About

Heather C. Hill is the Hazen-Nicoli Professor in Teacher Learning and Practice at Harvard Graduate School of Education, currently on leave for the 2025-2026 academic year. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, obtained in 2000. Her research focuses on policies and programs designed to improve teacher and teaching quality, with particular emphasis on mathematics education. Her recent work explores teacher learning and professional development, the quality of mathematics instruction, and the effectiveness of various approaches to teacher education. Hill and her team have developed assessments that measure teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching and the mathematical quality of instruction, which are disseminated through online training and administration systems. She studies the impact of these measures on instructional practices and teacher development. Hill is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also serves on the editorial boards of several journals and advises numerous research projects and policy efforts both in the U.S. and internationally.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Surgery
• Ophthalmology

Selected publications

• Measuring teachers’ Inclination to Engage in Standards-Based Instructional Practices at Scale: A New Approach

  Educational Assessment · 2026-04-01

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

• Assessing Instructional Explanations for Mathematical Procedures at Scale Using Animated Teaching Simulations

  The Elementary School Journal · 2026-01-26

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Student mastery of elementary mathematical procedures is foundational to learning in the discipline and to success in more advanced mathematics. Prior studies suggest that classroom instruction often focuses on the steps of procedures without also providing support for their meaning, for instance by emphasizing place value or justifying steps. However, studies on this topic are either outdated or limited in scale. In response, we analyze 324 teachers’ spoken instructional explanations in reaction to 6 animated teaching simulations covering 3 teaching tasks—explaining a procedure, addressing student confusion, and summarizing a nonstandard student method. An analysis of these data reveals that teachers primarily focus on the steps of procedures except when summarizing nonstandard student methods. Results provide clues about the nature of US classroom instruction and offer a new tool for evaluating the impact of efforts to change that instruction.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Same Idea, Shifting Standards: An Experimental Study of Racial-Ethnic Biases in Responsive Math Teaching

  Teachers College Record The Voice of Scholarship in Education · 2026-03-01

  articleSenior author

  Background: Teacher expectations and judgments about student capabilities are predictive of student achievement, yet such judgments may be influenced by salient dimensions of student identity and invite biases. Moreover, responsive teaching in mathematics may also invite teacher biases due to the emphasis on student-generated inputs and ideas. Although prior experimental work has demonstrated teacher biases against racially minoritized learners in the context of incorrect or partially correct student mathematical work, less is known about the potential for biases to emerge when teachers are presented with students’ correct and nonstandard mathematical ideas. Focus of Study: In this preregistered experiment, we investigate teacher biases in (a) expectations and judgments about student capabilities in math and (b) teacher responsiveness to students’ mathematical thinking. Research Design: Through a between-subjects design via an online survey, we randomly assigned N = 312 teachers to a simulated classroom composed of predominantly Black, Latinx/e, or White students and prompted them to respond to six vignettes featuring correct and nonstandard student solutions to mathematics problems. Teachers’ responses to each vignette were recorded, transcribed, and coded. We also prompted teachers to judge the quality of the students’ mathematical thinking and rate their expectations about the difficulty of the problems for a typical student. Finally, we ran a series of regressions on our outcomes of interest to understand how teachers’ responses to and thinking about student work in the vignettes might systematically vary depending on student race-ethnicity. Conclusions: Our findings show teachers expected greater task difficulty in both the Latinx/e and Black classroom conditions relative to the White. We did not find significant differences by condition in other dimensions, although we found trend-level evidence to suggest that teachers may be more likely to support student sense-making and provide more positive, substantive affirmations to Black students relative to White students for the same mathematical solution. Our findings have implications for research and teacher training in reform-oriented mathematics instruction.

  PublisherDOI

• Structured Reporting Guidelines for Classroom Intervention Research

  Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness · 2025-04-10 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A Meta-Analysis of the Experimental Evidence Linking Mathematics and Science Professional Development Interventions to Teacher Knowledge, Classroom Instruction, and Student Achievement

  AERA Open · 2025-05-20 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access

  Despite evidence that teacher professional development interventions in mathematics and science can increase student achievement, our understanding of the mechanisms by which this occurs—particularly how these interventions affect teachers themselves and the extent to which teacher-level changes predict student learning—remains limited. The current meta-analysis synthesizes 46 experimental studies of PK–12 mathematics and science professional development interventions to investigate how these interventions affect teacher-level outcomes, including knowledge and classroom instruction, and how these impacts relate to intervention effects on student achievement. Compared with controls, treatment group teachers in PK–12 mathematics and science PD intervention studies demonstrated stronger performance on teacher-level outcomes (pooled average impact estimate: +0.52 SD). Programs with larger impacts on teacher-level outcomes also tended to have significantly larger mean impacts on student achievement. We discuss implications for future research and practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Does Increased Choice over Learning Topic Improve the Effectiveness of Automated Feedback for Educators?

