In this dissertation, I explore ways to support secondary school students' meaningful understanding of quadratic functions. Specifically, I investigate how students co-developed representational fluency (RF) and functional thinking (FT), when they gained meaningful understanding of quadratic functions. I also characterize students' co-emergence of…

This work is an exploration of upper elementary students' sense making around four conventional representations of function: equations with algebraic notation, Cartesian graphs, function tables, and natural language. The cornerstone to the empirical work is a task called the Function Puzzle, where students are given 16 cards representing four…

Community colleges are continually being faced with pressures to use data to inform decisions. These pressures arise from a triage of factors, including accountability, accreditation, and student success initiatives. Yet, as these demands continue, research has shown that community colleges struggle to institutionalize data-informed decision…

Tabular data is pervasive in the form of spreadsheets and relational databases. Although tables often describe multivariate data without explicit network semantics, it may be advantageous to explore the data modeled as a graph or network for analysis. Even when a given table design conveys some static network semantics, analysts may want to look…

Access to quality mathematics content and instruction has been equated as a civil right (Moses & Cobb, 2001). However, access to empowering mathematics is not a reality for many urban youth. Data show an achievement gap between Black, Hispanic and American Indian students and their peers which, in turn, result in unequal access to education and…