Gwyneth Hughes , Jonathan Brendefur , and Michele Carney , of Boise State University , have been recognized as the AMTE winners of the 2016 NTLI Fellowhip for their article Moving Online: Challenges and Successes of Adapting Mandated Professional Development from In-Person to Hybrid Format.
Dr. Gwyneth Hughes currently provides professional development to in-service teachers both as the online math specialist for the Initiative for Developing Mathematical Thinking at Boise State University, and through the office of Educational Outreach and Partnerships at University of Wisconsin Madison. After studying mathematics and geology at Oberlin College, she taught high school mathematics in Washington DC. She went on to study volcanology at Stanford University, completing a PhD in Geological Sciences and an MS in Geophysics. Finding that her real passion was still mathematics education, she has been working with K-12 th grade math teachers at Boise State since 2010 to build content knowledge and make mathematics more accessible for all students. She is particularly interested in visual representations of challenging mathematics with context to connect with students' informal reasoning. Much of her work at Boise State over the past 3 years has involved utilizing asynchronous interactive technology to make math professional development more accessible to in-service teachers, particularly in rural areas.
Dr. Jonathan Brendefur is professor of Mathematics Education at Boise State University. He is currently the Director of the Initiative for Developing Mathematical Thinking, which currently hosts multiple grants, and is the project director of the Mathematical Thinking for Instruction grant from the Idaho State Department, which has provided and continues to provide mathematics professional development to over 14,000 teachers K-12 teachers and administrators across the state. In addition, he is a project investigator on a National Institute of Health (NIH) grant that examines the psychometrics of a primary mathematics screener and a project investigator on an Institute for Educational Sciences (IES) grant that works with teachers in 8 elementary schools to examine professional development related to formative assessment and mathematics teaching. He has written numerous chapters, journal articles, technical reports and curriculum and has presented over 70 conference papers. His area of research is on mathematical learning progressions, student learning, and teacher professional development.
Dr. Michele Carney is an assistant professor of mathematics education at Boise State University. Previously she has worked as a high school mathematics teacher, mathematics coach, and K-12 mathematics coordinator for a large suburban school district in Idaho. She is co-principal investigator on the Mathematical Thinking for Instruction grant, which involved the scale-up of a mandatory 45 hour professional development course to over 14,000 K-12 teachers and administrators. In addition, she serves as a program coordinator for Boise State University’s Mathematics Consulting Teacher Endorsement program for K-12 inservice mathematics teachers which makes use of asynchronous interactive technology to ensure courses are accessible to in-service teacher participants. Her research interests within mathematics education include scaling professional development and developing high quality measures to examine teacher and student knowledge.