Professor honored for math education

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has recognized Thomas P. Carpenter, a professor in the School of Education, for a lifetime of accomplishment in math education.

The 100,000-member group awarded Carpenter its 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics Education during its annual meeting in Philadelphia.

Carpenter is director of the National Center for Improving Student Learning and Achievement in Mathematics and Science at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

He has been on the UW–Madison faculty since 1975, and initially his work focused on the development of children’s mathematical thinking.

In the early 1980s, it shifted to studying how teachers incorporate knowledge about students’ mathematical thinking into the classroom. It provided early evidence that teachers’ professional development aimed at the way children think about mathematics could result in gains in student achievement.

The research led to the formation of a professional development program called Cognitively Guided Instruction, which has been implemented and studied across the nation. Carpenter is extending his work to study students’ thinking, classroom instruction and the development of algebraic thinking in elementary grades.