Deborah Schifter Author

Susan Jo Russell began her career in education as a K-3 classroom teacher and elementary mathematics coach. For the last four decades, she has been a senior researcher at TERC, a nonprofit organization that focuses on mathematics and science education, where she directed projects on children’s mathematical understanding and on supporting teachers to learn more about mathematics and about children′s mathematical thinking. She spearheaded the original development and second edition of the K-5 mathematics curriculum, Investigations in Number, Data and Space, and contributed to the conceptualization of the Forum for Equity in Elementary Mathematics. In recent years, her research has centered on how students engage in early algebra, number and operations, and mathematical argument, and how to support teachers to engage all of their students in high-level mathematical reasoning. Deborah Schifter has worked as an applied mathematician; has taught elementary, secondary, and college level mathematics; and, since 1985, has been a mathematics teacher educator and educational researcher at Mount Holyoke College and at the Education Development Center. She authored Reconstructing Mathematics Education: Stories of Teachers Meeting the Challenge of Reform and edited a two-volume anthology of teachers′ writing, What′s Happening in Math Class? for which she received the American Educational Research Association Professional Service Award in recognition of an outstanding contribution relating research to practice. She was a writer for The Mathematical Education of Teachers as well as the second and third editions of the K-5 curriculum, Investigations in Number, Data, and Space. Her recent research has focused on students’ mathematical generalizations and how students use a variety of representations to explain why such generalizations are true.