Doctoral Candidate presented at the 2026 Mid-Atlantic Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education

Doctoral candidate Emily Olson recently presented research at the 2026 Mid-Atlantic Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education (MA-RUME), hosted in a hybrid format at Richard Bland College in Prince George, Virginia. Olson presented alongside Drs. Joseph DiNapoli of Montclair State University, Jennifer Ward of Kennesaw State University, and Alesia Moldavan of Georgia Southern University. Their talk, What Elementary Preservice Teachers Notice in Children’s Mathematical Reasoning, examined how 54 elementary preservice teachers interpreted children’s mathematical thinking while analyzing a video case centered on an open-ended basketball modeling task. Findings showed that preservice teachers readily noticed arithmetic strategies and contextual reasoning, while deeper mathematical structures, such as systematically organizing possibilities and determining whether all solutions had been found, were less visible. Way to go, Emily!