Dr. Peter Appelbaum, professor of Education and director of Education Studies and Art Education Programs at Arcadia University, has been selected to serve on the National Selection Committee (NSC) review panel for the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST) for 2022.

The PAEMSTare the highest honors bestowed by the United States government on K-12 teachers of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. As a member of this year’s selection committee, Professor Appelbaum is reviewing dossiers of nominees who have already been chosen by their state or national territory as their STEM Teacher of the Year. Dossiers include videos of the teacher’s classroom practice, extensive narrative responses to questions about their instructional approaches, methods of assessment, and leadership at the local, state and national levels, and supplementary materials that demonstrate the depth and breadth of experience. The committee will meet at the end of April over several days to combine their reviews of the candidates and determine the awardee. Awardees receive a certificate signed by the President and a trip to Washington, D.C. to attend a series of recognition events and professional development opportunities. They also receive a $10,000 award from NSF, and join an active network of outstanding educators from throughout the nation. Awardees reflect the expertise and dedication of the Nation’s teaching corps, and they demonstrate the positive impact of excellent teachers on student achievement. To learn more about the PAEMST program, please click here.

Dr. Appelbaum, who joined Arcadia in 2001 and also recently was recognized as “Curriculum Scholar of the Week” by the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (AAACS), specializes in curriculum studies, interdisciplinary and integrative studies, and critical and reconceptual mathematics. He teaches courses and directs programs that “use educational theories to extraordinarily re-experience the ordinary.” The AAACS noted his leadership roles in national and international curriculum associations, his Outstanding Book Award winning, Children’s Books for Grown-Up Teachers, and more recent innovative contributions to sound studies in education scholarship.

Dr. Appelbaum enjoys working with students in areas such as curriculum theory and history; arts-based and hermeneutic research methods; mixed methods that combine quantitative approaches with qualitative approaches; interdisciplinary studies; education in and out of formal institutions; international and global leadership; psychoanalysis and education; popular culture studies; gender and sexuality education; and anything related to diversity, equity and social justice.

He has authored several books. His first, Popular Culture, Educational Discourse and Mathematics (1995), analyzed the ways that curriculum theory, ideology, and cultural trends support and transform power relations and social constructs across professional dialogue and public debates about education, even in the context of supposedly neutral subject areas such as mathematics. Subsequent books include Multicultural and Diversity Education: A Reference Handbook (2002); (Post) Modern Science (Education): Frustrations, Propositions, and Alternative Paths (2001); Embracing Mathematics: On Becoming a Teacher and Changing with Mathematics (2008), co-authored with Arcadia graduate students; Children’s Books for Grown-up Teachers: Reading and Writing Curriculum Theory (2009), which was awarded the American Educational Research Association Outstanding Book Award for Curriculum Studies; and Sonic Studies in Education Foundations (2019). 

Dr. Appelbaum has served as president of AAACS, chair or program chair of various research interest groups, a section editor for several curriculum studies journals, vice president of the International Commission for the Study and Improvement of Mathematics Education, a plenary speaker at international curriculum theory and curriculum studies conferences and international mathematics education conferences, and a workshop leader for several international and global educational leadership programs. He  is also a founding member of the Arts-based Educational Research Group of the American Educational Research Association. 

He is collaborating as a European Union scholar in ethnomathematics with the University of Thessaly in Greece, and as an international expert in assessment and public pedagogies with the University of Lyon in France. Dr. Appelbaum’s sabbatical research plans for the 2022-2023 academic year have him traveling to collaborate on public educational programs outside of schools in Brazil, Norway, Greece, Canada, and South Korea.