Graphical Representations of Speed: Obstacles Preservice K‐8 Teachers Experience

This study examines the difficulties college students experience when creating and interpreting graphs in which speed is one of the variables. Nineteen students, all preservice elementary or middle school teachers, completed an upper‐level course exploring algebraic concepts. Although all of these preservice teachers had previously completed several mathematics courses, including calculus, they demonstrated widespread misconceptions about the variable speed. This study identifies four cognitive obstacles held by the students, provides excerpts of their graphical constructions and verbal interpretations, and discusses potential causes for the confusion. In particular, misconceptions arose when students interpreted the behavior and nature of speed within a graphical context, as well as in situations where they were required to construct a graph involving speed as a variable. The study concludes by offering implications for the teaching and learning of speed and its interpretation within a graphical setting.     

Enhancing engineering education in the elementary school

The Next Generation Science Standards emphasizes the inclusion of engineering practices throughout the K–12 science curriculum. Therefore, elementary educators need to be knowledgeable about engineering and engineering careers so that they can expose their students to engineering. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of engineering professional development on in‐service elementary teachers’: (a) knowledge and perceptions regarding engineering, and (b) self‐efficacy of teaching engineering. This quantitative study revealed that even one professional development opportunity can help to alleviate some misconceptions about the work of engineers and what constitutes technology, as well as increase teachers’ confidence to teach engineering concepts.     

A Comparison of Textbooks' Presentation of Fractions

In the United States, fractions are an important part of the middle school curriculum, yet many middle school students struggle with fraction concepts. Teachers also have difficulty with the conceptual understanding needed to teach fractions and rely on textbooks when making instructional decisions. This reliance on textbooks, the idea that teaching and learning of fractions is a complex process, and that fraction understanding is the foundation for later topics such as proportionality, algebra, and probability, makes it important to examine the variation in presentation of fraction concepts in U.S. textbooks, especially the difference between traditional and standards‐based curricula. The purpose of this study is to determine if differences exist in the presentation of fractions in conventional and standards‐based textbooks and how these differences align with the recommendations of National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Common Core State Standards, and the research on the teaching and learning of fractions.     

Facilitating an Elementary Engineering Design Process Module

STEM education in elementary school is guided by the understanding that engineering represents the application of science and math concepts to make life better for people. The Engineering Design Process (EDP) guides the application of creative solutions to problems. Helping teachers understand how to apply the EDP to create lessons develops a classroom where students are engaged in solving real world problems by applying the concepts they learn about science and mathematics. This article outlines a framework for developing such lessons and units, and discusses the underlying theory of systems thinking. A model lesson that uses this framework is discussed. Misconceptions regarding the EDP that children have displayed through this lesson and other design challenge lessons are highlighted. Through understanding these misconceptions, teachers can do a better job of helping students understand the system of ideas that helps engineers attack problems in the real world. Getting children ready for the 21st century requires a different outlook. Children need to tackle problems with a plan and not shrivel when at first, they fail. Seeing themselves as engineers will help more underrepresented students see engineering and other STEM fields as viable career options, which is our ultimate goal.     

Game Design as an Interactive Learning Environment for Fostering Students'' and Teachers'' Mathematical Inquiry

Many learning environments, computer-based or not, have been developed for either students or teachers alone to engage them in mathematical inquiry. While some headway has been made in both directions, few efforts have concentrated on creating learning environments that bring both teachers and students together in their teaching and learning. In the following paper, we propose game design as such a learning environment for students and teachers to build on and challenge their existing understandings of mathematics, engage in relevant and meaningful learning contexts, and develop connections among their mathematical ideas and their real world contexts. To examine the potential of this approach, we conducted and analyzed two studies: Study I focused on a team of four elementary school students designing games to teach fractions to younger students, Study II focused on teams of pre-service teachers engaged in the same task. We analyzed the various games designed by the different teams to understand how teachers and students conceptualize the task of creating virtual game learning environment for others, in which ways they integrate their understanding of fractions and develop notions about students' thinking in fractions, and how conceptual design tools can provide a common platform to develop meaningful fraction contexts. In our analysis, we found that most teachers and students, when left to their own devices, create instructional games to teach fractions that incorporate little of their knowledge. We found that when we provided teachers and students with conceptual design tools such as game screens and design directives that facilitated an integration of content and game context, the games as well as teachers' and students' thinking increased in their sophistication. In the discussion, we elaborate on how the design activities helped to integrate rarely used informal knowledge of students and teachers, how the conceptual design tools improved the instructional design process, and how students and teachers benefit in their mathematical inquiry from each others' perspectives. In the outlook, we discuss features for computational design learning environments. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Prospective elementary teachers use of representation to reason algebraically

