Blog posts

As a researcher who studies mathematics interventions for students with mild disabilities, the principles of universal design presented in the SmartGraphs software by the Concord Consortium were encouraging to me. Considering the difficulties that students with learning disabilities in mathematics and students with mild intellectual disabilities have with working memory, the multiple, user-friendly representations of math and science concepts presented in this software could potentially be valuable for these students.

A primary goal of education research is to inform and benefit the everyday work of practitioners, yet often it is hard to establish and maintain partnerships between groups.  What is so difficult about building relationships to bridge this divide?

Shortly after my 10^th birthday, Neil Armstrong took “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” This was a short 11 years after the creation of NASA, which was just one of the political-technical reactions to the successful Soviet launch of the first Earth satellite, Sputnik 1. How were these brilliant American and Russian scientists and engineers educated in the mathematical sciences?

Editor's Note: People like us (DR K-12) are primarily funded to understand and/or fix parts of the supply chain in education. If something isn't working well, we fix standards or testing or administration or curriculum or teaching, etc. Goldenberg suggests that, in addition to thinking about the supply side of education, we research and think about influencing the demand side as well.