Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education

Scheiner, Thorsten

doi: 10.1007/s10857-024-09645-3pmid: N/A

Stovall, Jessica Lee; Pimentel, Daniel R.; Carlson, Janet; Levine, Sarah R.

doi: 10.1007/s10857-023-09572-9pmid: N/A

To make instructional decisions that interrupt inequitable talk in the classroom, teachers must notice it in the first place. In a two-year Professional Learning Experience (PLE) focused on the core practice of facilitating equitable discussions, we found that two different groups of math teachers took up the work of noticing for equity in different ways and with varying degrees of success. We analyzed teachers’ written goals for teaching, videos of their in-person classroom instruction, video recordings of their coaching sessions, and sets of video annotations. Our findings indicate that teachers who noticed for equity: (1) engaged in conversations about status and identity (2) had more student-centered goals, and (3) were more likely to select “bumpy moments” of their instruction to discuss in coaching sessions. These findings have implications for instructional coaches, teacher educators, and professional learning facilitators interested in supporting teachers with noticing inequitable talk in their classrooms.

Rotem, Sigal H.; Ayalon, Michal

doi: 10.1007/s10857-023-09574-7pmid: N/A

This study aims to analyze possible connections among the noticing skills of pre-service mathematics teachers, and specifically the skills of attending to students’ thinking, interpreting students’ mathematical understanding, and proposing teaching alternatives. We characterized these connections in terms of coherency, i.e., the extent to which pre-service teachers take into account (a) an identified critical event—including its mathematics and context—when interpreting students’ statements, (b) their own interpretation of students’ statements when interpreting the teacher’s response, and (c) their own interpretation of students’ statements when proposing alternative teaching strategies. The construct of coherency evolved during our attempts to analyze pre-service teachers’ interpretations of the critical events they identified while observing mathematics lessons as part of their preparation program. In this paper, we elucidate the construct of coherency and its different levels and demonstrate how this construct relies upon and expands existing ideas from the literature on noticing. We propose a framework for identifying different coherency levels and the different patterns identified when using the framework to noticing among the pre-service teachers. Some of these patterns are supported by previous research, while others were unanticipated. We explore possible explanations for the emergence of these unanticipated patterns.

Capone, Roberto; Adesso, Maria Giuseppina; Manolino, Carola; Minisola, Riccardo; Robutti, Ornella

doi: 10.1007/s10857-023-09578-3pmid: N/A

This paper describes a Lesson Study in which in-service mathematics secondary-school teachers, collaborating with researchers, involve grade 10 students in tessellation problems. The data are collected by an experiment carried out in the context of the “Liceo Matematico” project, with three volunteer teachers. The experiment goal was to craft a collaborative design of the research lesson between teachers and researchers. The research aim of the paper is to examine the use of Lesson Study in the institutional and cultural context of Italian secondary school with the use of Cultural Transposition as a theoretical framework. The research is qualitative with idiographic aims, based on video research. The educational aim of the research is to provide a solid basis for a revamped in-service teacher education first in the context of the project, then in curricular context. Semiotic mediation is used to provide, within Lesson Study, the conceptual framework for teachers and researchers collaborative design of the research lesson. The results show that Lesson Study, as a foreign practice, is an opportunity for teachers to confront their teaching practices, to enrich their professional development, resulting in more awareness on their didactical action in and outside the classroom.

Ratnayake, Iresha Gayani; Adler, Jill; Thomas, Mike

doi: 10.1007/s10857-023-09580-9pmid: N/A

The use of digital technology has the potential to support students’ understanding in the mathematics classroom with the teacher playing a vital role. However, teaching with digital technology is not trivial, especially for teachers who are new to this. In this paper, we present an analysis of the enactment of a function lesson of a Sri Lankan mathematics teacher who used digital technology for the first time in her teaching. We combined the instrumental orchestration and ROG (resources, orientations and goals) frameworks into a conceptual framework to analyse her teaching. In particular, we used instrumental orchestration to identify how the teacher orchestrated the resources in her technology-rich classroom. This was combined with ROG theory to understand the reasons underpinning the decisions involved in moving from one orchestration to another. We demonstrate that this teacher showed diverse orchestrations and use the ROG framework to present these in the sequences in which they were used, formed into chains of orchestrations linked by goals. We propose that her didactical performance is a function of orchestration types over in-the-moment decision-making.

