Abbey is passionate about translating research into practice. Her research has focused on understanding how children learn math and developing ways to support math teaching and learning. She has 7 years of experience conducting research in schools on high impact problems such as assessing and improving algebraic reasoning. She is fascinated by how incorrect knowledge changes as people learn, and how misunderstandings affect the construction of correct knowledge.
Prior to joining the ISP, she was a postdoctoral researcher in Education at Washington University in St. Louis. She earned a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and Human Development from Peabody College at Vanderbilt, and a B.A. in Psychology from Purdue. She lives near Tower Grove Park and is renovating a 115-year-old red brick house.