SOE's Stemhagen and Henney win AESA book award

New book by Kurt Stemhagen, Ph.D., and Catherine Henney, SOE doctoral student, wins 2021 AESA Critics’ Choice Book Award.

Outdoor portrait of Kurt Stemhagen, Ph.D., and SOE doctoral student Catherine Henney.
Stemhagen and Henney. (Courtesy photo)

The American Educational Studies Association (AESA) has recognized a new book, Democracy and Mathematics Education: Rethinking School Math for Our Troubled Times, authored by the VCU School of Education’s Kurt Stemhagen, Ph.D., and Catherine Henney, a doctoral student in the school, as a winner of the 2021 AESA Critics’ Choice Book Award.

A committee of AESA members selected the book by Stemhagen, a professor in the Department of Foundations of Education, and Henney, who is in the Ph.D. in Education, Concentration in Curriculum, Culture and Change program, as part of a collection of titles it regards as outstanding books that may be of interest to those in educational studies. The Critics’ Choice Award winners are honored and displayed prominently at the association's annual conference.

“This was a big surprise because a lot of books are nominated from around the country annually, and only 12 are picked as winners by the association,” Stemhagen said. The book highlights a new way of thinking about math education in our K-12 schools and promotes math education as a crucial vehicle for student development and engagement in democratic, social practices.

Stemhagen and Henney also recently travelled to the annual conference of the John Dewey Society in Burlington, Vermont. In a session titled “Issues Old and New in STEM Education,” they engaged with Dewey scholars and other democratic theorists and educators about democratic mathematics education and other ideas in their book.

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