Skip to content

Matty Lau CV

Matty Lau
Email: lau.matty (at) gmail.com

Education

Doctor of Philosophy, 2010, Science Education, University of Maryland, College Park
Dissertation: Understanding the dynamics of teacher attention: case studies of how high school physics and physical science teachers attend to student ideas.
Advisors: Drs. David Hammer and Andrew Elby

Bachelors of Arts, Physics, 1997, Bryn Mawr College
Senior Thesis: The use of pulse NMR to study local structures in the organic solid 2-tertiarybutlyanthraquinone.
Advisor: Dr. Peter Beckmann

Research

Research Assistant (6/05 – 8/08) for NSF ESI 0455711 project: “What influences teachers’ modifications of curriculum?” Science Teaching Center, University of Maryland (PIs: Drs. David Hammer, Janet Coffey and Andrew Elby)

  • Developed an analytic framework to capture and explain the variability in high school physics teachers’ attention to student ideas during classroom interactions.
  • Co-facilitated teacher discussions focused on analyzing aspects of productive student reasoning in physics through close examination of video and written data generated from teachers’ classes.
  • Co-facilitated teacher exploration of physics content and the practices of science.
  • Supported teachers writing of case studies for a volume of written and video case studies on student thinking in physics.

    • Research Assistant (9/02 – 5/04) for NSF ESI 9986846 project: Case studies into student inquiry into physical science, Science Teaching Center, University of Maryland (PIs: Drs. David Hammer and Emily van Zee)

  • Assisted in the development of a volume of written and video case studies as professional development material to promote teachers’ substantive investigation of student inquiry in physical science. Cases included transcript, video and/or student written work, the author’s reflections on the class and insights and ideas for use of cases in teacher professional development.
  • Co-facilitated teacher discussions focused on analyzing aspects of productive student reasoning in physical science.

    • Research Assistant (9/00 – 12/00) for Drs. Richard Steinberg and Seth Rosenberg, Department of Physics and School of Education, City College of New York

  • Adapted the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey to probe secondary science teachers’ epistemology.
  • Implemented and analyzed survey for the pre-service teachers’ beliefs on science and learning.

    • Administration

    Program Officer (9/08- 6/09) for Knowles Science Teaching Foundation

  • Recruited, selected, and presented nominated fellows to Executive Director and Board of Trustees.
  • Collaborated in the planning, enactment, and evaluation of program activities to ensure alignment with the Foundation’s five year teacher development plan and mission.
  • Worked with colleagues to develop and refine the Foundation’s core commitments, guiding principles, policy documents and rubrics for selection of Teaching Fellows, and evaluation of program activities.
  • Reviewed grant proposals from Fellows in the Teaching Fellowship program.
  • Mentored Teaching Fellows.

    • Teaching

    University Teaching Experience

    Co-Instructor (09-present), Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, PHYS 591, Physics 2: Foundations of Science

  • Co-developed and co-instructed a physics course on electric circuits and magnetism in the Master of
    Integrated Science Education Program (MISEP)
  • Utilized the University of Washington’s Physics by Inquiry curriculum
  • Developed supplemental activities to emphasized issues regarding nature of science (e.g., development of evidence-based reasoning and scientific argumentation) and teaching scientific inquiry.
  • Trained co-instructor in the pedagogical strategies utilized in the Physics by Inquiry curriculum.

    • Instructor (8/04–5/05), Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Maryland, EDCI 372, Issues of Teaching and Learning in Elementary School Science

  • Utilized Seeing the science in children’s thinking: Case studies of student inquiry in physical science.
  • Created projects to support collaborative group learning about science, teaching, and learning. Projects included investigations involving modeling the motion of the moon based on lunar observations and documenting and analyzing student thinking in science in the practicum placement classrooms.

    • Supervisor (8/04–5/05), Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Maryland

  • Supervised elementary education student teachers.
  • Created a weekly video club to support supervisees’ professional learning in science teaching.

    • Teaching and Research Assistant (9/03-12/03), Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Maryland, EDCI 695, the Teaching and Learning of Science

  • Assisted lead instructor, Dr. David Hammer.
  • Conducted research on the impact of using videos of elementary school student discussion in physical science on the pre-service teacher class discussions.

    • Secondary & Middle School Teaching Experience

    Course developer and teacher (6/04–8/04), The Governor’s School of North Carolina (residential summer school), Area I: Natural Science and Area III: Self & Society

  • Topics included physics, astronomy, and philosophy of science.
  • Focused on using content based exploration to develop students’ scientific epistemology and argumentation.

    • Science Teacher (9/99-6/02), The Berkeley Carroll School.

  • Developed and taught 7th grade Physical Science, 9th grade conceptual physics, and 12th grade science and ethics courses.
  • Created interdisciplinary projects in each course to encourage subject matter connections.
  • Adapted University of Washington’s Physics by Inquiry Kinematics unit for use in middle and high school classrooms to probe student thinking.

