Student Argumentation Work Sample Sorting Task and Teachers’ Evaluations of Arguments

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Megan Staples University of Connecticut

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Jillian Cavanna University of Connecticut

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To support teachers in implementing ambitious reform efforts, professional developers and teacher educators need to know more about teachers’ thinking about argumentation. Specifically, there is a need to understand more about teachers’ views and evaluations of students’ mathematical arguments as they play out in practice. In this article, we share a tool developed to elicit teachers’ pre- and postevaluations of students’ mathematical arguments on a problem-solving task. We discuss the design of the tool and provide evidence of its utility. Our findings indicate that the tool can be used to (a) identify changes in teachers’ evaluations of student mathematical arguments over time and (b) inform the design of professional learning experiences.

Contributor Notes

Megan Staples, Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Connecticut, Neag School of Education, 249 Glenbrook Rd – Unit 3033, Storrs, CT 06269, megan.staples@uconn.edu

Jillian Cavanna, Assistant Professor, Elementary Education – STEM & Innovation, University of Hartford, 200 Bloomfield Ave, Hillyer 324, West Hartford, CT 06117, cavanna@hartford.edu

(Corresponding author is Megan Staples megan.staples@uconn.edu)
(Corresponding author is Jillian Cavanna cavanna@hartford.edu)
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