We used a teaching experiment to evaluate the preparation of preservice teachers to teach early algebra concepts in the elementary school with the goal of improving their ability to generalize and justify algebraic rules when using pattern-finding tasks. Nearly all of the elementary preservice teachers generalized explicit rules using symbolic notation but had trouble with justifications early in the experiment. The use of isomorphic tasks promoted their ability to justify their generalizations and to understand the relationship of the coefficient and y-intercept to the models constructed with pattern blocks. Based on critical events in the teaching experiment, we developed a scale to map changes in preservice teachers’ understanding. Features of the tasks emerged that contributed to this understanding.     

Supporting Preservice Teachers' Understanding of Place Value and Multidigit Arithmetic

This article provides an analysis of a teaching experiment conducted in the context of teacher education designed to support preservice teachers' understandings of place value and multidigit addition and subtraction. The experiment addresses the following research question: Can the results from research conducted in elementary mathematics classrooms guide preservice elementary teachers' development of conceptual understanding of the same concepts? In both cases, the students (e.g., elementary students and preservice teachers) participated in activities from an instructional sequence designed to support conceptual understanding of both place value and multidigit addition and subtraction. Analyses of the episodes from the teaching experiment document the learning of the preservice teachers and how that learning was supported by initial conjectures grounded in the research on elementary students' ways of reasoning.     

Teaching and Learning Mathematics With Interactive Spreadsheets

Learning to teach mathematics at the middle and secondary levels should include many opportunities for teachers to learn how to use technology to better understand mathematics themselves and promote students' learning of mathematical concepts with technology-enabled pedagogy. This article highlights work done in a variety of preservice and in-service mathematics teacher education courses to help teachers use commonly available spreadsheets as an interactive exploratory learning tool. Several examples of teachers' subsequent use of spreadsheets in their own teaching are also discussed.     

Planning District‐Wide Professional Development: Insights Gained From Teachers and Students Regarding Mathematics Teaching in a Large Urban District

This paper describes the mechanism used to gain insights into the state of the art of mathematics instruction in a large urban district in order to design meaningful professional development for the teachers in the district. Surveys of close to 2,000 elementary, middle school, and high school students were collected in order to assess the instructional practices used in mathematics classes across the district. Students were questioned about the frequency of use of various instructional practices that support the meaningful learning of mathematics. These included practices such as problem solving, use of calculators and computers, group work, homework, discussions, and projects, among others. Responses were analyzed and comparisons were drawn between elementary and middle school students' responses and between middle school and high school responses. Finally, fifth‐grade student responses were compared to those of their teachers. Student responses indicated that they had fewer inquiry‐based experiences, fewer student‐to‐student interactions, and fewer opportunities to defend their answers and justify their thinking as they moved from elementary to middle school to high school. In the elementary grades students reported an overemphasis on the use of memorization of facts and procedures and sparse use of calculators. Results were interpreted and specific directions for professional development, as reported in this paper, were drawn from these data. The paper illustrates how student surveys can inform the design of professional development experiences for the teachers in a district.     

Teaching and Coherent Science: An Investigation of Teachers’ Beliefs About and Practice of Teaching Science Coherently

This article is about an investigation of six middle school science teachers’ beliefs and instructional practice about the coherence of the science they teach as articulated by National Science Education Standards ( NRC, 1996 ). Many well intentioned reform efforts focus on improving content knowledge of teachers, but many classroom teachers regularly miss opportunities to provide conceptual connections within the science ideas building the sense of coherence in science. This investigation involved a quasi experimental study to examine the efficacy of a method for collecting data about middle school science teachers’ thinking about science and to determine if they teach science coherently. The teachers were surveyed, interviewed, provided concept maps about their thinking of the science they taught, and observed to investigate whether their practice reflects their beliefs. An examination of the teachers’ beliefs, stated and unstated curriculum, the connections among topics and the nature of science revealed that one, the observation tool may have merit for identifying the content and connections among science topics, and two, that teachers ‘stated beliefs consistent with the National Science Education Standards’ vision for coherent science, did not match their demonstrated practice. The content taught could be characterized in three ways; coherent content and few connections, coherent content and connections, and not coherent content. This indicates for this group of middle school science teachers that knowing how they think about science and how those beliefs are reflected in their teaching is complex. This study can inform teacher education and professional development efforts about the need to move beyond just content enhancement to examine prior beliefs about the connections of concepts within science.     

