2021 Susan Gay Travel Scholarship Recipient
Pavneet Kaur Bharaj
Indiana University, Bloomington
Biography
Pavneet Kaur Bharaj is a Ph.D. candidate in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Mathematics Education at Indiana University Bloomington and has earned a double master’s in mathematics and education. Pavneet has nearly a decade of teaching experience in both formal and informal settings as a middle and high school mathematics teacher. Throughout her doctoral studies, she has had the opportunity to teach both content and methods courses for elementary pre-service teachers. In addition, she has worked on an NSF-funded research project, Assessing the Structure of Knowledge in Teaching Mathematics, which focused on developing a multidimensional assessment of pedagogical content knowledge for teaching fractions and decimals. Her research interests are in assessment and focus on the processes of instrument development and validation, specifically for elementary teacher education. Her dissertation explores what teachers know about the use of representations for teaching fractions and decimals and how their beliefs on the use of representations guide their instructional choices in the classroom. Overall, as a mathematics educator and researcher, she is focused on promoting high-quality mathematics instruction by understanding both the contextual and teacher-specific factors that motivate teachers’ instructional decisions.