Different types of open tasks can be used as a tool to promote rigorous student mathematical discourse and considerations for facilitation.
Browse
Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About
Nicola M. Hodkowski and Carolyn Carhart-Quezada
Teaching Is a Journey: The Frog in the Well
Linling Cai Chawla, Amanda Fox, and Elodie Resurreccion
Three authors from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, who discovered that their understanding of math and education have been limited by their cultural views, collaborate to become better educators.
Ways to Help Students Become Powerful Mathematical Thinkers
Alan H. Schoenfeld
Ear to the Ground features voices from several corners of the mathematics education world.
Adapt It! Adapting Stories and Technology for Engagement in Geometry
Karen L. Terrell, Dennis J. DeBay, and Valerie J. Spencer
A task to develop and provide access to mathematics for all.
Construct It! Triangle Puzzle Challenges
Enrique Ortiz
This article presents an original puzzle that supports students’ development of visual thinking and geometry ideas based on the Van Hiele levels of geometric thought.
Characterizing Secondary Teachers’ Structural Reasoning
Stacy Musgrave, Cameron Byerley, Neil Hatfield, Surani Joshua, and Hyunkyoung Yoon
The Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Practice asks students to look for and make use of structure. Hence, mathematics teacher educators need to prepare teachers to support students’ structural reasoning. In this article, we present tasks and rubrics designed and validated to characterize teachers’ structural reasoning for the purposes of professional development. Initially, tasks were designed and improved using interviews and small pilot studies. Next, we gave written structure tasks to over 600 teachers in two countries and developed and validated rubrics to categorize responses. Our work contributes to the preparation and support of mathematics teachers as they develop their own structural reasoning and their ability to help students develop structural reasoning.
Designing for Sensemaking of Research: The Mathematics District Leader Research Group
F. Paul Wonsavage
In this article, I share a design-based research intervention meant to help mathematics district leaders build their capacity to engage with research quality. I present my design (i.e., principles, key features, and intervention structure) and elaborate on how the features of the design allowed for mathematics district leaders’ sensemaking of educational research quality, especially regarding the process for collecting data and research implications. I conclude with recommendations for mathematics teacher educators on how they might adapt my design to their contexts.
Using a Practical Measure to Support Inquiry Into Professional Development Facilitation
Hannah Nieman, Kara Jackson, Michael Jarry-Shore, Hilda Borko, Elham Kazemi, Starlie Chinen, Anita Lenges, Zuhal Yilmaz, and Cara Haines
Despite the complexity of facilitating professional development (PD) and growing attention to supporting facilitators, few tools exist for facilitators to engage in ongoing inquiry into their practice. In this article, we offer a practical measure, the Collaborative Professional Development Survey (CPDS), designed to provide facilitators with information about teachers’ perceptions of aspects of the PD learning environment that research indicates matter for teachers’ opportunities to learn. We illustrate how facilitators used the CPDS to support their collective inquiry into facilitation. We also illustrate the social processes that appeared to enable facilitators’ productive use of the CPDS, including a routine to analyze the resulting data, and the orientations that underpinned their analysis. We discuss implications for facilitators’ use of the CPDS.
Your Role in Students’ Stories
Pamela A. Seda
Ear to the Ground features voices from several corners of the mathematics education world.
“Mathematics: The Universal Language?”
Sharon B. Hoffert and Introduction by: Candies Cook
From the Archives highlights articles from NCTM’s legacy journals, previously discussed by the MTLT Journal Club.