Preparation for Practice: Elementary Preservice Teachers Learning and Using Scientific Classroom Discourse Community Instructional Strategies

Despite historical national efforts to improve elementary science education, science instruction continues to be marginalized, varying by state. This study was designed to address the ongoing challenge of educating elementary preservice teachers (PSTs) to teach science. Elementary PSTs are one of the science education community's major links to schools and science education reform. However, they often lack a strong background in science, knowledge of effective science teaching strategies, and consequently have low confidence and self‐efficacy. This investigation explored the initial learning of elementary PSTs using an interdisciplinary model of a scientific classroom discourse community during a science methods course. Findings post‐methods course suggested that the PSTs gained confidence in how to teach inquiry‐based elementary science and recognized inquiry‐based science as an effective means for engaging student learning. Additionally, PSTs embraced the interdisciplinary model as one that benefits students' learning and effectively uses limited time in a school day.     

Science Talk: Preservice Teachers Facilitating Science Learning in Diverse Afterschool Environments

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact a community‐based service learning program might have on preservice teachers' science instruction during student teaching. Designed to promote science inquiry, preservice teachers learned how to offer students more opportunities to develop their own ways of thinking through utilization of an afterschool science program that provided them extended opportunities to practice their science teaching skills. Three preservice teachers were followed to examine and evaluate the transfer of this experience to their student teaching classroom. Investigation methods included field observations and semi‐structured, individual interviews. Findings indicate that preservice teachers expanded their ideas of science inquiry instruction to include multiple modes of formative assessment, while also struggling with the desire to give students the correct answer. While the participants' experiences are few in number, the potential of afterschool teaching experience serving as an effective learning experience in preservice teacher preparation is significant. With the constraints of high‐stakes testing, community‐based service learning teaching opportunities for elementary and middle‐school preservice teachers can support both the development and refinement of inquiry instruction skills.     

Attention to meaning by algebra teachers

Non-attendance to meaning by students is a prevalent phenomenon in school mathematics. Our goal is to investigate features of instruction that might account for this phenomenon. Drawing on a case study of two high school algebra teachers, we cite episodes from the classroom to illustrate particular teaching actions that de-emphasize meaning. We categorize these actions as pertaining to (a) purpose of new concepts, (b) distinctions in mathematics, (c) mathematical terminology, and (d) mathematical symbols. The specificity of the actions that we identify allows us to suggest several conjectures as to the impact of the teaching practices observed on student learning: that students will develop the belief that mathematics involves executing standard procedures much more than meaning and reasoning, that students will come to see mathematical definitions and results as coincidental or arbitrary, and that students’ treatment of symbols will be largely non-referential.     

Teaching Algebraic Expressions to Young Students: The Three‐day Journey of “a+ 2”

This classroom scholarship report is based on the teaching experience using Davydov's mathematics curriculum, which was developed in the former Soviet Union. While “from arithmetic to algebra” is the normally accepted instructional sequence in school mathematics, Davydov's curriculum is laid out “from algebra to arithmetic,” focusing on algebraic thinking from the very beginning of the elementary grades. The purpose of this report is not to provide a definitive conclusion about which curriculum or sequence is better nor to address which instructional strategy is right in all circumstances. Rather, it is to explore how primary grade students develop their own conceptual understanding while confronting difficulties met within a specific context. This report provides actual classroom episodes from working with a group of first graders and describes dynamic interactions between the teacher and children while they discuss the use of algebraic expressions and understand the meaning behind them.     

Supporting Preservice Teachers' Understanding of Place Value and Multidigit Arithmetic

This article provides an analysis of a teaching experiment conducted in the context of teacher education designed to support preservice teachers' understandings of place value and multidigit addition and subtraction. The experiment addresses the following research question: Can the results from research conducted in elementary mathematics classrooms guide preservice elementary teachers' development of conceptual understanding of the same concepts? In both cases, the students (e.g., elementary students and preservice teachers) participated in activities from an instructional sequence designed to support conceptual understanding of both place value and multidigit addition and subtraction. Analyses of the episodes from the teaching experiment document the learning of the preservice teachers and how that learning was supported by initial conjectures grounded in the research on elementary students' ways of reasoning.     

