Committees

Awards Committee

Rongjin Huang, Chair, Middle Tennessee State University

Colleen Eddy, University of North Texas

Jada Kohlmeier, Auburn University

Lesson Study Conversations Committee

Karie C. Brown, Georgia State University, Chair

Johana Thomas Zapata, University of British Columbia

Outreach Committee

Joanna C. Weaver, Bowling Green State University, Chair

Saadeddine Shehab, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

LS K-12 Practitioner Network

Robert Evans, Denver Public Schools

Awards Committee-Rongjin Huang, Chair

Dr. Rongjin Huang is a Professor of Mathematics Education at Middle Tennessee State University. His research centers on mathematics classroom practices, teacher education, Lesson Study, and comparative mathematics education. He has led multiple research projects and published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.

Dr. Huang has co-edited eight influential books, including Theory and Practice of Lesson Study in Mathematics: An International Perspective (Springer, 2019) and Teacher Professional Learning through Lesson Study in Virtual and Hybrid Environments (Routledge, 2023). He has also served as a guest editor for leading journals such as ZDM Mathematics Education and the International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, co-editing eight special issues. Notable among these are Networking Theories for Understanding and Guiding Lesson Study (2023) and Developing Generative AI-Informed Pedagogies Using Lesson Study (2025).

His international contributions include serving on the program committee for ICMI Study 25 and currently as a council member of the World Association of Lesson Study. Dr. Huang’s work continues to shape the global discourse on mathematics education and professional learning.

Awards Committee-Colleen Eddy

Awards Committee-Jada Kohlmeier

Dr. Jada Kohlmeier is the Humana Foundation Germany-Sherman Distinguished Professor and Program Coordinator of Social Science Education at Auburn University. She is the Director of the Persistent Issues in History Network (www.pihnetwork.org), a professional network of hundreds of social studies teachers hosting fifty wise practice cases of inquiry-based lessons. Her research focuses on teacher and student learning. She has investigated professional development models, primarily Lesson Study, designed to encourage problem-based inquiry and discussion facilitation in social studies contexts. She has also published extensively on student learning including historical, civic, and ethical reasoning. She has published articles in Theory and Research in Social Education, Journal of Social Studies Research, Social Studies Research and Practice, The Social Studies and Social Education. Dr. Kohlmeier is currently co-project director of the C.L.E.A.R. Thinking project, a $2 million, three year project funded by the U.S. Department of Education to conduct virtual lesson study with over 40 teachers across the United States.

Lesson Study Conversations Committee-Karie C. Brown, Chair

Karie 5 Square638835282619018305 Karie Brown (kbrown383@gsu.edu) is an assistant professor in mathematics education in the Early Childhood and Elementary Education Department. Brown earned her doctorate in curriculum and instruction, focusing on mathematics, from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Brown received the Hardie Dissertation Award and was a Fulbright Fellow in Chile. Brown is a mathematics educator and researcher whose interests include teaching professional learning and its intersections with politics, language, and community. Her work centers on the humans who do mathematics and the social nature of mathematics learning and doing.

Lesson Study Conversations Committee, Johana Thomas Zapata

Outreach Committee - Joanna C. Weaver, Chair

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Dr. Joanna C. Weaver is an Associate Professor at Bowling Green State University. Her research framework is interdisciplinary reflective practice using lesson study as the vehicle for reflection. She serves pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and the educational community. Implementing training, workshops, and professional development (PD) for pre-service and in-service teachers across disciplines and grade bands, Dr. Weaver promotes collaboration and reflection to strengthen instructional practice, content knowledge, and student learning. Dr. Weaver has developed jigsaw lesson study in her teacher education courses, and in research, she has partnered with colleagues in lesson study both internationally and nationally. She has published numerous chapters and articles focused on the positive impact of lesson study on professional knowledge, feedback, instruction, and reflective practice.

Outreach Committee - Saadeddine Shehab

SShehab

Saadeddine Shehab is currently the Associate Director of Assessment and Research at the Siebel Center for Design (SCD) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on studying students’ collaborative problem-solving processes and the role of the teacher in facilitating these processes in design-based STEM classrooms. Over the past year, Dr. Shehab has been working on exploring synergies between lesson study and Human-Centered Design to design and implement a professional development where researchers and teachers design human-centered design problem-based mathematics research lessons.

LS K-12 Practitioner Network, Robert Evans

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Rob Evans currently serves as the Senior Team Lead for Multilingual Education at Farrell B. Howell, an ECE–8 school in Denver Public Schools. He is committed to engaging educators in the creation of practical, quasi-practical, and theoretic knowledge through action research.

Dr. Evans was introduced to Lesson Study while serving in the JET Program in Japan (2006–2010), where he supported the expansion of English education at the elementary level. After returning to the U.S., he began localizing Lesson Study, leading to his CPED-informed EdD dissertation-in-practice exploring it as action-oriented inquiry.

Mentoring Program Chair, Catherine Lewis

Catherine Lewis, Ph.D. is a research scientist at Mills College at Northeastern University (Oakland, California campus) who has directed 10 major federal grants focused on instructional improvement. Her randomized trial of teacher-led lesson study with Japanese mathematical resources (Lewis & Perry, JRME, 2017, 48:3) was identified by a What Works Clearinghouse-criteria review as one of only two studies of mathematics professional learning (of 643 reviewed) to improve students’ mathematical proficiency. A developmental psychologist fluent in Japanese, she has makes Japanese elementary education practices and materials available to U.S. educators, including lesson study (teacher-led, classroom-based professional learning), and Mathematics Teaching Through Problem-solving (an approach in which students build each new mathematical idea in the curriculum). School-wide lesson study enables a shift to powerful mathematics learning and dramatically improves mathematics achievement in urban schools.