For the first time in its history, Montclair State will confer doctoral degrees at commencement. Three of the four graduates—Martha Baklarz Croley, Matthew Victor Schertz and Deborah L. Ives—will participate in the May 21 ceremony. Louise Brandes Moura Ferreira will not attend as she has returned to her home country of Brazil.

The candidates each earned a doctorate of education in pedagogy, with Croley and Ives specializing in mathematics education, and Schertz and Ferreira specializing in philosophy for children.

"It's still amazing to me that I am among the first to earn a doctorate from Montclair State," said Croley, a math teacher who eventually would like to become a school district math supervisor or curriculum director. "I knew that to successfully complete a doctoral program while teaching full time would demand strong support and commitment. The strong ties with other members of the cohort well exceeded my expectations, and the professors were challenging, yet supportive."

Croley chose her dissertation topic, "Factors that Produce and Reduce Mathematics Anxiety as Perceived by 7th Grade Females: A Qualitative Study," because she's always been curious about why some females suffer from math anxiety. "I have two daughters and one has high math anxiety and the other has low math anxiety," said Croley who was advised by Kenneth Wolff of Mathematical Sciences. "I had read research that gave many reasons for math anxiety but very few went to the source, female students, at the middle school level. Most research has been with college and post-graduate levels."

Ferreira's adviser was Maughn Gregory of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children for her dissertation, "The Role of a Science Story, Activities and Dialogue Modeled on Philosophy for Children in Teaching Basic Science Process Skills for Fifth Grade."

"Because of my interest in science education I wanted to study the role of a Philosophy for Children modeled science curriculum as fifth graders learned the basic science process skills of classification, observation and inference," she said. "To do that, I developed a dialogical science curriculum that encompassed three central elements of the Philosophy for Children pedagogy--a narrative, communal dialogue and classroom activities."

Ferreira, who earned a master's degree from Montclair State in 1996, taught her curriculum to students at a bilingual (Portuguese and English) school in Brasilia, Brazil. "It means a lot to me to have defended an empirical dissertation that has shown that Philosophy for Children helped my class develop thinking skills," she said. "Philosophy for Children is an innovative and strong pedagogy that needs more studies like this so educators and policymakers can be convinced of its worth."

Schertz and Ives could not be reached for comment. Schertz wrote his dissertation on "Empathic Pedagogy" and was advised by David Kennedy of Educational Foundations. Ives's dissertation topic was "The Development of Seventh Graders' Conceptual Understanding of Geometry and Spatial Visualization Abilities Using Mathematical Representations with Dynamic Models" and was advised by Evan Maletsky of Mathematical Sciences.