    Science and Mathematics Teacher (9/97–6/99) The Saddle River Day School

  • Developed and taught Honors Physics, Physics, and 6th grade science, and AP Calculus AB and BC courses.
  • Prepared students for AP Calculus (AB and BC) exams.
  • Conducted the search for a new Lower School science curriculum.

    • Fellowships, Grants & Awards

    Fellowship, College of Education, University of Maryland, College of Education, 2003-2004.

    Travel Grants, College of Education, University of Maryland, 2007, 2005; the International School of Physics, Research on Physic Education Session, 2003.

    Publications

    Lau, M. and Elby, A. (2008) Two distinct ways of attending to the substance of students’ ideas. Proceedings of the International Conference for the Learning Sciences, Utrecht, Netherlands.

    Beckmann, P. A., Burbank, K. S., Lau, M. M. W., Ree, J. N., Weber, T. L. (2002). “Solid state proton spin-lattice relaxation in four structurally related organic molecules.” Chemical Physics, 290, 241-250.

    Manuscripts in progress

    Elby, A., Lau, M., Hammer, D. Accounting for variability in a teacher’s epistemology: Resources and framing. Submitted.

    Lau, M., Hammer, D., Elby, A. Hovan, D. Framing as a tool for understanding variability in teacher attention. In preparation.

    Presentations

    Refereed Presentations

    Lau, M. and Elby, A. Dave’s 9th-grade physics class: a “sticky” shift from eliciting ideas to finding correct answers, poster presented in an interactive poster session at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Denver, CO, April 2010.

    Lau, M., Elby, A., Myeson, J. Two distinct ways of attending to the substance of student ideas, poster presented at the International Conference of the Learning Science, Utretch, Netherlands, June 2008.

    Lau, M. “Is that what you are saying?”: An investigations into how a teacher attends to student ideas, data presentation given at the 29th Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum, Philadelphia, PA, February 2008.

    Lau, M., Hammer, D., Elby, A., Hovan, D. Framing as a Tool for Understanding Variability in Teacher Attention and Interaction, poster presented in an interactive poster session at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL, April 2007.

    Lau, M., Elby, A., Hammer, D., Hovan, D. Case for variability in teaching practice, talk presented at the American Association of Physics Teachers Conference, Syracuse, NY, July 2006.

    Lau, M., Elby, A., Hammer, D., Hovan, D. How a teacher framed his interactions with his students: a window into the complexities of practice, poster presented at the American Association of Physics Teachers Conference, Syracuse, NY, July 2006.

    Lau, M. and Hammer, D. What a teacher hears: A case of how a teaching intern makes sense of student ideas in science, poster presented in an interactive poster session at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, Canada, April 2005.

    Lau, M. and Hammer, D., Making sense of Student Ideas- what one pre-service teacher noticed in his elementary science class, talk presented at the American Association of Physics Teachers Conference, Sacramento, CA July 2004.
    Hutchison, P. and Lau, M. Bad at Science but Good at Inquiry? A Case Study, talk presented at the American Association of Physics Teachers Conference, Madison, WI, August 2003.

    Lau, M. Examples of Student Inquiry in a 5th grade classroom, poster presentation at the National Science Teachers Association’s National Conference, March 2003.

    Invited Talks

    Lau, M. Sense-making in science: a proposal for a teacher professional development program. Invited talk given at Knowles Science Teaching Foundation, Moorestown, NJ May 2008

    Lau, M. Understanding the dynamics of teacher attention. Invited talk given at TERC, Cambridge, MA March 2008.

    Hammer, D. and Lau, M. Helping Pre-service Elementary Teachers Learn to Attend to Student Thinking, invited talk given at the American Association of Physics Teachers Conference, Miami, FL, January, 2004.

    Invited Participant

    Conference on Videocases for Analysis of Science. LessonLab Research Institute. Santa Monica, CA, 2006.

    Media

    Featured in article, “Teachers who make magic”, Creative Classrooms Magazine, August 2001.

    Consulting

    Professional development workshops. Led workshop at the following institutions for in- and pre-service teachers on attending to the substance of elementary student thinking utilizing the cases from D. Hammer and E. van Zee (Eds) Seeing the Science In Children’s Thinking: Appletree Institute (7/08) and Rutgers University Graduate School of Education (4/08)

    Analyzing videos with teachers (4/05). Towson’s Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC) project. Consulted on methods for video use in teacher discussions about student learning.

    Service

    Graduate student representative on faculty search committee, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Maryland. (09/05-05/06) A voting member of the search committee for new tenure-line faculty hire in the Science Education.

    Co-organizer of the Physics Education Research Seminar, Department of Physics. (09/04-05/05) Scheduled speakers, arranged travel and housing for speakers, and organized seminars on Education and Physics Education research.

    Reviewed submissions for publication in the journals: Cognition and Instruction and the Journal of Research in Science Teaching.

    Reviewed proposals for the International Conference of the Learning Sciences and the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

    Professional Affiliations

    American Association of Physics Teachers
    American Education Research Association, Division K and Division C
    National Association of Research in Science Teaching
    International Society of the Learning Sciences