• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.619-633
• /
• 2010

To offer insights in organizing professional development programs to promote teachers' substantial ongoing learning, this paper provides an overview of situative perspectives in terms of cognition as situated, cognition as social, and cognition as distributed. Then, it describes research findings on how mathematics teachers can enhance their knowledge and thus improve their instructional practices through participation in a professional development program that mainly provides opportunities to learn and analyze students' mathematical thinking and to perform mathematical tasks through which they interpret the understanding of students' mathematical thinking. Further, it shows that a knowledge of students' mathematical thinking is a powerful tool for teacher learning. In addition, it suggests that teacher-researcher and teacher-teacher collaborative activities influence considerably teachers' understanding and practice as such collaborations help teachers understand new ideas of teaching and develop innovative instructional practices.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.433-457
• /
• 2022

An effective teacher community helps the participating teachers improve their instructional quality. This study reports a teacher community consisting of 15 elementary school teachers and one teacher educator. This paper analyzed 15 mathematics lessons in which the teachers implemented the five practices for orchestrating productive mathematics discussions by Smith and Stein (2018) based on the grade-specific discussions as well as the whole community's discussions. The results of this study showed that the overall levels of each practice either increased gradually or maintained at the highest Level 4, as mathematics lessons had been implemented. Specifically, the following practices were quite successful: setting goals for a lesson, selecting an appropriate task, anticipating student responses, and selecting student solutions. However, both sequencing and connecting student solutions were implemented at various levels. Monitoring student work tended to remain at Level 2 which included incorrect implementation of the practice. This paper closes with implications related to the skillful implementation of the five practices through a teacher community.

• Research in Mathematical Education
• /
• v.22 no.1
• /
• pp.19-33
• /
• 2019

While the field of mathematics education strives to promote equitable mathematics learning and identifies it as a core instructional practice, less is known about its effective enactment. As teachers' teaching practices are dependent on their views and beliefs, this study investigated 133 elementary pre-service teachers' (PSTs') interpretations of diverse learners' learning experiences and proposed accommodations for them as reflected in their lesson planning process. Findings showed that PSTs came up with some strategies that are often suggested in teacher education literature, such as using multiple modes of representation and various grouping strategies. However, their responses were generic in nature rather than specific to diverse learners. Also, it was noted that many PSTs' interchangeably referred to the English Language Learners (ELLs), struggling learners, and culturally diverse learners, inferring that they thought that culturally diverse students must have been ELLs and that ELLs or culturally diverse students must have been weaker students in math. We found that the PSTs used their own frames while filtering and discarding information about diverse student populations to develop instructional plans, rather than based on the results of assessments of learning. We suggest that it is the critical first step to unwrap PSTs' unproven assumptions to better equip them for working with all of their future students.

• The Mathematical Education
• /
• v.41 no.2
• /
• pp.173-187
• /
• 2002

The purpose of this study through ethnographic inquiry is to describe how an elementary teacher teaches mathematics with understanding. The ways that teachers'beliefs affect instructional activities, what means understanding from the view of cognitive psychology, and ethnographic research tradition were reviewed to anchor theoretical background of this study. A third-grade teacher and his 45 students were selected in order to capture vivid and thick descriptions of the teaching and learning activities of mathematics. Three major sources of data, that is, participant-observation with video taping, formal and informal interviews with the teacher and his students, and a variety of official documents were collected. These data were analyzed through two phases: data analysis in the field and after the fieldwork. According to data analysis, ‘teaching mathematics with understanding’ was identified as the teachers central belief of teaching mathematics. In order to implement his belief in teaching practices, the teacher made use of three strategies: ⑴ valuing individual student's own way of understanding, ⑵ bring students' everyday experiences into mathematics classroom, and ⑶ lesson objectivies stated by students. It is suggested for future research that concrete and specific norms of mathematics classroom for the improvement of mathematics understanding are needed to be identified and that experienced and skillful teachers' practical knowledge should be incorporated with theories of teaching mathematics and necessarily paid more attention by mathematics educators.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
• /
• v.28 no.4
• /
• pp.431-455
• /
• 2014

The purpose of this study was to suggest methods to apply generalizability theory to mathematics teacher evaluation using classroom observations in Korea by analysing mathematics teachers in the U.S. using the instructional quality of assessment instrument as an illustrative example. The subjects were 96 teachers participating in Year 3 and Year 4 from the Middle-school Mathematics and the Institutional Setting of Teaching (MIST) project funded by the National Science Foundation since 2007. The MIST project investigates the following question: What does it takes to support mathematics teachers' development of ambitious and equitable instructional practices on a large scale (MIST, 2007). This study examined data based on both the univariate generalizability analysis using GENOVA program and the multivariate generalizability analysis using mGENOVA program. Specifically, this study determined the relative effects of each error source and investigated optimal measuring conditions to obtain the suitable generalizability coefficients. The methodology applied in this study can be utilized to find effective optimal measurement conditions for the mathematics teacher evaluation for professional development in Korea. Finally, this study discussed limitations of the results and suggested directions for future research.

