Patrick Kirkland, Ph.D.

Dr. Patrick Kirkland is an Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Institute for Educational Initiatives and a faculty member of ACE Teaching Fellows.

Kirkland teaches elementary math methods and assessment courses for ACE Teaching Fellows and will teach education research methods courses in the Education, Schooling, and Society program. He also supervises a community of ACE Teaching Fellows. His research interests are in the area of children’s development of mathematical cognition in the context of K-12 classrooms. Specifically, he researches how students make sense of the relationship between whole numbers, fractions, and decimals and operations in math.

His current research is funded by the National Science Foundation and examines how to best measure upper elementary and middle school students’ number sense. This research is in collaboration with the CLAD Lab and TutorND here on campus.

Kirkland is a former Burns Fellow in the Notre Dame Program for Interdisciplinary Research (ND PIER) and a graduate of ACE Teaching Fellows. He taught middle school math and social studies in Savannah, GA before working as the Associate Director of Academics for ACE Teaching Fellows.

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Degrees

• 2022 Ph.D., Psychology, Research and Experimental, University of Notre Dame
• 2020 M.A., Psychology, University of Notre Dame
• 2012 M.Ed., University of Notre Dame
• 2010 B.B.A., Finance and Political Science, University of Notre Dame

Awards

• Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher Award, The Graduate School and ND Learning | Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Notre Dame

Publications

Kirkland, P.K., Guang, C., Cheng, Y. & McNeil, N.M. (2024). Mature Number Sense Uniquely Predicts Middle School Students’ Growth in Mathematics Achievement Over a School Year. Journal of Educational Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000880

Kirkland, P. K., Guang, C., Otuonye, C., & McNeil, N. M. (2024). A Brief, Multiple-Choice Assessment of Mature Number Sense Is Strongly Correlated with More Resource-Intensive Measures. Journal of Numerical Cognition, 10, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.5964/jnc.12679

O’Rear, C.D., Kirkland, P.K., Purpura, D., (2024). The How Many and Give-N Tasks: Conceptually Distinct Measures of the Cardinality Principle. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 66, 61–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2023.08.010

Kirkland, P.K., Cheng, Y., & McNeil, N.M. (2024). A Validity Argument for a Brief Assessment of Mature Number Sense. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 55(1), 51–67. https://doi.org/10.5951/jresematheduc-2022-0071

Kirkland, P.K. & McNeil, N. M. (2021). Question design affects students' sense-making on mathematics word problems. Cognitive Science, 45, e12960.

CV