Dr. Lynda Colgan receives the 2023 Margaret Sinclair Memorial Award, which “recognizes an educator in Canada who has demonstrated innovation and excellence in promoting mathematics education at the elementary, secondary, college or university level”.
Dr. Colgan’s research has focused on supporting early career mathematics teachers, involving parents as partners in mathematics teaching and learning and alternate images of mathematics curriculum. Her creative projects have resulted in the development of a children’s television show, The Prime Radicals and an award-winning children’s non-fiction book, Mathemagic.
On September 23, she delivered the 2023 Margaret Sinclair Memorial Award Lecture at the MathEd Forum. Her lecture was titled: “Full Circle: My journey through mathematics education and the unstoppable path back to Kindergarten”.
“The seeds for my career were sown by drawing a few straight lines with two different coloured crayons on a plain piece of paper in the JK/SK class at Bruce Public School in Toronto. Those mathemagical lines were the beginning of a zigzagged path that took me through myriad roles in mathematics education–teacher, LOGO pioneer, district coordinator, newspaper columnist, TV scriptwriter, children’s book author, professor, researcher and outreach enthusiast–as well as the shepherds that guided the journey along a lengthy and circuitous route that ends (for now) where it began. The gist of this retrospective will focus on mentors and moments…including being vilified in the press for daring to say, “Math should be fun.””
Dr. Colgan’s commitment to transforming the way children perceive and learn mathematics is evident throughout her career. She believes in “seeing and doing through the eyes of a child,” a philosophy that has driven her to make math more relatable and enjoyable for young learners. One of her key initiatives is engaging parents in “Family Math” activities, an approach that reshapes negative attitudes towards mathematics. In addition to her extensive contributions as an educator, Dr. Colgan is also known for her outreach work, including her role as the co-founder of Science Rendezvous Kingston and the current Science Rendezvous Executive Director, Education and Development.
