Athens, Ga. – Two University of Georgia education professors have been named 2010 Fellows of the American Educational Research Association in recognition of their accomplishments in education research.
Leslie Steffe, a UGA Distinguished Research Professor of mathematics education, and Peter Smagorinsky, a professor of language and literacy education, will be inducted during AERA’s 91st Annual Meeting on May 1 in Denver, Colo.
Steffe’s research is focused on constructing models of children’s mathematical thinking and learning throughout elementary and middle school years. These models have been constructed by means of teaching children in teaching experiments for up to three years and conducting conceptual analyses of the corpus of video-recorded material. His work is based in the research program, Interdisciplinary Research on Number.
Steffe received the inaugural Senior Scholar Award from the Special Interest Group for Research in Mathematics Education of the AERA in 2007. The award recognized the programmatic research and research-mentoring work of a senior scholar in the field of mathematics education.
He was named a UGA Distinguished Research Professor in 1985 and received the Albert Christ-Janer Award in 1984. He was awarded the Creative Research Medal in 1983.
Steffe joined the UGA faculty in 1967 after earning his Ph.D. in mathematics education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Smagorinsky uses a Vygotskian framework to study teaching and learning in high school English classes, as well as other classes across the curriculum, and to study how teachers develop conceptions of teaching.
His research focuses on the transition from pre-service teacher education programs to the workforce, a study of pre-service teachers’ concept development as mediated by service learning, and studies of students’ meaning-making in disciplinary contexts with an emphasis on high school English classes.
He received the AERA Publications Committee Outstanding Reviewer Award for Educational Researcher in 2006 and 2007. He also received the Edward B. Fry Book Award and the UGA College of Education Russell H. Yeany Jr. Research Award in 2009.
Smagorinsky joined the UGA faculty in 1998 after serving eight years as an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma. He earned his Ph.D. in English education from the University of Chicago.
Steffe and Smagorinsky are preceded by four College of Education AERA Fellows. Mary Atwater, a professor of science education, and Roy Martin, a professor emeritus of educational psychology were named inaugural Fellows in 2008. Judith Preissle, a professor of lifelong education, and Jeremy Kilpatrick, a Regents Professor of mathematics education, were named Fellows in 2009.