For more than forty years, Carolyn Maher has spearheaded the use of research on student learning and reasoning to inform the practice of classroom mathematics teachers. She has been a role model for teachers in engaging students through problem solving, communication, and collaboration and has worked extensively to make her research accessible for the professional development of classroom mathematics teachers.
Carolyn Maher's groundbreaking longitudinal study followed students' mathematics learning from elementary school through high school. More than 400 hours of video data is available to mathematics teachers and researchers through Maher's Video Mosaic Collaborative in the Robert B. Davis Institute for Learning. As one of her colleagues noted, “Carolyn's paradigmatic investigations are memorialized in her hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, books, and (over 80) dissertations of her students.”
Carolyn Maher's work has had a broad impact on the international mathematics education community. She has given more than 50 international talks, was elected as the U. S. representative to the International Executive Committee for the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, served the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education as an Executive Board member and as President, and served as chair of the Special Interest Group of AERA: Research in Mathematics Education.
Carolyn Maher has been recognized with the Distinguished Faculty Award from the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education, the C. Oswald George Prize in Teaching Statistics, and the Outstanding Service Award from the American Society of Engineering Education. She is currently the editor of the Journal of Children's Mathematical Behavior, a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Education in the Department of Learning and Teaching, and the Director of the Robert B. Davis Institute for Learning in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University.