“Last curves not quite correct”: diagnostic competences of future teachers with regard to modelling and graphical representations

The article describes the results of a national enrichment to the six-country study Mathematics Teaching in the 21st century (MT21)—an international comparative study about the efficiency of teacher education. The enrichment focuses on the diagnostic competence of future mathematics teachers as sub-component of teachers’ professional competence for which the evaluation of students’ solutions of a modelling task about the course of a racetrack is demanded. In connection with two sub-facets of the diagnostic competence, namely the competence to recognise students’ misconceptions and the competence of criteria-guided assessment of students’ solutions, typical answer patterns are distinguished as well as the frequency of their occurrence with regard to future teachers’ phase of teacher education and the level of school teaching they are going to teach in.     

A third grader's way of thinking about linear function tables

This paper is inscribed within the research effort to produce evidence regarding primary school students’ learning of algebra. Given the results obtained so far in the research community, we are convinced that young elementary school students can successfully learn algebra. Moreover, children this young can make use of different representational systems, including function tables, algebraic notation, and graphs in the Cartesian coordinate grid. In our research, we introduce algebra from a functional perspective. A functional perspective moves away from the mere symbolic manipulation of equations and focuses on relationships between variables. In investigating the processes of teaching and learning algebra at this age, we are interested in identifying meaningful teaching situations. Within each type of teaching situation, we focus on what kind of knowledge students produce, what are the main obstacles they find in their learning, as well as the intermediate states of knowledge between what they know and the target knowledge for the teaching situation. In this paper, we present a case study focusing on the approach adopted by a third grade student, Marisa, when she was producing the formula for a linear function while she was working with the information of a problem displayed in a function table containing pairs of inputs-outputs. We will frame the analysis and discussion on Marisa's approach in terms of the concept of theorem-in action (Vergnaud, 1982) and we will contrast it with the scalar and functional approaches introduced by Vergnaud (1988) in his Theory of Multiplicative Fields. The approach adopted by Marisa turns out to have both scalar and functional aspects to it, providing us with new ways of thinking of children's potential responses to functions.     

Issues and Challenges for Middle School Mathematics Teachers in Inclusion Classrooms

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate typical middle school general education mathematics teachers' beliefs and knowledge of students with learning disabilities and inclusive instruction and to gain an understanding of the process of inclusion as it is implemented in middle school classrooms. In‐depth interviews, surveys, and classroom observations were conducted with seven teachers. The constant comparative method was used to analyze all interview and observation data. The findings reveal that even teachers who believe that inclusion is being successfully implemented are unclear about their responsibilities towards included students and the learning characteristics and specific mathematics teaching approaches that would be effective. The general educators feel that they were grossly under‐prepared during preservice and inservice for the realities of inclusion teaching. The study provides insights that can be used to enhance preservice and inservice programs for teachers and underscores the necessity for building teamwork and collaboration among general and special education middle school teachers.     

Using Contrasting Case Activities to Deepen Teacher Understanding of Algebraic Thinking and Teaching

Findings from an on-going design experiment within a year-long graduate course for middle school teachers of mathematics are reported. The purpose of the course was to help teachers assist students in transitioning from arithmetic to algebraic reasoning. Goals included developing teachers' ability to interpret, compare, and generalize across multiple mathematical solutions and to help teachers see and explain opportunities for algebraic thinking in their curriculum. To achieve these goals, we developed contrasting-cases instruction grounded in cognitive theory. Based on a pre-posttest design and a video assessment task developed by the researchers, teachers improved significantly on measures of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) related to course goals, but not on a measure of spontaneous reflection or algebra content knowledge. Future work will improve the course in an attempt to promote better learning through reflection and better transfer of PCK to classroom practice.     

Teachers in transition: Moving towards CAS-supported classrooms

In the near future many teachers may be required to incorporate CAS into their teaching practices. Based on classroom observations and interviews over two years, this paper reports how two teachers made the transition from using graphics calculators to CAS calculators while teaching differential calculus to upper secondary school students. Both teachers taught with CAS in ways that were consistent with their beliefs about learning and teaching. Over two years, the teachers' teaching approaches and purpose for use of technology were stable and seemed to be underpinned by their beliefs about learning. In contrast, both teachers made changes to the content they taught (and thus what they used technology for) in response to new institutional knowledge. Content choice seemed to be underpinned by the teachers' purpose for teaching. Other influences impacted on what the teachers taught and how they taught it: the teachers' content knowledge, their pedagogical content knowledge, and the lack of legitimacy of CAS as a tool for learning and during examinations in the trial school and wider educational community. The extent of differences noted between the responses of just two teachers indicates that there will be many responses to using CAS in classrooms, as teachers aim to achieve different learning goals and interpret their responsibilities to students in different ways.