Deborah Loewenberg Ball

Deborah Ball is dean of the School of Education and William H. Payne Collegiate Professor and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan. Ball's work draws on her many years of experience as an elementary classroom teacher and teacher educator. Her research focuses on mathematics instruction and on interventions designed to improve its quality and effectiveness. Her research groups study the nature of the mathematical knowledge needed for teaching, and develop survey measures enabling analyses of the relations between teachers' mathematical knowledge, the quality of their teaching, and their students' performance. Of particular interest in this research is instructional practice that can intervene on significant patterns of educational inequality in mathematics education. In addition, she and her group develop and study opportunities for teachers' learning. Ball's extensive publications, presentations, and website are widely used.

Ball is a co-principal investigator of the Study of Instructional Improvement, a large longitudinal study of efforts to improve instruction in reading and mathematics in high-poverty, urban elementary schools. Ball was a member of the Glenn Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the Twenty-first Century. She is a co-director of the NSF-funded Center for Proficiency in Teaching Mathematics, a research and development center aimed at strengthening professional education of mathematics teachers. She chaired the Rand Mathematics Panel on programmatic research in mathematics education, co-chaired the international Study on Teacher Education sponsored by the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction, and she is a trustee of the Mathematical Sciences Research institute in Berkeley.