• The Mathematical Education
• /
• v.44 no.4 s.111
• /
• pp.603-625
• /
• 2005

Identity is the concept which approaches individuals' affective problems with the social and cultural view. The previous studies on the problems, studied the attitudes, beliefs, or emotions while they restricted the problems to teachers or students' private problems. Otherwise, identities focus on individuals which participate to any community and share its social practices(Mclead, 1994). This study purposed to get an understanding on the teaching and learning mathematics in elementary mathematics classroom with an ethnographic view, while we consider mathematics as a kind of social practices, and mathematics classrooms as communities of practice. We analysed teacher's identities on mathematics and teaching mathematics depending on her responses of the questions as following: How does she think about mathematics, what are the instructional goals in her mathematics classroom, how do students learn mathematics in her mathematics classroom. In addition, we analysed students' identities on mathematics and learning mathematics depending on their responses of the questions as following: What do students think of mathematics, do they like mathematics, why do they study mathematics, how do they feel their mathematics classroom(describe your classroom) and themselves in it(describe yourselves in your classroom), what are their duties and what do they do actually in their mathematics classroom.

• Research in Mathematical Education
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.135-152
• /
• 2019

This conceptual paper proposes a conceptualization regarding teacher candidates' experiences as learners during instructional activities implemented by teacher educators in practice-based teacher education programs. We argue that the current learning cycle framework for teacher candidates to engage in core teaching practices does not fully address teacher candidates' own learning experiences as learners. To provide a rationale for our proposal, we examine the current conceptualization of learning to enact core practices and suggest the need for integrating teacher candidates' experiences into the current conceptualization. We also draw on research on figured worlds as an effort to conceptualize teacher candidates' experiences coming from multiple figured world. We present some examples from our own mathematics methods courses to illustrate how this newly proposed framework can be used in practice and share remaining questions for future research.

• Research in Mathematical Education
• /
• v.23 no.2
• /
• pp.113-133
• /
• 2020

Pre-service teachers (PST) are students who are developing their mindset, persistence, instructional practices, and perception of tasks from two perspectives: as current students and as future teachers. As part of a larger study with PSTs engaged in a mindset intervention, this study quantitatively investigated PSTs mindset and persistence. During professional development (PD), PSTs engaged in multiple strategies (MS) tasks that promoted changes to PSTs mindset and persistence. PSTs' mindset pre- and post- PD were categorized after attending at least 4 interventions as fixed, mixed, or growth using the theory of intelligence, and their persistence as high or low using the Grit-S. Changes in categorization were noticed and explored for reasons of what could be done to make mindset interventions more effective such as consistently using challenging mathematics tasks with more open ended answers and focusing on discussion based mathematical lessons.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.1-22
• /
• 2010

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between teacher's role and interaction patterns in mathematics classrooms. Teacher's role was divided into usual practices with students, usual practices with content and usual practices with students and contents, and interaction patterns were classified into report, inquiry and discussion. The subjects in this study were teachers and students in three fourth- grade classes in T elementary school located in Seoul. After the classes of every math teacher were observed, three teachers who played distinctively unique roles were selected in accordance with the results of the first-semester autonomous supervision, of open class for parents and of the instructional observation. Thus, there was a close relationship between the teacher roles and interaction patterns. And it's concluded that students are able to have a more discussion on each other's ideas in the student-centered classroom, and that teachers should perform active roles in that process. Given the findings of the study, there are some suggestions: First, the teachers appeared to fulfill consistent roles when their videotaped classes, study aids and performance assessment materials were analyzed, and they should play more active roles in mathematics class. Second, they should try to create the kinds of climate that encourages students to come up with ideas in an active manner. Third, earlier studies had focused on student-teacher interaction patterns, but this study found that the roles of the teachers depended on interaction with not only students but study aids and performance assessment materials, and that the interaction patterns hinged on their roles as well. Therefore more profound research efforts should be directed into this issue.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.25-41
• /
• 2006

The purpose of this study was to analyze teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) about area of plane figure and how it was actualized in instruction. As an exploratory, qualitative, and comparative case study, 2 fifth-grade teachers were selected. Semi-structured interviews with the leachers were conducted in order to explore their PCK with regard to the area of plane figure. A total of 14 mathematics instructions were videotaped and transcribed. Teachers' PCK and classroom teaching practices were analyzed in detail into 3 categories: (a) knowledge of mathematics contents, (b) knowledge of students' understanding, and (c) knowledge of instructional methods. As such, this paper provided a detailed description on each teacher's PCK and her teaching practice. The results showed that teachers' PCK had a significant impact on instruction. The teacher who had rich knowledge about the area of plane figure was able to encourage students to understand the concept of area and to or explore the principles behind formula calculating various areas of plane geometry. The results demonstrated the importance of individual components of PCK as well as that of overall level of PCK. Different aspects of teaching practices were observed as to how the teachers had internalized PCK. On the basis of a close relationship between teachers' PCK and their teaching practice, this paper finally raised several implications for teachers' professional development for effective mathematics instruction.