2025 AMTE Dissertation Award - “Honorable Mention”
Merve Nur Kursav
CPM Educational Program & Dartmouth College
Teachers’ Beliefs, Perceptions, Experiences, and Strategies in Teaching and Engaging MLs in Mathematics Classrooms
Biography
Dr. Merve Kursav is the Lead Data Scientist and Research Faculty at CPM Educational Program and a Research Associate in the Mathematics Department at Dartmouth College. She earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics Education with a minor in Measurement and Quantitative Methods from Michigan State University, where she conducted her doctoral research under the guidance of Dr. Corey Drake. Her dissertation, “Teachers’ Beliefs, Perceptions, Experiences, and Strategies in Teaching and Engaging Multilingual Learners in Mathematics Classrooms,” examined how teachers approach instruction for multilingual learners in secondary mathematics classrooms.
Dr. Kursav also holds an M.A. in Mathematics Education from the University of Georgia, where her thesis focused on “Future Middle School Teachers’ Performance on Proportional Relationship Tasks and Their Use of Meanings for Multiplication and Division.” She considers herself a research methodologist and data scientist specializing in STEM and mathematics education. Her work focuses on interdisciplinary curriculum development, data science integration, mixed-methods research design, and professional development for mathematics teachers and instructors.
She has taught undergraduate and graduate mathematics and mathematics education courses. Dr. Kursav has contributed to several major research initiatives, including the Connected Mathematics Project (CMP), INstilling QUantitative & Integrative Reasoning (INQUIRE), the Scholarship Program for Retaining, Inspiring, and eNabling Graduates (SPRING), and Investigating Proportional Relations in Two Perspectives (InPReP2).
At Dartmouth, she supports the Data Science InFusion into Undergraduate STEM Education (DIFUSE) project through co-leading curriculum development and professional development workshops that prepare faculty to integrate data science into STEM instruction. She also teaches a graduate-level course in the Mathematics Department. At CPM, she leads analytics and research efforts focused on curriculum design, evaluation of student learning outcomes, and supporting mathematics teacher learning through targeted professional development.
With over a decade of experience, Dr. Kursav brings a distinctive perspective to the field of mathematics education by drawing on her expertise in STEM and data science to inform innovative mathematics curriculum design, instructional improvement, and teacher education. Her interdisciplinary approach aims to strengthen professional development for mathematics educators, offering practical strategies and data-informed tools that help bridge research and classroom practice across K–16 learning environments.