Mike Shaughnessy has taught
mathematics content courses and directed professional development experiences
for mathematics teachers at all levels, K–12, as well as community college and
university. He has authored or coauthored more than 60 articles, books, and
book chapters on issues in the teaching and learning of mathematics. From 1996
to 2008 Shaughnessy served as the director of the doctoral program in
mathematics education at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon.
Throughout his career, his principal research interests in mathematics
education have been the teaching and learning of statistics and probability and
the teaching and learning of geometry.
A
principal focus of Shaughnessy’s research has been students’ understanding of
chance and data, and he has attempted to explore, synthesize, and build on the
contributions of psychologists and mathematics and statistics educators alike
to strengthen knowledge related to students’ learning about data and chance.
Syntheses developed by Shaughnessy of research into how students think and
learn about probability and statistics have appeared in the chapters
“Probability and Statistics: Reflections and Directions” and “Research on
Statistics Learning and Reasoning” in the first and second editions,
respectively, of the Handbook of Research
on Mathematics Teaching and Learning, a project of the National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics (1992, 2007).
From 2004 to 2008, Shaughnessy
directed a four-year NSF ROLE (Research on Learning and Education) project to
investigate middle and secondary students’ conceptions of variability and
distribution in statistics.
Shaughnessy served as a
member of the Board of Directors of the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics (NCTM) from 2001 to 2004, and in April 2010, he began a two-year
term as NCTM President.
Shaughnessy received his
Ph.D. in mathematics education from the Department of Mathematics at Michigan
State University in 1976. He taught in
the Department of Mathematics at Oregon State University from 1976 until 1991,
and at Portland State University in the Department of Mathematics and
Statistics from 1991 to 2008.