In this article we detail a research study using the Instructional Quality Assessment (IQA) Rubrics () as the frame for a professional development with mathematics teachers in grades 3-8. We wanted to create a professional development around a tool that was typically used in research as a way to observe teachers, as a tool to use with teachers on their reflection of instruction. In this study we share both the researchers’ and teachers’ perspectives of affordances and constraints of the professional development and observational rubrics.
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Amber G. Candela and Melissa Boston
Carybeth Hobbs
This article describes how fortuitous mathematical moments should be noticed, encouraged, embraced, and capitalized upon.
Luz A. Maldonado Rodríguez, Naomi Jessup, Marrielle Myers, Nicole Louie, and Theodore Chao
Elementary mathematics teacher education often draws on research-based frameworks that center children as mathematical thinkers, grounding teaching in children’s mathematical strategies and ideas and as a means to attend to equity in mathematics teaching and learning. In this conceptual article, a group of critical mathematics teacher educators of color reflect on the boundaries of Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) as a research-based mathematical instructional framework advancing equity through a sociopolitical perspective of mathematics instruction connected to race, power, and identity. We specifically discuss CGI along the dominant and critical approaches to equity outlined by , ) framework. We present strategies used to extend our work with CGI and call for the field to continue critical conversations of examining mathematical instructional frameworks as we center equity and criticality.
Farshid Safi, Sarah B. Bush, Siddhi Desai, and Introduction by: Kevin J. Dykema
From the Archives highlights articles from NCTM’s legacy journals, as chosen by leaders in mathematics education.
Chunlian Jiang and Eunmi Joung
Growing Problem Solvers provides four original, related, classroom-ready mathematical tasks, one for each grade band. Together, these tasks illustrate the trajectory of learners’ growth as problem solvers across their years of school mathematics.
Daniel Frischemeier
Bar graphs are fundamental to display distributions of categorical variables in primary school. Here is an approach using TinkerPlots™ to create bar graphs on different representation levels in small and large data sets.
Amanda T. Sugimoto
Mathematics standards and practices highlight the vital role that language plays in mathematics education. However, there remains a common misconception that mathematics is somehow language-free or less linguistically demanding than other content areas. This qualitative study describes an intervention implemented in six elementary mathematics methods courses. The intervention was designed to attune prospective teachers’ noticing to the language modalities and supports in mathematics teaching and learning. The intervention began with an observation tool that prospective teachers completed in their field placement classrooms. This article classifies prospective teachers’ noticings and explicates how these noticing became a pedagogical catalyst for further learning and discussion in subsequent mathematics methods classes.
Jody Guarino, Shelbi Cole, and Michelle Sperling
In a humanized approach to assessment, the design of the instrument itself is only a small part of the overall process.
Megan Holmstrom and Zachary Sweet
Problems to Ponder provides 28 varying, classroom-ready mathematics problems that collectively span PK–12, arranged in the order of the grade level. Answers to the problems are available online. Individuals are encouraged to submit a problem or a collection of problems directly to mtlt@nctm.org. If published, the authors of problems will be acknowledged.
Hanan Alyami
During a Desmos activity, students adjust the measures of angles in radians to reposition a laser and a mirror so the beam passes through three stationary targets. The Radian Lasers activity can be extended to simulate project-based learning.