Search for: All records

Abstract Technology-mediated simulations of teaching are used increasingly to represent practice in the context of professional development interventions and assessment. Some such simulations represent students as cartoon characters. An important question in this context is whether simplified cartoon representations of students can convey similar meanings as real facial expressions do. Here, we share results from an implementation and replication study designed to observe whether and how (1) cartoon-based representations of emotion using graphical facial expressions can be interpreted at similar levels of accuracy as photo representations of emotions using actors and (2) the inclusion of markers of student emotions in storyboard-based scenarios of secondary mathematics teaching affects teachers’ appropriateness rating of the actions taken by a teacher represented in the storyboard. We show graphical representations of emotions can evoke particular intended emotions and that markers of student emotions in representations of practice could cue mathematics teachers into particular judgments of action. The Impact Sheet to this article can be accessed at10.6084/m9.figshare.24219964 

Although the paradigm wars between quantitative and qualitative research methods and the associated epistemologies may have settled down in recent years within the mathematics education research community, the high value placed on quantitative methods and randomized control trials remain as the gold standard at the policy-making level (USDOE, 2008). Although diverse methods are valued in the mathematics education community, if mathematics educators hope to influence policy to cultivate more equitable education systems, then we must engage in rigorous quantitative research. However, quantitative research is limited in what it can measure by the quantitative tools that exist. In mathematics education, it seems as though the development of quantitative tools and studying their associated validity and reliability evidence has lagged behind the important constructs that rich qualitative research has uncovered. The purpose of this study is to describe quantitative instruments related to mathematics teacher behavior and affect in order to better understand what currently exists in the field, what validity and reliability evidence has been published for such instruments, and what constructs each measure. 1. How many and what types of instruments of mathematics teacher behavior and affect exist? 2. What types of validity and reliability evidence are published for these instruments? 3. What constructs do these instruments measure? 4. To what extent have issues of equity been the focus of the instruments found?