Mitchell J. Nathan

Mitchell J. Nathan, Ph.D., is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Learning Sciences, in the Educational Psychology Department in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with affiliate appointments in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, and the Department of Psychology; and Principal Investigator in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER). Professor Nathan received his doctorate from University of Colorado at Boulder Department of Psychology; and BSEE degree from Carnegie Mellon University, with a triple major in electrical engineering, history, and applied mathematics.

Professor Nathan is Director of the MAGIC Lab, where he and the members of his lab study how people think, teach, and learn, with particular emphasis on the role that language, gestures, and embodied processes plays mathematical reasoning and the construction of meaning for formal systems that are used to model mathematical and physical phenomena, and engineering design.

Some of the specific topics of investigation include: the development of children’s algebraic reasoning, the nature of expert blind spot in teaching, teachers’ uses of gesture during instruction, the importance of cohesion building in project-based STEM education, the role of common ground in instruction, computer animation to support reading of mathematics story problems, the embodied nature of mathematical intuition and geometric proof, and role that both teachers and students play in embodied accounts of transfer of learning. Dr. Nathan’s research on the nature of teaching and learning offers direct implications for the design of educational technology, teacher education and professional development, classroom instruction, and student knowledge assessment.

Prior to conducting research in educational psychology, he worked in research and development in artificial intelligence, computer vision, and sensor fusion for mobile robotic systems.

Dr. Nathan has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications, and has secured research funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U. S. Dept. of Education-Institute of Educational Sciences (IES), and the James S. McDonnell Foundation. He is currently IES Principal Investigator on “How dynamic gestures and directed actions contribute to mathematical proof practices.”

Dr. Nathan was a founding officer of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (2002), he founded the American Education Research Association (AERA) Division C section on Engineering and Computer Science Education (2013), co-Chaired CSCL10 (2013), and co-founded EMIC (2015), an international group of scholars and educators focused on embodied mathematical imagination and cognition.

Prof. Nathan was Visiting Professor at the Latin American School for Education, Cognitive and Neural Sciences (2011-2016) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (2012). He has served on multiple committees for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to advance science and engineering education. Dr. Nathan is an inductee of the University of Wisconsin’s Teaching Academy, which promotes excellence in teaching in higher education, and served on its executive board. Dr. Nathan has, since 2017, served as the inaugural Chair of the Teachers as Learners (TaL) grant program, funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation. He is a Fellow of the International Society of the Learning Sciences.