Julie Sarama

Julie Sarama is the Kennedy Endowed Chair in Innovative Learning Technologies and Professor at the University of Denver. She conducts research on young children's development of mathematical concepts and competencies, implementation and scale-up of educational reform, professional development models and their influence on student learning, and implementation and effects of software environments (including those she has created) in mathematics classrooms. These studies have been published in more than 50 refereed articles, 4 books, 30 chapters, and 60 additional publications. She has been Principal or Co-Principal Investigator on seven projects funded by the National Science Foundation, including Building Blocks—Foundations for Mathematical Thinking, Pre-kindergarten to Grade 2: Research-based Materials Development and Planning for Professional Development in Pre-School Mathematics: Meeting the Challenge of Standards 2000. She is Principal Investigator on her latest NSF award, entitled, “Early Childhood Education in the Context of Mathematics, Science, and Literacy.”

Dr. Sarama is also co-directing three large-scale studies funded by the U.S. Education Department’s Institute of Educational Studies (IES). The first is entitled, Scaling Up TRIAD: Teaching Early Mathematics for Understanding with Trajectories and Technologies. The second is a longitudinal extension of that work, entitled, Longitudinal Study of a Successful Scaling Up Project: Extending TRIAD. The third, with Dr. Sarama as Principal Investigator, is an efficacy study, Increasing the efficacy of an early mathematics curriculum with scaffolding designed to promote self-regulation. Dr. Sarama was previously the lead co-PI at the Buffalo site on another IES-funded project, A Longitudinal study of the Effects of a Pre-Kindergarten Mathematics Curriculum on Low-Income Children’s Mathematical Knowledge (IES; one of seven of a cohort of national projects conducted simultaneous local and national studies as part of the IES’s Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research project).

Dr. Sarama has taught secondary mathematics and computer science, gifted math at the middle school level, preschool and kindergarten mathematics enrichment classes, and mathematics methods and content courses for elementary to secondary teachers. In addition, she presenting is the Director of the Gifted Mathematics Program (GMP) at the University of Buffalo, SUNY. She designed and programmed over 50 published computer programs, including her version of Logo and Logo-based software activities (Turtle Math™, which was awarded Technology & Learning Software of the Year award, 1995, in the category "Math").