Assistant Professor, Mathematics Education, Clemson University
Nicole conducts research on how mathematics teachers (MTs) develop an asset-orientation to the profession, specifically focusing on communities of practice as robust settings for learning strengths-based teaching practices. Collaboration is at the center of many improvement efforts for MTs’ professional learning of these practices because of the positive empirical relationship between teacher participation in communities of practice and equitable student outcomes. Yet, it remains unclear how teacher learning mediates this relationship and what other moderating and malleable factors may be at play. By investigating what teachers learn within professional community contexts and how that learning takes place, Nicole's research addresses critical unknowns about how MTs teachers learn ambitious and equitable instruction.
Nicole teaches content and education courses for pre-service mathematics teachers and doctoral seminar courses in mathematics education and the learning sciences. Nicole has been the principal investigator of a professional development project using a teacher community strategy to improve rural school math teachers’ learning of strengths-based practice and development of valued disciplinary literacies. Nicole was named as a 2014 Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE) Service, Teaching and Research (STaR) fellow, and was the 2012-2013 recipient of the School of Education Excellence in Teaching Award. Her research has been published in the Journal of the Learning Sciences (JLS), the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL), the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education (JRME), and Cultural Studies in Science Education (CSSE).
Nicole teaches content and education courses for pre-service mathematics teachers and doctoral seminar courses in mathematics education and the learning sciences. Nicole has been the principal investigator of a professional development project using a teacher community strategy to improve rural school math teachers’ learning of strengths-based practice and development of valued disciplinary literacies. Nicole was named as a 2014 Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE) Service, Teaching and Research (STaR) fellow, and was the 2012-2013 recipient of the School of Education Excellence in Teaching Award. Her research has been published in the Journal of the Learning Sciences (JLS), the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL), the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education (JRME), and Cultural Studies in Science Education (CSSE).