BLIDI S. STEMM

Dr. Blidi S. Stemn is an Assistant Professor of Education at Northeastern University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate mathematics education courses for future and practicing elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers. His current research interests include mathematics education for social justice, ethnomathematics, problem-based learning of mathematics, mathematics achievement of urban children, and using writing to teach and learn mathematics. His most recent publications include Strategies for Teaching Mathematics from a Multicultural Perspective, and Do Numbers have Shapes? Connecting Number Patterns and Shapes through the Vedic Matrix.

This pilot project will provide prospective elementary school teachers enrolled in the science and mathematics education course with approximately 10 hours of field-based experience in an urban classroom. During the field experience students will observe productive teaching of mathematics and science by expert teachers, examine and reflect on their personal experiences for self-understanding, apply the theoretical knowledge from the course in an actual classroom setting by facilitating lessons, acquire knowledge about children from diverse cultural experiential backgrounds, and construct their own theories and understandings about culturally responsive science and mathematics pedagogy.

The participants will work in teams throughout the filed experiences. Each team will maintain a portfolio that will have a summative review of their experiences at the school, personal reflections, a profile of a child, and the theories constructed as a result of the data collected and analyzed.