathematical Association of America. He received the American Mathematical SocietyUs 1998 Award for Distinguished Public Service for his work devoted to underrepresented minority students in mathematical science. Through out his career, Dr. Millett has worked to increase the participation and achievement of students of mathematics, from preschool through graduate degrees. He served as a member of the advisory board of the California Mathematics Project for thirteen years, is the Academic representative of the University of California to the College Board, is a regular contributor to elementary mathematics classes in his community and, offers mathematics workshops to visiting K-12 students. Dr. Millett is the author of more than forty mathematics research articles or chapters as well as a dozen others concerned with the teaching of mathematics.

Maggie Myers is a senior research associate for the Texas Statewide Systemic Initiative at the Charles A. Dana Center, an organized research unit of the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a lecturer in UT’s Department of Computer Sciences. Maggie has a Ph.D. in Mathematical Statistics and extensive experiences in mathematics education, from developing educational materials for children and their families to teaching High School through graduate-level mathematics. She was contracted by the Texas Education Agency to serve as a writer for the voluntary Texas Prekindergarten Curriculum Guidelines released January 2000. She is the site director for Family Math in Austin, Texas; the co-author of "Family Learning Events: Science and Math Activities through a Literacy Approach"; and author of "The Mathsters Series", a series of stories in Spanish and English that invite young children to explore mathematics. In addition to creating mathematics materials for use in informal settings, she is currently involved in the development and support of other resources for early childhood mathematics, including professional development opportunities and web-based resources. She is responsible for the continuing development of the Mathematics TEKS Toolkit, a site to support the implementation of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Mathematics, the curriculum for the state of Texas.

Tony Ralston is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Mathematics at SUNY/Buffalo and an Academic Visitor in the Department of Computing at Imperial College, London. He was a charter member of the Mathematical Sciences Education Board. For the past 20 years he has written and lectured extensively about math education, particularly about the impact of technology. He is a passionate believer in the use of technology at *all* levels of mathematics education. He also believes passionately that technology should not be used to make math easier but only to enhance understanding and preparation for further study. See http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ar9/abolpub.htm.

Kathy Richardson is a former classroom teacher who has spent the past 20 years as an author and international educational consultant. She is the author of several books and videos including the four book series, Developing Number Concepts, Math Time: The Learning Environment and her latest book, Understanding Geometry. Her videos focus on children's thinking and are used nationwide by school districts and in pre-service college courses. She has worked with several NSF funded projects focused on long-term professional development for both classroom teachers and teacher leaders. In 1998 she formed Mathematical Perspectives to expand the reach of this work through the Mathematical Perspectives workshops and leadership development courses offered to school districts by a team of highly qualified instructors. Currently, Kathy Richardson is regularly working in classrooms with teachers and students to further develop and field-test assessments for K-4 mathematics for her upcoming book, How Do We Know They're Learning? Assessing Math Concepts.

Julie Sarama is an assistant professor of mathematics education at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). She conducts research on the implementation and effects of her own software environments in mathematics classrooms, young children’s development of mathematical concepts and competencies, implementation of educational reform, and professional development. She is currently directing several projects funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Education. She is co-PI on “A Longitudinal study of the Effects of a Pre-Kindergarten Mathematics Curriculum on Low-Income Children’s Mathematical Knowledge” (OERI). In addition, for the project Building Blocks—Foundations for Mathematical Thinking, Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 2: Research-based Materials Development (http://www.gse.buffalo.edu/org/buildingblocks/), she is developing mathematics software and activities; the first product from that project has recently been published by SRA/McGraw-Hill (DLM Express, 2003). Previously, for Planning for Professional Development in Pre-School Mathematics: Meeting the Challenge of Standards 2000, she conducted multiple research projects on professional development for early childhood mathematics education. She is also the external evaluator for other NSF projects. In previous projects, she designed and programmed microworlds for the National Science Foundation-funded Investigations in Number, Data, and Space project and is co-author of several of the geometry units for that curriculum. She also has conducted numerous research studies on the implementation and effects of these software environments in mathematics classrooms. She is co-author of the award-winning Turtle Math, as well of over 20 refereed articles, 15 chapters, 7 units of the Investigations in Number, Data, and Space project, and has authored 1 book, 20 software titles and more than 70 additional publications. She is an author and consultant with other publishers, including the Computer Curriculum Corp., EDC, Macmillan-McGraw-Hill’s technology division. Sarama has taught secondary mathematics and computer science, gifted math at the middle school level, preschool and kindergarten mathematics enrichment classes, and mathematics methods and content courses for elementary to secondary teachers.

Kyoung-Hye Seo is an Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She teaches courses in early mathematics education and works with teachers to promote young children’s mathematics learning. She has conducted research on mathematics teaching and learning, particularly everyday mathematical thinking. Her current work focuses on teachers’ understanding of young children’s mathematical thinking.

Catherine Sophian is a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, where she teaches courses in developmental psychology at the undergraduate and graduate levels and serves as PI on the NIH-funded research project, Developmental Foundations of Ratio Knowledge. She has also conducted extensive research on young children's counting and related number concepts. She is author of the book, Children's Numbers, and author or co-author of 34 refereed articles and 7 book chapters.

