More Like this

1. From terrified to comfortable: a fourth-grade teacher’s journey in teaching coding

   https://doi.org/10.51272/pmena.42.2020-323  

   Menke, Jenna; Miller, Claire (December 2020, Proceedings of the 42nd Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education)

   Sacristán, A.I.; Cortés-Zavala, J.C.; Ruiz-Arias, P.M. (Ed.)

   Collective Argumentation Learning and Coding (CALC) is a project focused on providing teachers with strategies to engage students in collective argumentation in mathematics, science, and coding. Collective argumentation can be characterized by any instance where multiple people (teachers and students) work together to establish a claim and provide evidence to support it (Conner et al., 2014b). Collective argumentation is an effective approach for promoting critical and higher order thinking and supporting students’ ability to articulate and justify claims. The goal of the CALC project is to help elementary school teachers extend the use of collective argumentation from teaching mathematics and science to teaching coding. Doing so increases the probability that teachers will integrate coding in regular classroom instruction, making it accessible to all students. This project highlighted Gloria (pseudonym), a fourth-grade teacher from Cohort 1 because of the extent to which she went from fear of coding to fluent implementation. Initially, Gloria was comfortable engaging her students in argumentation, explaining they already used it in mathematics with Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI). However, she was “terrified” about learning to code because she didn’t view herself as proficient with technology. She was willing to overcome her fear of coding because she saw the value in providing her students with coding experiences that would help them develop the necessary skills for our increasingly technological society. In the course of three months, Gloria’s instruction progressed from using simple coding activities to more sophisticated coding platforms. This progression in her coding instruction paralleled the change in her personal feelings about coding as she moved from “terrified” to “comfortable with it”. 

   more » « less
2. “I Loved Seeing How Their Brains Worked!”—Examining the Role of Epistemic Empathy in Responsive Teaching

   https://doi.org/10.1177/00224871231187313  

   Jaber, Lama Z; Davidson, Shannon G; Metcalf, Allison (March 2024, Journal of Teacher Education)

   Studies in science and mathematics education have shown that teachers’ responsiveness to students’ ideas, feelings, and experiences is critical for promoting epistemic agency, disciplinary engagement, and equity. Such responsiveness is particularly important for students whose cultures, backgrounds, and funds of knowledge have been traditionally marginalized in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms. Yet, what allows teachers to enact responsive teaching is less clear. We argue that epistemic empathy—the capacity for tuning into and appreciating learners’ intellectual and emotional experiences in constructing, communicating, and critiquing knowledge—is an essential driver of teacher responsiveness. In this work, we examine how epistemic empathy can serve to support teachers’ attention and responsiveness to students’ sensemaking experiences in the classroom and discuss emergent tensions that arise in this work. We end with implications for research and for teacher education to cultivate epistemic empathy as a resource for responsive teaching and a target for teacher learning. 

   more » « less
3. Building on Students’ Knowledge of Solar Cells: Integrating Mathematics and Science to Support Engineering Design Tasks

   Ing, Marsha; Ward, Mary; Haberer, Elaine D (February 2013, Science scope)

   As science teachers, you observe excitement among your middle school students when they build things, tinker with materials, and work together. The engineering design practices included in the K–12 Framework for Science Education (NRC 2012) are an attempt to harness this excitement and enthusiasm for science and engineering. Integrating engineering design into your laboratory science teaching is an engaging way to support students in learning mathematics and science concepts (Katehi, Pearson, and Feder 2009). This article describes how the three of us (an education professor, a middle school teacher who implements engineering design activities as part of a green STEM curriculum, and an engineering professor) built on student thinking to design a weeklong unit on solar energy that supported mathematics and science learning. The lesson included students designing and redesigning a model solar car and culminated in a model-solar-car race. 

   more » « less
4. FROM UNIVERSITY TO SCHOOL: EXPLORING BEGINNING TEACHERS INTEGRATING REASONING AND PROVING

   Weingarden, M; Buchbinder, O (July 2023, Proceedings of the 46th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education)

   Ayalon, M; Koichu, B; Leikin, R; Rubel, L; Tabach, M (Ed.)

   We follow a beginning mathematics teacher, Olive, from the university-based course Mathematical Reasoning and Proving for Secondary Teachers through the supervised internship where Olive taught in her cooperating teacher’s classroom. By drawing upon Activity Theory, we compare her teaching within the two teaching settings, and we examine the opportunities for reasoning and proving she provided to her students in each teaching setting. As a prospective teacher, Olive provided her students opportunities for reasoning and proving. During the internship, these opportunities initially diminished due to institutional and contextual constraints. However, Olive gradually carved out unique paths to engage students with reasoning and proving as her teaching independence increased. 

   more » « less
5. Navigating the Transition from University to School: A Case Study of Incorporating Reasoning and Proving in Secondary Mathematics Teaching

   Buchbinder, O; Brisard, S (July 2025, Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education. Alexandria, VA.)

   Cook, S; Katz, B; Melhuish, K (Ed.)

   University teacher preparation programs extend significant efforts to support the development of secondary teachers’ competence in teaching mathematics. However, it remains an open question whether or to what extent beginning mathematics teachers enact ambitious practices in their teaching – specifically, engaging students with reasoning and proving. We report on one teacher, Nancy, who, after two years of autonomous teaching seized the opportunity to design and enact a “proof unit,” by utilizing materials from her undergraduate studies. Using the framework of practical rationality and four professional obligations, we examine Nancy’s discourse over various time points on her professional journey, focusing on how she held on to the ideas from her university training, culminating in the reasoning-and-proof unit. Implications for strengthening mathematics teacher preparation beyond university programs are discussed. 

   more » « less