Lee Vernon Stiff (born 1949) is an American mathematics education researcher, a professor in the Department of Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education at North Carolina State University,[1] and the author of several mathematics textbooks.
Stiff's father was "a factory worker with only a third-grade education".[2] Despite his inauspicious family background, Stiff studied mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in 1971, and went on to earn a masters degree from Duke University in 1974 and a doctorate in mathematics education from North Carolina State University in 1978.[3][4] After teaching mathematics at the middle school and high school levels, and then holding a faculty position at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte beginning in 1978, he returned to NCSU in 1983.[3]
From 2000 to 2002 Stiff was president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.[5] Under his leadership, the NCTM pushed for a greater emphasis on basic computational skills in elementary and secondary school mathematics education, and for an appropriate emphasis on conceptual understanding.[6] Stiff rejected simple solutions to complex issues, saying that "Back to basics is moving backward. Number-crunching alone is no longer enough."[7] Instead, Stiff has recommended better training and incentives for mathematics teachers, a teaching style that incorporates a variety of ways of looking at the same material, and an attitude that all students can learn mathematics regardless of their background.[2][8]
In 1995 he was a Fulbright scholar in Ghana.[9] In 2009 he was an NCSU College Distinguished Award recipient,[10] and in 2010 the NCSU College of Education gave him their Distinguished Alumni Award.[3]