Category: Colloquia

We are excited to announce that Dr. Sarah Lubienski from Indiana University will be visiting next week and giving a colloquium!

When: Wednesday, November 15th 3:15pm
Where: Aderhold Room 229
What:  “Mathematics Instruction, Achievement and Equity in the U.S.: What Can (and Can’t) National Data Tell Us About Recent Trends?”.

Dr. Sarah Lubienski is a professor of mathematics education at Indiana University. Her research focuses on diverse students’ mathematics outcomes and the policies and practices that shape those outcomes. Dr. Lubienski is co-Chair of the Research in Mathematics Education SIG of AERA as well as a member of the AERA Grants Governing Board. Dr. Lubienski has served as director of several AERA Institutes on Statistical Analysis for Education Policy. Her work has been funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Center of Education Statistics, the National Science Foundation and the Fulbright Program. She recently served as Associate and then Interim Dean of the University of Illinois Graduate College before moving to Indiana University in Bloomington.

We look forward to seeing you next week.

Please join us for a colloquium with Dr. Rochelle Gutiérrez on Tuesday, October 25^th 11:15am–12:15pm in Aderhold Hall Room 520.

Title:
Rehumanizing Mathematics: Should That Be Our Goal?

Abstract:
Mathematics has always been a human endeavor, a way in which we make sense of the world around us and come to appreciate its beauty and our interconnectedness with others, including humans, plants, animals, rocks, and other living beings.  But, school mathematics often presents a different view of this activity and our efforts to get students to do mathematics can be viewed as dehumanizing.  In this talk, I will discuss the subtle (and not so subtle) ways in which mathematics teachers, parents, learners, and researchers can be complicit with dehumanizing practices.  I will also share some of the ways we can heal through reimagining mathematics with an alternate vision.

This past Thursday, September 8, 2016, we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Elise Lockwood from Oregon State University for our first fall colloquium! The video of her talk can be found here. Details on Dr. Lockwood’s talk are below.

Dr. Elise Lockwood giving the introduction to her fantastic talk
to UGA students and faculty

Title:
Investigating Students’ Generalizing Activity: Two Contrasting Cases from and Undergraduate Combinatorial Context

Abstract:
Dr. Elise Lockwood provides two contrasting cases of students who solved a series of combinatorial tasks that were designed to facilitate generalizing activity. In these cases, each student generated what externally appeared to be the same representation – a general outcome structure that both students spontaneously developed. However, upon further examination, the ways in which the two students’ understood and subsequently used the general representation differed significantly. Lockwood seeks to explain these differences by identifying two types of relating that emerged in the study, and by connecting this relating to Piaget’s notion of reflective abstraction. By comparing and contrasting these students, we gain insight into the kinds of activity that promote both efficacious generalization and robust combinatorial reasoning. Lockwood concludes with implications and directions for further research.

Hi all!

We’d like to thank everyone who attended Dr. Gerald Goldin’s colloquium earlier this week. He would like to thank everyone who came. He has also provided resources that might be of interest if you are interested in his line of research. We will upload the video as soon as we can.

Goldin 2014 Perspectives on Emotion proofs for Pekrun & Linnenbrink, Intl-Handbook

Goldin Epstein Schorr Warner 2011 ZDM 43(4) 547-560

Goldin 2003 Developing Complex Understandings

Goldin 2002 Meta-Affect and Belief Structures

DeBellis Goldin 2006 Affect and Meta Affect

We are happy to have our second colloquium with Dr. Gerald Goldin from Rutgers University. Here are the details of his colloquium:

Some Perspectives on Affect and Engagement in Mathematics Teaching and Learning

Monday, October 5, 2015; 12:00NN-1:00PM, Aderhold 116

The affective domain is receiving increased attention as researchers focus on obstacles and affordances of student engagement with mathematics. In this talk, I shall discuss some important affective constructs which relate directly to mathematical teaching and learning.  Among the ideas considered are the importance and function of emotional feelings during mathematical activity, the idea that information important to learning is encoded affectively (interactions with cognition), the essential and transformative role of meta-affect (affect about affect, affect about cognition about affect, and the monitoring and regulation of affect), beliefs about mathematics and self-efficacy beliefs, students’ (longer-term) motivational orientations, various “in the moment” motivating desires that can foster (or inhibit) students’ mathematical engagement, and several proposed “engagement structures.” Some broader implications are suggested for mathematics teacher preparation, for our own teaching, and for the wider mathematics community.

Light refreshments will be served.

Meet and Greet with Graduate Students for Lunch on October 5

Please email mesacolloquium@uga.edu if you would like to go to the Meet and Greet.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us.

We hope to see you there!

The importance of being flexible: Improving algebra learning and teaching

Laying groundwork for function and rate: Leveraging a dynamic computer environment to foster students’ quantitative and variational reasoning