Zaur Berkaliev, Ph.D.

Zaur Berkaliev received his Ph.D. in mathematics education from Indiana University, Bloomington (2003); Ph.D. in mathematics from Moscow State University (1985); M.S. in mathematics (with honors) from Moscow State University (1981).

Dr. Berkaliev has extensive teaching experience ranging from the secondary level to undergraduate and graduate courses at the university level. In addition to such mathematics courses as analysis, geometry, linear algebra, topology, and history of mathematics, he has also taught mathematics education courses including clinical supervision, inquiry and problem solving, and math and science curriculum foundations. Dr. Berkaliev has also conducted professional development workshops for inservice mathematics teachers and supervised student teachers. His work in these areas builds on his own experience as a winner of Soviet math olympiads and teaching mathematics and problem solving to secondary students.

In addition to teaching, Dr. Berkaliev has served as director of an international educational-advising center, director of a distance education and telecommunications center, and dean of a teacher training college. He has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship (1998) and Freedom Support Act Scholarship (1996). Dr. Berkaliev has also served as coordinator of a US-Russian international project on mathematics education funded by the NSF.

Dr. Berkaliev’s research interests focus on applications of strange attractors and chaos to the field of mathematics education and on the innovative Russian mathematics curriculum based on Lev Vygotsky’s psychological concepts and its possible implementation in the U.S. The most important features of this problem-solving curriculum are the use of measurement of continuous quantities at the pre-number stage of math instruction and early development of algebraic and geometric thinking.