Vita Highlights for Chandra Hawley Orrill, Ph.D.
Research Interests
My research focuses on mathematics teacher professional development in the middle grades. Specifically, I am interested in how teachers understand mathematics, how they make sense of their professional development experiences, and how we can design better professional development and materials to support mathematics teachers. Technology often plays an important role in my work because it allows teachers to develop richer understandings of mathematics, facilitates better discussions about mathematics, and promotes reflection on how to teach mathematics.
Major Research Projects
- Does It Work?: Building Methods for Understanding Effects of Professional Development - We are investigating 3 critical research questions: (1) what do teachers learn in professional development?; (2) Assuming that the teachers learn, how did their practice change as a result of the professional development?; (3) Assuming that teachers' practices change, how does that impact student performance on assessments? The context for this is an InterMath course developed for 6th and 7th grade teachers called InterMath - Rational Numbers. (Funded by the National Science Foundation REESE program.)
- CoSTAR (Coordinating Teachers' and Students' Algebraic Reasoning) - In this work, the research team considered how students and teachers interpret the shared instructional events of the classroom. We studied classrooms in which the Connected Mathematics program was being used as we followed a teacher and her students through an entire unit of instruction. We asked students to interpret classroom events, then asked the teacher to interpret both the same events and the students' responses to those events. (Funded by the National Science Foundation ROLE program.)
Selected Recent Publications & Presentations
- Orrill, C. H., Geisler, S., Brown, R., & Brunaud-Vega (June, 2008). Questioning teacher goals in professional development: Do goals really make a difference? In The International Conference of the Learning Sciences 2008: Proceedings of ICLS 2008. Mahwah, NJ: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
- Orrill, C. H., Sexton, S., Lee, S-J, & Gerde, C. (June, 2008). Mathematics teachers' abilities to use and make sense of drawn representations. In The International Conference of the Learning Sciences 2008: Proceedings of ICLS 2008. Mahwah, NJ: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
- Recesso, A. & Orrill, C. H. (2008). Integrating technology into teaching: The technology & learning continuum. New York: Houghton-Mifflin Company.
- Wise, A. F., Orrill, C. H., Duffy, T. M., del Valle, R., & Kirkley, J. R. (2008). When a peer group isn't needed: Effective onlinelearning in an individual mentoring model. In L. Moller, D. Harvey, & J. Huett (Eds.), Learning and instructional technologies for the 21st century: Visions of the future. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
- Bleich, L., Ledford, S., Orrill, C.H., & Polly, D. (2006). An analysis of using graphical represenations in participants' solutions. The Mathematics Educator, 16(1), 22-34. (Special issue on the InterMath project.)
- Kwon, N. Y. & Orrill, C. H. (2007). Understanding a teacher's reflection: A case study of a middle schoolmatheamtics teacher. School Science and Mathematics, 107(6), 246-257.
- Orrill, C. H., Anthony, H. G., Izsák, A., & Singleton, E. (June, 2006). Tupelo enacted: How teachers shape learning opportunities in middle grades mathematics. In S. A. Barab, K. E. Hay, & D. T. Hickey (Eds.), In The International Conference of the Learning Sciences 2006: Proceedings of ICLS 2006 (p. 968-969) . Mahwah, NJ: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
- Orrill, C. H. & the InterMath Team (2006). What learner-centered professional development looks like: The pilot studies of the InterMath professional development project. The Mathematics Educator, 16(1), 4-13. (Special issue on the InterMath project.)
- Orrill, C. H., Izsák, A., Singleton, E., & Anthony, H. G. (October, 2005). Mathematical connections in open-ended problem-solving environments. Poster presented at Psychology of Mathematics Education – North America, Roanoke, VA.
- Orrill, C. H., Anthony, H. G., Singleton, E. (April, 2005). Connection and conflict in one teacher’s implementation of reform-oriented materials. Roundtable to be presented at American Educational Research Association: Montreal.
- Polly, A., Ledford, S., & Orrill, C. (April, 2005). Learning technology in the context of professional development. Roundtable presented at American Educational Research Association: Montreal.