Translating Learning Trajectories Into Useable Tools for Teachers

Mathematics teacher educators play a critical role in translating research findings into frameworks that are useful for mathematics teachers in their daily practice. In this article, we describe the development of a representation that brings together four research-based learning trajectories on number and operations. We detail our design process, present the ways in which we shared this representation with teachers during a professional development project, and provide evidence of the ways teachers used this translation of research into a pedagogical tool to make sense of students’ mathematics. We conclude with revisions to the representation based on our analysis and discuss the role of mathematics teacher educators in translating research findings into useful tools for teachers.