National Honor for NC State Mathematics Education Doctoral Student

North Carolina State University doctoral student, Jennifer Nickell, was awarded the National Technology Leadership Initiative (NTLI) fellowship this past weekend at the conference of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators.

Nickell won with her paper, Incorporating Technology to Enhance Teacher Education Lessons and Preservice Teachers’. The research study for this award-winning paper was conducted in the context of NC State’s Introduction to Mathematics Education course that she taught as a graduate teaching assistant.

“I taught middle school and high school in Cincinnati, Ohio for seven years before attending NC State,” said Nickell. “During that time technology was an integral part of my classroom. I frequently used different technologies to help develop my students’ conceptual understanding of the topics.”

NC State’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education Department emphasizes exemplary teaching, scholarship and service using the latest in educational advancements to improve teaching and learning. “I wanted to make a larger impact in the field of mathematics education and I chose to attend NC State for the department’s focus on technology integration into mathematics classrooms,” said Nickell.

Incorporating Technology to Enhance Teacher Education Lessons and Preservice Teachers’ discusses affordances and constraints of incorporating technologies into methods courses to enhance teaching approaches and students’ learning of content, pedagogy and technology.

“We are very proud of Jen who is a great example of how having experiences as a graduate teaching assistant can lead to exciting development opportunities,” said Dr. Hollylynne Lee, professor of mathematics education and dissertation chair for Nickell. “NC State offers a graduate student experience that allows for expansion as a teacher educator, integration of technology in our courses, early research experiences and opportunity for national recognition.”

Since fall 2000, the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE) has been collaborating with four teacher education associations representing the content areas of mathematics, science, English language arts, and social studies education through the National Technology Leadership Initiative (NTLI). The NTLI fellowships were established to recognize exemplary presentations related to integration of technology in core content areas at the annual meetings of each participating association.