Sarah Smitherman Pratt

Assistant Professor, University of North Texas

Complexity Statement

In my graduate work with Bill Doll, I became deeply interested in concepts surrounding nonlinear dynamics. I use this term as a broad umbrella for both complexity theory in science and chaos theory in mathematics. Since my introduction to these concepts, my life has been transformed. I see connections, recursions, exchanges, emergence and relationships everywhere, not as cause-and-effect but as systems moving through different moments of equilibrium. In education, then, no more is there a center, for me. As a teacher educator (and more specifically a mathematics teacher educator), my epistemology comes out of my desire to encourage a community of learners to examine mathematics in fun and exciting ways. My pedagogy then follows suit. My current theoretical framework for my work in education research in around the notion of complex conversations, about teaching and learning as exchanges and interchanges in which transformations emerge.

INTERESTS

  • Teacher education
  • Mathematics education
  • Chaos theory in mathematics
  • Education research from a complexivist's perspective
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