  Education Sciences · 2025-09-05

  articleOpen access

  Educator agency in the form of choice over learning experiences is widely thought to enhance educator engagement and instructional improvement, yet causal evidence is scarce. We conducted a preregistered randomized controlled trial in an online computer science course with volunteer instructors who teach students worldwide. All instructors (N = 583) received automated feedback on their instruction, with half randomly assigned to have choice over the feedback topic. Choice alone did not increase feedback engagement or yield observable changes in practice, but it raised student attendance—an effect that was strongest for instructors who voluntarily engaged with additional training resources, including training modules and teaching simulations. For this subset of instructors, having choice over feedback had significant positive impacts on their instruction and student outcomes compared to the control group. This suggests that agency in choosing feedback topics may be most effective when combined with instructors’ intrinsic motivation to pursue self-directed improvement. Our study also demonstrates a scalable method for testing design principles in educator training and underscores the need to examine when, how and for whom agency might drive improvement.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Quantitative Study of Mathematical Vocabulary Use in Upper Elementary Classrooms

  Educational Researcher · 2025-11-30

  article

  This study provides the first large-scale quantitative exploration of mathematical vocabulary use in upper elementary U.S. classrooms. Our approach employs natural language processing techniques to describe variation in teachers’ and students’ use of mathematical vocabulary in 1,657 fourth- and fifth-grade lessons in 317 classrooms in four districts over 3 years. Students’ exposure to mathematical vocabulary varies substantially across lessons and between teachers. Results suggest that teacher modeling, defined as the frequency of mathematical vocabulary in teacher talk, does not substantially cause students to uptake mathematical vocabulary but that teachers may encourage student use of mathematical vocabulary by means other than mere modeling or exposure. We find that teachers who more frequently model mathematical vocabulary use are more effective at raising student test scores.

  PublisherDOI

• <i>Equipping Educators for Equity Through Ethnic‐Racial Identity</i> Curriculum: Comparing Teachers' Fidelity of Implementation Across Remote and in‐Person Training

  Journal of Community Psychology · 2025-06-13 · 3 citations

  article

  Professional development (PD) to help teachers learn to use curriculum materials can be effective in aiding fidelity of implementation and supporting student learning. PD may be particularly necessary for curricula focused on students' ethnic-racial identities, given educators' potential discomfort and limited formal training focused on strategies for discussing race/ethnicity in class. The Equipping Educators for Equity through Ethnic-Racial Identity (E⁴) PD prepares educators to implement an eight-lesson ethnic-racial identity curriculum with high school students. We tested whether fidelity of implementation of the ethnic-racial identity curriculum varied by two training modalities: in-person versus remote. Teachers' (N = 14) fidelity of implementation across 55 classrooms was assessed via 440 observations. Teachers' fidelity regarding curriculum adherence was high (76%) and did not vary significantly by training modality. Remote and in-person training resulted in similar fidelity of implementation, suggesting remote trainings may enable scaling up without sacrificing impact.

  PublisherDOI

• Practice-Based Teacher Education Pedagogies Improve Responsiveness: Evidence from a Lab Experiment

  Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness · 2025-02-12 · 5 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Equity-Focused, Rubric-Based Coaching: An Incremental Improvement Approach to Supporting Teachers to Shift Toward More Equitable Mathematics Instruction

  Education Sciences · 2025-04-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Historically, inequities in mathematics education have resulted in mathematics classrooms that do not support all students, and particularly students from marginalized backgrounds. Efforts to transform mathematics classrooms to be culturally responsive, sustaining, and justice-oriented have met limited success at scale. It may be that supporting teachers to develop more equitable teaching practices would benefit from a more incremental improvement approach. This article considers how school-based mathematics coaches can support teachers to make incremental shifts toward more equitable instruction. We describe a coaching model designed to include elements of incremental improvement, in which coaches and teachers analyze video against a set of rubrics that delineate equitable teaching practices. Using established routines and structures, coaches and teachers work together to identify and enact small, actionable changes that build toward more ambitious equity-oriented practices. Drawing on pilot data, we articulate how the coaching model both reflects and builds on an improvement approach to professional learning. We argue that while incremental shifts may be insufficient to fully address systemic inequities, they can serve as a meaningful bridge toward larger changes. We conclude with considerations for engaging in equity-oriented incremental improvement work.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• SURVEY OF U.S. MIDDLE SCHOOL MATHEMATICS TEACHERS AND TEACHING

  NSF · $3.3M · 2014–2019

• Exploring Methods for Improving Teachers' Mathematical Quality of Instruction

  NSF · $421k · 2012–2015

• Investigating the Effect of Professional Development, Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching, and Instruction on Student Outcomes

  NSF · $4.7M · 2009–2016

Frequent coauthors

• J. Dailey

  36 shared

• Simone Chess

  University of California, San Diego

  36 shared

• Matt Brim

  36 shared

• Eric Garry

  Brooklyn College

  36 shared

• Abigail Jelsing

  University of California, San Diego

  36 shared

• Kel Currah

  City University of New York

  36 shared

• E. J. Rose

  Los Angeles LGBT Center

  36 shared

• Stacey Geiger

  Wells College

  36 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Political Science

  University of Michigan

  2000

• B.A.

  Swarthmore College

  1992

Awards & honors

• Elected member of the National Academy of Education
• Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences