Sandra Crespo, Kristen Bieda, and Christopher Dubbs
A serious
problem for the field is the ever-increasing workload demands that leave us
with much less time to read and keep up with the published works in our
scholarly community, particularly works that push us beyond our boundaries and
help our field evolve. A common challenge of writing for publication that is
particularly challenging to prospective authors of the
journal is that of situating and making explicit the contributions a manuscript
makes to ongoing conversations in the field and to the relevant research
literature.
Ji-Yeong I and Jasmine Stanford
Using visuals is a well-known strategy
to teach emergent bilinguals (EBs). This study examined how preservice teachers
(PSTs) implemented visuals to help EBs understand mathematical problems and how
an innovative intervention cultivated PSTs’ capability of using visuals for
EBs. Four middle school mathematics PSTs were engaged in a field experience with
EBs to work on mathematical problems; during the field experience, the PSTs
received interventions. In one intervention session, the PSTs were asked to
make sense of a word problem written in an unknown language with different
visuals. After this intervention, they changed their use of visuals when
modifying tasks for EBs. The results suggest that immersive experiences where
PSTs can experience learning from the perspective of EBs helps PSTs implement
mathematically meaningful visuals in a way that makes mathematical problems
accessible to EBs.
Related MTE Podcast
Christine Phelps-Gregory and Sandy M. Spitzer
One goal in teacher education is to prepare
prospective teachers (PTs) for a career of systematic reflection and learning
from their own teaching. One important skill involved in systematic reflection,
which has received little research attention, is linking teaching actions with
their outcomes on student learning; such links have been termed hypotheses. We
developed an assessment task to investigate PTs’ ability to create such
hypotheses, prior to instruction. PTs (N = 16) each read a mathematics lesson
transcript and then responded to four question prompts. The four prompts were
designed to vary along research-based criteria to examine whether different
contexts influenced PTs’ enactment of their hypothesizing skills. Results
suggest that the assessment did capture PTs’ hypothesizing ability and that
there is room for teacher educators to help PTs develop better hypothesis
skills. Additional analysis of the assessment task showed that the type of
question prompt used had only minimal effect on PTs’ responses.
Rachael Brown and Kimberly Masloski
This
article shares the authors’ use of written teaching replays as part of a
professional development experience for beginning secondary mathematics
teachers. This form of narrative writing is inspired by Horn’s (2010)
descriptions of teachers sharing their practice in professional learning
communities. In this study, written teaching replays are used to gain insights
about what beginning teachers noticed about their teaching practice and whether
these noticings highlighted dilemmas or successes in their teaching practice.
The analysis of teaching replays indicated that, despite being in their first
years of teaching, these beginning teachers’ narrative writings focused least
on management issues. Instead, the writings had a strong focus on mathematics
or teaching mathematics as well as on social issues within their classrooms.
These findings counter the research literature that suggests beginning teachers
are overwhelmingly concerned with classroom management. The authors conclude
with their reflections on the potential of this form of narrative writing for
beginning teachers and how it could be used by other mathematics educators.
Ziv Feldman and Matt Roscoe
The
literature has shown that preservice elementary school teachers (PSTs) struggle
to adequately attend to a number’s multiplicative structure to determine divisibility.
This study describes an intervention aimed at strengthening preservice and
in-service teachers’ procedural knowledge with respect to using a number’s
prime factorization to identify its factors, and presents evidence of the
impact of the intervention. Results point toward improved abilities to use a
number’s prime factorization to sort factors and nonfactors across four factor
subtypes, to create factor lists, and to construct numbers with particular
divisibility properties. Implications for mathematics teacher education include
providing specific materials and strategies for strengthening preservice and
in-service teachers’ procedural knowledge.
The National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics expresses its appreciation to the program reviewers for the Council
for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation in the 2017–2018 academic year.