An instructor’s encouragement leads to a career that’s making a major difference
Kathryn Pedings-Behling grew up in the small town of Saint Matthews, S.C. In middle school, she developed a fondness for solving mathematics and logic puzzles — so much so, that she even stole her older brother’s SAT prep workbook for fun!
“I found the problems fascinating,” says Pedings-Behling. “They were so different from what we were learning in school, and I really enjoyed the puzzle aspect.”
Pedings-Behling later attended the S.C. Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics during high school. There, she met an instructor that would alter her future path and change her life for the better. Nancy Long, Ph.D., saw a talent for mathematics in Pedings-Behling and encouraged her to take elective math classes beyond those taught in a typical high school.
“My whole life, I knew I wanted to be a teacher,” says Pedings-Behling. “Even throughout my time at the Governor’s School, I still felt like I would teach elementary school. I became a Teaching Fellow and was off to college to pursue an elementary education degree.”
Pedings-Behling exempted all the required math courses for elementary education due to her AP Calculus exam scores, but she still wanted to take additional math courses. She ended up changing her major to mathematics education to enroll in those specialized courses.
“Before I even called my parents to tell them I was changing my major, I called Long,” says Pedings-Behling. “I stayed very close with her throughout my college career and found new mentors in the math department as well. They pushed me to pursue opportunities that I would never have considered possible.”
At the conclusion of her time in college, she was able to recognize Long at her graduation for meaningful contributions to her education. Their collaboration continued as Pedings-Behling began her teaching career, and though Long has since passed, her impact is still felt with Pedings-Behling today. She was even able to have a full-circle moment later in her career when she served as an Outreach curriculum developer at her alma mater, the Governor’s School.
This job sparked an interest in curriculum design that continues to motivate Pedings-Behling. She got an opportunity to teach distance education classes at the College of Charleston and meet up with a former professor, Amy Langville, Ph.D. During her master’s program, she and Langville studied ranking, ranking methods and rankability. While Pedings-Behling was teaching and working for the Governor’s School, Langville developed a project called “Deconstruct Calculus” where she created interactive journals for her students who traditionally struggled with college calculus classes. Pedings-Behling was teaching business calculus classes but did not want to shoehorn Langville’s books into her instruction — so together they wrote a new one.
“It was crazy,” says Pedings-Behling. “We had this conversation in May and planned to launch the textbook in the fall. All summer we were working, writing pages, developing the problems and editing.”
In the fall, they used the book with their students and constantly requested feedback. They wanted to know about errors, confusing instructions and concepts, and would use this feedback to update the book each semester.
“In the beginning, we were editing hundreds of pages at a time,” says Pedings-Behling. “There was so much to fix, change and add. We were incredibly iterative. We could see that our students might be having a difficult time with logarithms, so we would think about how we could make concepts understandable. It was grueling at times.”
This constant feedback was the perfect foundation for Pedings-Behling to use in her doctoral education. Her program emphasizes “Action Research,” a process of action, evaluation and reflection that allows practitioners to quickly implement improvement practices in their classrooms.
“Although I felt like I have already applied these concepts, I now feel much more efficient,” says Pedings-Behling. “We both have stories of our students interacting with their textbooks outside of class. I’ve even run into one of my students at an apple farm where she was excited to tell me that she brought her book along on the car ride.”
These are not your typical responses to business calculus. Pedings-Behling emphasizes that not every student is a fan. Some students respond to more traditional lecturing, but the change occurring in the classroom cannot be ignored.
“I have so many students tell me that they had no idea this is what math could be,” says Pedings-Behling.
Pedings-Behling is not done innovating. It’s been four years since they wrote the first book, but her doctoral professors are encouraging her to see her work in new ways. Most of her students will complete their math education in her class. She is considering her responsibility as their last math professor and wants to leave them with a better attitude toward the subject. So many students understand math until they encounter a certain course or concept, and then they write it off as not their subject. They feel that they must get through it, but there is no longer a place for them in the subject.
“My dissertation hopes to change the narratives around math and leave students with an appreciation of what math can bring to their lives,” says Pedings-Behling. “My professors are helping me narrow my focus and determine what I can control in my work. Until now, I haven’t formalized the data surrounding our work. Now, I want the data to show what I am seeing in my students. We know what we are doing is making phenomenal change, but we need to legitimize that work as well.”