Candace Walkington
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Texas
214-768-3072
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Dr. Candace Walkington is an Assistant Professor in Teaching and Learning at Southern Methodist University, specializing in Mathematics Education. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in Mathematics from Texas A&M University, and she is a former NSF-GK12 Fellow and college mathematics professor. She received her Ph.D. in Mathematics Education from University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Walkingtons research examines how abstract mathematical ideas can become connected to students concrete, everyday experiences such that they become more understandable. She conducts research on personalizing high school algebra instruction to students out of-school interests in areas like sports, music, shopping, and video games. She also examines ways to connect practices of mathematical proof to students everyday experiences and informal ways of reasoning. Her work draws upon theories of situated and embodied cognition, and she is an active member of the learning sciences community.
Dr. Walkington's dissertation was funded by Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center (PSLC), and she was awarded the Graduate Student Research Award by Division C of the American Educational Research Association and nominated for Best Dissertation. She is a member of the PSLCs Motivation & Metacognition thrust and recently received a second grant from the center to extend her work on personalization. She was also an IES Postdoctoral Fellow in Mathematical Thinking, Learning, and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she focused hierarchical linear modeling and experimental design.
Dr. Walkington has worked with the UTeach secondary math and science teacher preparation program at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as the Gates Foundations Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project. In partnership with MET, she recently led a large, national study of teaching effectiveness in elementary mathematics which involved training 100 teachers to rate 1,000 video lessons. She has published her work in journals like Mathematical Thinking and Learning and Journal of Mathematical Behavior. She teaches courses and professional development workshops for pre-service and in-service mathematics teachers, and she engages in service for a number of journals and professional organizations.
Recent Publications:
Walkington, C., Nathan, M., Wolfgram, M., Alibali, M., & Srisurichan, R. (in press). Bridges and barriers to constructing conceptual cohesion across modalities and temporalities: Challenges of STEM integration in the precollege engineering classroom. In J. Strobel, S. Purzer, & M. Cardella, (Eds.), Engineering in PreCollege Settings: Research into Practice. Sense Publishers.
Walkington, C., & Maull, K. (2011). Exploring the assistance dilemma: The case of context personalization. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 90-95). Boston, MA: Cognitive Science Society.
Walkington, C., Petrosino, A., & Sherman, M. (in press). Supporting algebraic reasoning through personalized story scenarios: How situational understanding mediates performance and strategies. Mathematical Thinking and Learning.
Walkington, C., & Sherman, M. (2012). Using adaptive learning technologies to personalize instruction: The impact of interest-based scenarios on performance in algebra. In J. Aalst, K. Thompson, M. Jacobson, & P. Reimann (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of the Learning Sciences. Sydney, Australia: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Walkington, C., Sherman, M., & Petrosino, A. (2012). Playing the game of story problems: Coordinating situation-based reasoning with algebraic representation. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 31(2), 174-195.