CMP at PME-NA 2026: Designing for Artificial Intelligence in Mathematics Education
On Tuesday, October 13, the Connected Mathematics Project (CMP) took part in the annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME-NA), held at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
Dr. Alden J. “AJ” Edson joined Ruthmae Sears and Min Sun for the conference’s plenary Curriculum AI Panel. AJ’s talk, Designing for Artificial Intelligence: Rethinking Curriculum Tasks, Tools, and Student Thinking in Mathematics, took on a pressing question for the field. Generative AI is quickly entering mathematics classrooms, but much of its use today centers on generating tasks and checking answers. What would it take for AI to support students’ mathematical thinking instead?
Using proportional reasoning as a case study, AJ drew on CMP’s design-based research with the Connected Mathematics®4 curriculum, the CLUE digital collaborative platform, and a human-developed framework for interpreting students’ reasoning. Together, this work shows how curriculum and technology can make student thinking visible, shareable, and interpretable over time. He closed by proposing design principles for AI that helps teachers interpret student thinking and supports meaningful mathematics learning, rather than replacing the work of teaching.
Earlier that day, AJ also presented a poster developed with CMP colleagues Elizabeth (Betty) Phillips and Yvonne Slanger-Grant, Design Principles for Classroom Artificial Intelligence to Surface and Support Students’ Proportional Reasoning over Time. The poster shared principles from the team’s iterative design research. These include collaborative problem solving, teacher-facing analytics for sorting and comparing student work, and AI models trained on student work tagged with a proportional reasoning rubric.
Both presentations reflect CMP’s long-standing commitment to problem-based learning and deep mathematical understanding. Technology should serve that work, not replace it. We’re grateful to the PME-NA organizers and to everyone who joined the conversation in Provo.
Up next: The CMP team heads to Denver later this month for the annual meetings of NCSM (October 27) and NCTM (October 29–30).