Prentice Starkey is a professor of education at the University of California, Berkeley. He has a Ph. D. in developmental psychology and has been conducting research on young children’s mathematical thinking for more than 20 years. His recent research focuses on socioeconomic and cultural influences on early mathematical development and education. He is currently Co-Principal Investigator on two federally funded research projects, “The Early Development of Mathematical Cognition in Socioeconomic and Cultural Contexts” (Interagency Education Research Initiative, NSF-OERI-NIH), and “A Longitudinal study of the Effects of a Pre-Kindergarten Mathematics Curriculum on Low-Income Children’s Mathematical Knowledge” (OERI). Starkey has consulted on math readiness goals and guidelines for state education departments and has recently authored papers on early mathematical development and education presented at roundtables and conferences held by the National Research Council, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and others. He co-authored (with H. Ginsburg and A. Klein) a review of research on mathematical development, "The development of children's mathematical thinking: From research to practice," for the Handbook of Child Psychology, and has published papers on early cognitive development in Science, Cognition, Early Education and Development, and other journals. He and Alice Klein are the authors of Pre-K Mathematics Curriculum, a book of mathematics activities for teachers and parents, published by Scott Foresman.

Les Steffe is Distinguished Research Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Georgia. Working with Ernst von Glasersfeld in 1975, he established the project Interdisciplinary Research On Number (IRON). The goals of this project were to build models of the construction of numerical knowledge by children within an emerging model of knowing that now goes by the name "radical constructivism". His work and publications have contributed to the development of the constructivist field in mathematics education and to ensure not only the quality of discourse on this subject, but also to constantly question the new ways of speaking about constructivism and the social. He has been extensively involved in mathematics teacher education and holds both a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in mathematics. He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics education from the University of Wisconsin where he worked with Henry Van Engen.

Michelle Stephan is a faculty member at Purdue University Calumet in Hammond, IN. Michelle’s research interests involve conducting classroom-based experiments at the K-12 level as well as the collegiate setting. Classroom based research allows her to investigate many of the theoretical issues that have become important in the last 10 years in the education field. For example, part of classroom research involves designing instructional sequences that build on students' informal mathematical understanding and gradually lead them to construct more formal, abstract conceptions. During the course of any classroom teaching experiment, Michelle’s primary interests include a) Exploring the role that social interaction and discourse play in supporting students' development of sophisticated mathematical conceptions, b) Investigating the role of tools in supporting students' mathematical development, and c) Analyzing students' learning as it occurs in the social context of the classroom. At present, Michelle is looking more closely at mathematical argumentation in both college level differential equations classrooms and geometry for pre-service elementary education majors.

Chuck Thompson is a Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Louisville in Louisville, KY. He is one of the co-authors of NCTM’s ground-breaking document, Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (1989), and has authored or co-authored more than 25 articles and book chapters in professional journals and books. He has also been an author for three elementary school mathematics textbook series published by Houghton-Mifflin Company. Chuck has taught mathematics at all levels, preschool through college, and mathematics education courses for 27 years, including sabbatical experiences at Auckland University in New Zealand and Moray House College of Education in Edinburgh, Scotland. He served as President of the Kentucky Council of Teachers of Mathematics and of the Greater Louisville Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and has led more than eighty sessions at regional and national conferences of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. He works in schools on a regular basis and has led teacher development programs in thirteen states and four foreign countries. Chuck has served as the regional director for 3 multi-million dollar teacher development projects (K-8) in Kentucky. For the next several years he will be conducting research on the development of number and arithmetic skills in children 3-6 years old.

Cheryl Z. Tibbals is Director of the State Leadership Center at the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), an organization that works with the states' chief education officers. The role of the State Leadership Center at CCSSO is to provide direct technical assistance to chief state school officers and state policy makers on leadership and systemic reform efforts. Besides working directly with chief state school officers on state-specific issues, the Center's staff oversees a variety of projects that include the following: - Standards Benchmarking Services (in-state, capacity-building training); - State Standards Implementation Reviews (external team reviews of a state's standards implementation efforts); - The State Action for Educational Leadership Project (a grant from the Wallace Readers' Digest Foundation to support state work toward strengthening the qualifications and training of education leaders); - Collaboration for Standards and Assessments (an urban/state project to align standards implementation efforts that involves five states and the largest urban district); - The Deputies Leadership Commission (a professional development program for deputy chief state school officers); - The Christa McAuliffe Fellowship Program (a teacher fellowship award program); and - Technology Networking Services. Prior to her work at CCSSO, Cheryl created and oversaw the Office of State and Local Relations for New Standards, a joint project of the Learning Research Develop Center at the University of Pittsburgh and the National Center on Education and the Economy in Washington, DC. Cheryl has also served as a California district and school administrator as well as a teacher.

Paul Trafton is Professor of Mathematics and Fellow in the Regent's Center for Early Developmental Education at the University of Northern Iowa. He was actively involved in the development of the initial NCTM Standards ("Principles and Standard for School Mathematics," 1989), serving as chair of the K-4 working group. Since that experience, he has work extensively at the K-2 level both in the areas of teacher development and children's learning in classrooms that stress mathematical sensemaking, learning through problems, and building instruction on children's thinking. This naturalistic research and development effort has focused on children's development of number relationships and computational strategies in such settings. The work of teachers and children is described in "Learning Through Problems: Number Sense and Computational Strategies," (Heinemann 1999) which he coauthored with Diane Thiessen.

Carrie Valentine currently works for the Madison Metropolitan School District as an Algebra Gateway Resource Teacher and teaches PreK - 3 math methods at the University of Wisconsin. She recently received her Masters' Degree from University of Wisconsin in Elementary Mathematics Education under Tom Carpenter. Her classrooms have been sites for longitudinal, rational number, and algebraic thinking research for Cognitively Guided Instruction.