Hollylynne S. Lee

Hollylynne S. Lee earned her B.S. in secondary mathematics education from The Pennsylvania State University in 1991, her M.A.Ed. in secondary education-mathematics in 1995 from College of William and Mary, and her Ph.D. in mathematics education from University of Virginia in 2000. She serves as Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Education at North Carolina State University. Prior to her work at the university level, she served as a K-12 teacher.

Among her many teaching awards and honors, Lee was named in 2020 as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in recognition for excellence and advocacy in data science and statistics education and the professional development of teachers. She was honored with the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching for 2019-20 and named a Fellow of the International Society for Design and Development in Education in 2019. 

Lee has secured millions of dollars in external and internal grant funding, and she has committed much time and energy to creating open educational resources, offering free online courses for educators from around the world, and sharing research-based multimedia materials via Creative Commons licensing. Her scholarship and writings include over 100 journal articles, book chapters, and conference proceeding papers, four co-authored books, and a co-edited book on Scholarly Practices and Inquiry in the Preparation of Mathematics Teachers.

Data Moves and Discourse: Design Principles for Strengthening Statistics Education

This lecture was given on Tuesday, October 5, 2021, 5:30 p.m. We apologize for the sound quality on the video. Please turn on the closed captioning.

Download Dr. Lee's lecture handout

In today’s society, we all need to be fluent with statistics--for making everyday decisions, making sense of visualizations and statistics given in the media, and preparing for many careers that utilize data. Attention to students’ learning of statistics (and now data science) in grades K-12 and college settings has increased dramatically in the past decade, and will continue to grow as we emerge from a global pandemic with a constant flow of data. Yet, teachers often feel unprepared to teach statistics or engage students in data investigations.

This talk will focus on how Hollylynne Lee has tackled the problem of teachers’ preparedness to teach statistics through use of innovative design solutions in curriculum, software, and online professional learning environments. How do design principles help teachers and curriculum developers build opportunities for learning statistics in educational environments, both in person and online? We will unpack this question through examples of ways to foster discourse and engagement with data to build teachers’ capacity for teaching statistics. Come with your phone or tablet to engage in data moves and discourse!