Karen Tzanetopoulos, M.S., CCC-SLP is co-author of the book How Children Learn Math: The Science of Math Learning in Research and Practice (Routledge, 2023). She is a speech and language therapist with expertise in the cognitive processes of math learning and the science of reading. Currently, she owns her private practice, Learning to Full Potential, LLC, where she focuses on training educators and families on math teaching strategies and providing in-person and online instruction to students struggling with math and reading. She bases her math instruction on the latest cognitive and neurocognitive research in math learning and in modifying math language to improve understanding of math concepts. She bases her reading instruction on the science of reading and her experience as a speech and language pathologist. The science of reading and the science of math have multiple common neurological pathways. Learning math concepts requires additional specific brain development. Karen incorporates these processes into her instruction with students and trains teachers and parents in them as well.

Karen is currently participating in her third National Science Foundation grant, Conversations Across Boundaries out of NC State University. It is a two-year grant focused on finding common ground among math cognition researchers and university education departments on how to provide math instruction. Karen is one of 24 math-learning experts invited to debate and find common ground on the different approaches to math instruction, including the science of math,, cognitive and neurocognitive research, education research, explicit instruction, and inquiry-based instruction.

Previously, Karen was awarded two National Science Foundation Innovation Corps grants through the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. These grants enabled Karen to study the problems teachers have and children's struggles in learning math. With only 32% of 4th graders and 25% of 12th graders meeting basic state standards in math in the United States, teaching and learning math is clearly a great problem. The NSF grants allowed Karen to study the latest cognitive and neurocognitive research on math learning and interview teachers, administrators, parents, and researchers nationwide about these problems.

After receiving her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science degrees from the University of Michigan, Karen began her career at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (now the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab), followed by the Chicago Institute for Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch, laying the foundation for the brain science approach that Karen takes in helping children and young adults today.

Karen’s interest in math learning began while she worked in public schools. There, she observed that many children with reading and language difficulties also struggled with math. This observation began the extensive research in which she has engaged.