Brian R. Lawler

Brian R. Lawler is currently an Associate Professor for Mathematics Education in the Bagwell College of Education at Kennesaw State University and serves as coordinator for the secondary mathematics teacher certification programs. He earned his doctorate in Mathematics Education at The University of Georgia. He received his B.S. in Mathematics from Colorado State University, M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction from California State University Dominguez Hills, and M.A. in Mathematics from The University of Georgia.

Previously, Brian taught high school mathematics for 9 years in a variety of settings, including suburban, urban, and urban/rural settings. Throughout his quarter-century career in mathematics education, he has advised school districts and provided professional development to high school math teachers as they aim to transform their programs in order to meet the needs of all learners—in discourse-rich, heterogeneous classrooms. He is a contributing author to the second edition of the Interactive Mathematics Program, a four-year, college preparatory, problem-based high school mathematics curriculum designed particularly for untracked classrooms.

Brian draws upon a Piagetian epistemological framework, a critical pedagogy, a Deweyan progressivism, and a post-structural worldview to theorize an equitable and socially just framework for mathematics education. This emerges as a Critical Mathematics Education, in which the child’s mathematics and the mathematics of society are both held, not in tension, but as interacting, in order to understand learning and teaching of mathematics in its sociopolitical context. His research focuses on the personal epistemology of adolescent mathematical learners, and power and privilege in the science, practice, and politics of Mathematics and Mathematics Education.