Cathy Kessel

Cathy Kessel is a U.S. researcher in mathematics education^[1] and consultant, past-president of Association for Women in Mathematics, winner of the Association for Women in Mathematics Louise Hay Award, and a blogger on Mathematics and Education.^[2] She served as an editor for Illustrative Mathematics from the end of 2015 through July 15, 2017.^[3]

Biography

Kessel received her Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Colorado Boulder, specializing in mathematical logic, and taught for three years after earning her Ph.D. She taught for a total of 13 years as a graduate and postgraduate until the 1990s when she made the switch to research in education.^[4] She began auditing courses and working on research projects at the School of Education at the University of California at Berkeley. This led to a career that included editing reports, books, articles, and curriculum and standards documents. She was the president of the Association for Women in Mathematics from 2007 to 2009 and worked as a mathematics education consultant through 2015 and again after she left Illustrative Mathematics in 2017.

Projects

Kessel has participated in multiple projects pertaining to mathematics education, including the following.^[5]

• Editor and indexer, Liping Ma, Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics, first edition, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999; anniversary edition, Routledge, 2010
• Additional writer, Principles and Standards of School Mathematics, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000
• Editor, Mathematical Education of Teachers, Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences, 2001
• Consultant, Research for Better Schools guide to TIMSS public release videos, 2005
• Writer, Learning Across Boundaries: U.S.–Japan Collaboration in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 2007^[6]
• Editor, Critical Issues in Mathematics Education workshop booklet, Teaching Teachers Mathematics: Research, Ideas, Projects, Evaluation, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, 2009
• Editor, Mathematical Education of Teachers II, Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences, 2012^[7]
• Writer, Mathematics Curriculum, Teacher Professionalism, and Supporting Policies in Korea and the United States: Summary of a Workshop, 2015, National Academy of Sciences^[8]

Articles, reports, and book chapters

Gender and education

• M. Linn and C. Kessel. (2001). Test bias. In Judith Worrell (editor in chief), Encyclopedia of women and gender (pp. 1129–1140). Academic Press.
• M. Linn and C. Kessel. (2002). Gender differences in cognition and educational performance. In Lynn Nadel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of cognitive science (pp. 261–267). New York: Macmillan.
• M. Linn and C. Kessel. (2005). Gender and assessment. In Carol Goodheart & Judith Worell (Eds.), Handbook of girls’ and women’s psychological health: Gender and well-being across the life span. New York: Oxford University Press.
• C. Kessel. (2006). Perceptions and research: Mathematics, gender, and the SAT. Focus, 26(9), 14–15.
• C. Kessel. (2007). Op ed. Bay Area Businesswoman News, February.
• Many co-authors. (2007). Women mathematicians in the academic ranks: A call to action. Report of the 2006 BIRS workshop on women and mathematics.^[9]
• C. Kessel and D. Nelson. (2011). Statistical Trends in Women’s Participation in Science: Commentary on Valla and Ceci (2011). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(2), 147–149.
• C. Kessel. (2011). Women. Encyclopedia of Mathematics and Society, edited by Sarah Greenwald and Jill Thompson. Croton-on-Hudson, NY: Golson Media.
• C. Kessel. (2014). Understanding underrepresentation: Women in mathematics and other fields. Mathematical Intelligencer, 0.1007/s00283-013-9441-1. Online 20 March. In print, Volume 36, Issue 4 (2014), 10–18.^[10]
• C. Kessel. (2015). Women in mathematics: Change, inertia, stratification, segregation. In Willie Pearson Jr., Lisa M. Frehill, and Connie L. McNeely (editors), Advancing Women in Science: An International Perspective (pp. 171–186, 198–199). Springer International Publishing Switzerland.^[11]

Mathematics education

• A. Arcavi, C. Kessel, L. Meira, and J. Smith. (1998). Teaching mathematical problem solving: A microanalysis of an emergent classroom community. Alan Schoenfeld, Ed Dubinsky, and James Kaput (Eds.), Research in Collegiate Mathematics Education III (pp. 1–70). Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society.
• C. Kessel. (1999). Testing: . . . 2, 3, 4, . . . , 11, 12, 12+; G–, G+: CAP, CAT, CTBS, . . . , ITBS, . . . ; ACT, SAT; GRE, LSAT, MCAT; NTE. MER Newsletter 11(3), 8–11.^[12]
• C. Kessel. (2001). What’s in a name? MER Newsletter 13(3), 4–5, 10–11.
• M. Chiu, C. Kessel, J. Moschkovich, and A. Muñoz-Nuñez. (2001). Learning to graph linear functions: A case study of conceptual change. Cognition and Instruction, 19(2), 215–251.^[13]
• C. Kessel. (2013). A mathematical perspective on educational research. In Y. Li & J. N. Moschkovich (Eds.), Mathematical proficiency and beliefs in learning and teaching (pp. 237–256). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Awards

• Association for Women in Mathematics twenty-seventh annual Louise Hay Award (January 2017)^[14]

In 2017, she was selected as a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics in the inaugural class.^[15]