BIO

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Dr Thorsten Scheiner is a Research Fellow in Mathematics Education at the Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education, ACU Brisbane. Prior to this appointment, he has been a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Auckland. Before doing a Joint Ph.D. at the University of Hamburg and Macquarie University, Thorsten Scheiner received his B.Sc. and M.Ed. from the Leibniz University of Hannover. He has been a visiting researcher and visiting scholar at Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education in San Diego.

Thorsten Scheiner's research program focuses on enhancing the teaching and learning of mathematics at the secondary and university levels for all students. In particular, this research program advances conceptual understanding and theory in two interrelated research areas of mathematics education: (a) the nature and development of secondary mathematics teachers' knowledge and noticing, and (b) the nature and development of key processes in students' advanced mathematical thinking and learning.

In the first line of research, Thorsten Scheiner promotes a new understanding of the nature and development of secondary mathematics teachers' knowledge and noticing, an area of research that is highly relevant to pedagogical practice. This line of research includes original work to advance conceptualizations of mathematics teachers' knowledge and practices that contribute to the international discourse on how the field conceptualizes mathematics teachers' professional work (Scheiner, Godino, Montes et al., 2022; Scheiner, Montes, Godino et al., 2019). This includes developing a more comprehensive model of teacher noticing that allows the field to move beyond intuitive models that understand teacher noticing as a disembodied, purely mental form of seeing, and to position noticing as embodied, cultural, and positional in important ways (Scheiner, 2016, 2021). In the area of teacher noticing, he is also contributing to the body of knowledge about how prospective and practicing teachers learn to notice critical instructional events (König, Santagata, Scheiner et al., 2022), particularly through the use of video-based studies in teacher education and professional development programs (Santagata, König, Scheiner et al., 2021).

In the second line of research, Thorsten Scheiner generates new knowledge about complex dynamic processes that are crucial for meaningful mathematical learning of students in secondary schools and universities. In particular, new interpretive possibilities and theoretical hypotheses have been developed and explored that extend research on mathematical cognition by identifying key functions (epistemological, conceptual, and cognitive) of mathematical learning processes (Scheiner, 2016; Scheiner & Pinto, 2019). In this line of research, he also drives theoretical innovations in research on mathematical thinking and learning that enable the development of metatheories on highly contested topics such as conceptual change in mathematical learning (Scheiner, 2020). This is significant precisely because deeper processes in mathematical learning can be identified when tensions, conflicts, and paradoxes between fundamental but opposing theoretical perspectives are acknowledged and exploited. 

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To date, Thorsten Scheiner has taught undergraduate courses in mathematics as well as undergraduate and graduate courses in mathematics education at different universities, including the University of Auckland, Macquarie University, the University of Hamburg, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, and the Humboldt University of Berlin. He also worked as a part-time teacher at the German International School Sydney and has been a teaching assistant and instructor both in a local school in Germany and in the German International Schools in Cape Town and Dubai.

Thorsten Scheiner is the founder and director of the International Community of Emerging Researchers in Mathematics Education and has been the chairperson of three national working groups of the Foundation of German Business. He received the Studienkolleg Fellowship from the Foundation of German Business and the Robert Bosch Foundation; the Klaus Murmann Fellowship from the Foundation of German Business; and the Research Excellence Scholarship from Macquarie University. He has been awarded the Karl H. Ditze Award of the University of Hamburg for his doctoral dissertation, and he has recently been a recipient of the Early Career Researcher Excellence in Research Recognition Award from the Institute of Learning Sciences and Teacher Education Australia.