Dr. Blake E. Peterson, Professor of Mathematics Education at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, is the recipient of the 2015 AMTE Excellence in Teaching in Mathematics Teacher Education Award.
Dr. Peterson's research and teaching are closely related because he loves teaching teachers and studying how they learn to teach. He has studied student teaching in the United States and in Japan and how the structure of that experience influences the opportunity for preservice teachers to learn. Many of the tasks he uses in his classes or in his textbook come from his study of mathematics teaching and teachers in Japan and the United States. A critical element in all of his work is an effort to understand how to teach preservice mathematics teachers to recognize and effectively build on student mathematical thinking during instruction – the focus of the MOST project with which he is involved.