Max Sherard

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Southern Methodist University

Unprecedented investments are being made in mathematics tutoring interventions for K-12 students, but results from these interventions are not always promising. Traditional online or distance math tutoring can treat learning as disembodied, and not give learners access to embodied resources like gestures, movements, and actions. Virtual Reality off...

In higher education, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements are texts written by faculty members which explain their commitments to improving education for marginalized students. Requesting, reviewing, and acting upon DEI statements is just one practice, among others, which higher education institutions can use to transform individual an...

Background: This comparative case study examined the use of math walks with middle grade youths and adult facilitators in an informal STEM learning space. Math walks are place-based walking tours where youths and facilitators critically examine and ask math-related questions about their environment. Method: Drawing on situated theories of learnin...

Research-Practice Partnerships (RPPs) are a collaborative approach to inquiry where university-based researchers and community-based practitioners share in the work of understanding educational problems and creating evidence-based solutions. Theoretically drawing upon boundary spanners, boundary practices, and boundary objects, we aim to understand...

This qualitative case study examines the learning that occurred when a small group of middle grade youths embarked upon a personal excursion during a game-based math walk. Math walks are an informal learning activity where learners and facilitators explore mathematical concepts embedded in everyday spaces. The MathExplorer app is a location-based m...

This qualitative study examines the use of math walks with middle grade students and adult facilitators at a local zoo. Drawing on situated learning and participation frameworks, we used interaction and stance analysis to compare two contrasting cases: In the first case, the adult chaperone asked more questions and evaluated student responses. In t...

We report on a Research Practice Partnership (RPP) between The University of Texas Austin and eleven New York City high schools examining how co-design of curriculum, instructional practices, and teacher supports encourage broad participation in Computer Science (CS). Pulling from literature grounded in project-based instruction (PBI) and learning...

We present a novel method for the critical analysis of professional scientists’ communications with the public. The method blends Entman’s (2007) [Framing bias: Media in the distribution of power. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 163–173)] framing theory and van Leeuwen’s (1996) [The representation of social actors. In C. R. Caldas-Coulthard, & M....

We identified 46 university-based student farms or gardens' (SFG) mission statements from around the U. S. and used sociosemantic analysis to describe and compare the individuals involved, the actions conducted, and the objects involved. Two discourses emerged from our analysis: (a) a depoliticized framing of SFGs as sites for producing food for hi...

italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution: This article confirms the continued marginalization of undergraduate LGBTQ+ electrical and computer engineering (ECE) students and describes how they navigate their (non)visibility in engineering. Best practices to increase diversity and...

As federal and state policies continue to emphasize the need for STEM Education reform, it is important to understand how a collaboration between industry, academia, governments, nonprofits, and K-12 schools, can bolster this effort. However, any worthwhile attempts at this must arguably first be steeped in an understanding of the STEM Education mo...

This paper investigates an in-service teacher and her student’s abilities to utilize, implement, and enact a participatory agent-based modeling program, developed as part of the group-based cloud computing (GbCC) for STEM Education Project funded by the National Science Foundation. In this first cycle of design-based implementation research with an...

Schwarz and colleagues have proposed and refined a learning progression for modeling that provides a valuable template for envisioning increasingly sophisticated levels of modeling practice at an aggregate level (Fortus, Shwartz, & Rosenfeld, 2016; Schwarz et al., 2009; Schwarz, Reiser, Archer, Kenyon, & Fortus, 2012). Thinking about learning progr...