Kiera is committed to challenging the status quo. She comes to ConnectED from a 15-year career working in special education and instructional coaching. Kiera’s vision is to ensure access to high quality instruction for all learners. Kiera has worked as a teacher in residential programs, K-12 special education programs, focusing on 9-12 full inclusion. She became an instructional coach supporting other learning specialists. Kiera also developed an interest in designing Blended Learning programs that prioritized the integration of technology and coached teachers who were implementing. She began this work in Algebra 1 classrooms, growing the program to include math classroom 9-12 and assistive technology for student 9-12 in all disciplines.

Kiera has a Ph.D. in Special Education with a Designated Emphasis in New Media. Her research explores how the tools and technologies that are used in education influence learning, with an emphasis on discovery-based approaches. Using a design-based research approach she has designed alternative approaches to introducing learners to important aspects of algebraic cognition. Her dissertation focused on how technology-based learning activities can facilitate emergent algebraic understanding that is subjectively transparent and proposes a new pedagogical approach called Reverse Scaffolding.