Swars Auslander, Susan; Bingham, Gary E.; Tanguay, Carla L.; Fuentes, Debra S.

doi: 10.1007/s10857-023-09582-7pmid: N/A

This 5-year mathematics professional development project involves 27 elementary teachers prepared and supported as Elementary Mathematics Specialists (EMSs) in high-need, urban schools. Our inquiry centers on their experiences in the EMS preparation program and the development of important outcomes, specifically productive beliefs and teacher leadership. Data were gathered at the end of Year 1 via surveys of mathematical beliefs, coaching beliefs, and coaching practices, as well as individual and focus group interviews. The findings provide insights into participants’ growth and work as a more knowledgeable other, illuminating specific emphases of their efforts and influences of the project. When it comes to mathematical beliefs, as participants shifted toward embracing cognitively-oriented pedagogical beliefs, they became more efficacious in this learner-centered pedagogy. The findings also show variability in specific mathematics coaching practices, including those most participants were and were not using, and areas for improvement. Several themes are evident in the interview data: growing confidence for the uncomfortable, creating and finding spaces for stepping up, advocating for learned mathematics pedagogy, and building teacher capacity through interactions.

Çelikdemir, Kübra; Haser, Çiğdem

doi: 10.1007/s10857-023-09585-4pmid: N/A

Research in mathematics education has placed significant emphasis on teacher identity, particularly during teacher education, since it plays a critical role in shaping the identity of preservice teachers with regard to teaching mathematics. However, as teacher identity is context dependent, it is essential to study preservice teachers' identities in various contexts to develop expertise in mathematics teacher education. This study explored the transformation of preservice mathematics teachers’ (PMTs) teacher identity orientations after participating in a video club. Concentrating on task perceptions as the indicator of teacher identity, the change in the teacher roles that PMTs would like to adopt in the future and the student outcomes they associated with these roles were investigated. The analysis of teacher identity orientations before and after participating in the video club revealed that PMTs’ teacher identity orientations were transformed by their participation because the video club increased their self-awareness and understanding of the complexity of teaching mathematics. The most noticeable transformation was observed in the didactical roles and their associated outcomes. These roles were transformed from being a didactical expert aiming to develop students’ affective outcomes to being a didactical expert who prioritizes students’ cognitions. Although PMTs’ expertise in teaching mathematics and the content of the video cases limited their orientations, the video club can simulate alternative experiences for teacher education programs aiming to support PMTs’ teacher identity orientations.

Lendínez Muñoz, Elena M.; García García, Francisco J.; Lerma Fernández, Ana M.; Abril Gallego, Ana M.

doi: 10.1007/s10857-023-09597-0pmid: N/A

This paper explores the education of prospective teachers with regard to the Theory of Didactical Situations when they engage in lesson study. We particularly focus on studying how a lesson study process oriented towards the Theory of Didactical Situations contributes to increasing prospective teachers’ self-efficacy to plan and teach lessons based on such theory, reducing the gap between theory and practice. Prior to the study, we will discuss how the theoretical postulates assumed in lesson study affect crucial aspects of the process. The study is implemented with 47 prospective early childhood education teachers. We also consider another group of 47 prospective teachers that were engaged in practicum at the time the lesson study process took place. Using a quasi-experimental methodology based on a questionnaire developed ad hoc that captures the particularities of the didactic paradigm assumed, the results of our study show that both lesson study and practicum lead to a statistically significant increase in future teachers’ self-efficacy to plan and teach lessons in line with the paradigm assumed. However, size effect measures show that the increase observed in the lesson study group is significantly higher, which supports the benefits of lesson study in initial teacher education. We discuss what the features of lesson study are that could be related to this increase. Finally, we sketch new lines of research connected with the benefits of lesson study versus other teacher education experiences like practicum, as well as with links between self-efficacy and knowledge growth in lesson study.