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Dr. Heather Johnson, professor of mathematics education at CU Denver’s School of Education & Human Development, often rises early in the morning to collaborate with colleagues. The unusual hours come with the territory of being an internationally engaged scholar. Whether she’s Zooming with a German colleague to co-edit the theory section of the forthcoming handbook, co-leading working groups on theories in mathematics education for the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education, teaming with a group of math theorists planning the next International Congress on Mathematics Education in Sydney, Australia, or meeting with online students who live overseas, finding the perfect time to collaborate in real time usually means navigating vast time zones.

“In 2021, we had a group of worldwide mathematics education journal editors, working on an initiative to develop anti-racist editorial practices,” said Johnson. “We were taking a close look at our editorial and reviewing practices, and how those practices should reflect on what we want to have as a field. It was fun, because it was a 6 a.m. meeting Denver time, and then I was joking with the folks in Australia who were on the Zoom at 11 p.m. their time.”

Early in her career, Johnson was known for fine-grained investigations in secondary students’ mathematical reasoning. She offered new perspectives on how students made sense of relationships between quantities that were changing together.

Currently, she is known worldwide for her advancements in task design and mathematics theory development and her prestigious scholarly appointments and editorial board positions. For instance, she employed Variation Theory, developed by Swedish researcher Ference Marton, to design engaging “techtivities” that help students understand how graphs work. While engaging in the exercises, students sketch two different graphs to represent the same relationship between variables. While it is common in math to use different representations (say graphs and equations), it is less common to use two different forms of the same kind of representations. And by doing that, Johnson and her colleagues have been shedding light on the inner workings of graph reasoning. She leads a working group on theories in mathematics education for the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME) and has the honor of being the first scholar from the United States in this role. In addition, she has been part of the task design and theory working group leadership team for the International Congress on Mathematics Education (ICME), a quadrennial conference that will take place this summer in Sydney, Australia. Johnson serves as editor-in-chief of Colorado Math Teacher Journal, associate editor for Mathematical Thinking and Learning and sits on the editorial boards for top journals in her field: Journal of Mathematical Behavior and Mathematical Thinking and Learning.

“I research how students think and learn, so we can make mathematics education more humane, and improve math instruction around the world,” said Johnson, who instructs educators at the master’s and doctoral levels. “My mission is to disrupt the overemphasis on answer finding in math education. Worldwide, math educators have been focused way too much on finding answers to other people's questions. I believe math questions and reasoning should count just as much as answer finding. A stronger emphasis on individual and group inquiries can benefit real-world problem-solving for the serious issues of our time such as climate change.”

Johnson’s CU Denver research is connected to two National Science Foundation (NSF) funded projects she helped secure. In the NSF-funded undergraduate math project for which she is principal investigator (PI), Promoting Mathematical Reasoning and Transforming Instruction in College Algebra, she and her colleagues at CU Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and Texas State University are working to design online tasks around graphs and functions that help students make sense of relationships between different quantities in order to raise the status of math reasoning. In the NSF-funded undergraduate engineering project for which she is Co-Principal Investigator - Engineering is Not Neutral: Transforming Instruction via Collaboration and Engagement, Johnson and her colleagues are working to support faculty’s engagement in practices that can support more inclusive and equitable teaching. They have monthly learning community meetings to engage faculty in conversations around teaching and to share practices.

SEHD PhD students who receive NSF-funded apprenticeships and faculty mentorship through Johnson engage in every step of her research through team meetings. In the last year, together with Courtney Donovan, her PhD program team has published two mixed-methods journal articles in top journals in mathematics education.

Being an internationally recognized math scholar comes with a variety of rewards, including travel. This past summer, Johnson traveled to Budapest, Hungary to collaborate with her international colleagues. Math research travel plans are in the works to collaborate in Sydney, Australia this summer and Bolzano, Italy next winter. And, in fall of 2024, Johnson will take a sabbatical to work on a book advancing theories in math education with Angelika Bikner-Ahsbahs, emeritus faculty at the University of Bremen in Kiel, Germany.

Yet, Johnson still finds one of the biggest benefits of her job is being able to inspire future innovators. This spring, Johnson emailed a group of early scholars to commend them on an excellent article they had published. “One of the things that the academic told me, was that a precursor to this article were conversations they had early in their programs about theory and method in the context of co-variational reasoning, which is a specific part of the topic that I do. And they told me that my papers on this topic often served as guiding examples for their own work.”

Are you interested in delving deeper into mathematical questions and reasoning as an undergraduate, master’s or doctoral student while learning from amazing faculty members like Johnson? Follow the hyperlinks to learn more about SEHD’s undergraduate, fully online master’s, EdD and PhD math education degree opportunities.