Diane Briars

Diane Jane Briars (born 1951)[1] is an American mathematics educator, the former president of both the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. She has been an advocate for the Everyday Mathematics, Connected Mathematics, and Common Core State Standards Initiative mathematics education programs.

Education and career

Briars majored in mathematics at Northwestern University, graduating in 1973.[2] She has a master's degrees in mathematics and a Ph.D. in mathematics education from Northwestern;[3] the topic of her 1984 doctoral dissertation was Individual Differences in Rule Discovery: An Exploratory Study of the Inductive Reasoning Game Eleusis.[2] She has taught mathematics at the middle school level in Evanston, Illinois, where Northwestern is located.[4] After completing her Ph.D., she was a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University,[3] working there with Jill H. Larkin,[5] and briefly held a position as assistant professor of mathematics education at Northern Illinois University.[4]

She joined Pittsburgh Public Schools in 1986 as head of mathematics education.[4] At Pittsburgh, she instituted the Everyday Mathematics program for elementary-school mathematics and the Connected Mathematics program for middle-school mathematics.[4][6] Her state teaching certifications were brought into question in 2005, as part of a political battle with the school board over the continuation of these two programs, and she was placed on leave from her position in 2006.[6]

She stepped down to become a consultant and mathematics education developer,[7] and to co-direct the Algebra Intensification Project of the University of Illinois at Chicago and University of Texas at Austin.[8] She served as president of the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics from 2009 to 2011,[8][9] and of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics from 2014 to 2016.[3] As NCTM president, she advocated for the Common Core State Standards Initiative and used her platform to debunk what she has described as widely-spread falsehoods about the initiative.[10]

Book

Briars is a coauthor of What Principals Need to Know about Teaching and Learning Mathematics (Solution Tree Press, 2012) and of a teacher guide to the mathematics components of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, Common Core Mathematics in a PLC at Work, Grades 6-8 (Solution Tree Press, 2013).

Recognition

In 2009 the Pennsylvania Council of Supervisors of Mathematics gave Briars their Outstanding Contributions to Mathematics Supervision award.[8] In 2018 the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics gave her their Ross Taylor/Glenn Gilbert National Leadership Award.[11]

References
  1. Middle name and birth date from Library of Congress catalog entry, retrieved 2020-12-31
  2. Commencement, Northwestern University, 1984, p. 50 – via Internet Archive
  3. Diane J. Briars, NCTM President, 2014-2016, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, retrieved 2020-12-31
  4. Kalson, Sally (October 19, 2004), "No. 5: Diane Briars", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  5. Briars, Diane J.; Larkin, Jill H. (Summer–Fall 1984), "An integrated model of skill in solving elementary word problems", Cognition and Instruction, 1 (3): 245–296, doi:10.1207/s1532690xci0103_1, JSTOR 3233635
  6. Smydo, Joe (February 20, 2006), "Pittsburgh schools chief places top math official on leave: Lacks certification, Roosevelt says", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  7. Former Pittsburgh Public Schools Mathematics Director, Diane Briars, Begins Term as President-Elect of NCTM, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, May 16, 2003, retrieved 2020-12-31
  8. Kerlik, Bobby (December 11, 2009), "Newsmaker: Diane Briars", Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
  9. 50th Anniversary Addendum 2003–2018 (PDF), National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics, p. 7, retrieved 2020-12-31
  10. "NCTM President: Core truths", NebraskaMATH, University of Nebraska, August 16, 2014
  11. "Congratulations to Diane Briars, the 2018 Ross Taylor/Glenn Gilbert National Leadership Awardee", eNews Newsletter, National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics, July 2018, retrieved 2020-12-31
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