Candidate for Member-at-Large - Beth Herbel-Eisenmann

A former junior high mathematics teacher, I am currently Associate Professor of Mathematics Education at Michigan State University, where I serve as the Elementary Mathematics Subject Area Leader for the teacher preparation program. By drawing on ideas from linguistics and discourse literatures, I examine written, enacted, and hidden curriculum as well as the professional development of secondary mathematics teachers in my research. This work has been published in national and international journals, including Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Educational Studies in Mathematics, Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, Mathematics Teacher, Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. In 2009, I co-edited the research volume, Mathematics Teachers at Work: Connecting curriculum materials and classroom instruction, and, am currently co-editing a book titled Equity in discourse for mathematics education: Theories, practices, and policies, which is forthcoming in the Mathematics Education Library published by Springer.

As principal investigator of an NSF early CAREER project, I spent five years collaborating with eight secondary mathematics teachers who used action research to better align their discourse practices with their professed beliefs. We collaboratively disseminated findings from this project at regional and national NCTM conferences. This group also produced an edited volume, Promoting purposeful discourse: Teacher research in mathematics classrooms, which was published by NCTM in 2009. This long-term relationship was extremely influential to my practice as a mathematics teacher educator. It also informs my current design work developing professional development materials, which focus on collaborating with secondary teachers to become more purposeful about their classroom discourse. In part because of this work, I was awarded the 2010 Early Career Award from the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators.

My service to the broader mathematics education community has been both national and international. For NCTM, I recently co-authored the Research Agenda Conference Report and currently serve on the Editorial Board of the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education. From 2006-2008, I served as Treasurer for Research in Mathematics Education, a Special Interest Group in the American Educational Research Association. I helped to organize the Topic Study Group on Communication and Language for the 11th International Congress on Mathematics Education and currently serve on the International Advisory Board and am an Organizing Committee Member for Mathematics Education and Society.

AMTE is an important organization that contributes to the development and support of mathematics teacher educators. My vision of AMTE is for it to be an organization that advocates for policies and practices that help all mathematics teacher educators to work in equitable ways with prospective and practicing teachers, thereby enacting what we hope to see teachers doing with their own students. To do so, I believe we need to consider identity and power in our relationships with teachers and students. Of AMTE's primary goals, I am interested in developing collective understanding of effective mathematics teacher education, the orchestration of research and collaborative scholarly endeavors in mathematics professional development, informing policies and practices related to mathematics teacher education that empower mathematics teachers to facilitate their students' "opportunities to learn," and engaging in equitable practices in mathematics teacher education.