Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education最新文献

Critical elements of the expertise of mathematics teacher educators (MTE) can be identified in the artifacts they design for working with prospective teachers (PT), specifically for engaging PT in the double role of practitioners and students of practice. While MTE are increasingly utilizing designed multimodal representations of practice (such as storyboards), theoretical frameworks and methods for analyzing these pedagogical artifacts and the meanings they support are still in early development. We utilize a semiotic framework, expanding systemic functional linguistics to encompass non-linguistic elements, to identify aspects of what we call navigational expertise—which supports PTs in engaging both as practitioners and students of the practice. We view this expertise as tacit knowledge-in-use, enacted through artifact production. The paper demonstrates MTE’s navigational expertise by showing how MTE design storyboards of practice to engage PT as fellow teachers experiencing the lesson taught by a peer and as university students who consider the artifact (including the represented lesson) as an object of study. The framework allows us to identify how MTE’s navigational expertise lies in seamlessly interweaving these two purposes and navigating between them, knowing when, how, and for what purposes to invoke each. Through analysis of storyboards from four MTE in diverse US settings, we uncover some of the nuanced tacit components of navigational expertise, highlighting linguistic and non-linguistic design choices and their potential meanings for transactions with PT.

In this paper we investigate the issue of representation within the Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education (JMTE) and the broader academic publishing landscape, particularly focusing on the underrepresentation of authors from various world regions. A questionnaire, distributed globally, aimed to amplify the voices of the underrepresented, exploring the constraints and affordances of publishing in English-medium mathematics education research journals. The question that guided our investigation was: What do voices from the mathematics education community raise in their responses to questions about publishing in English-medium research journals like JMTE? We used qualitative methods to review the responses and identify common themes. The findings revealed significant barriers and challenges related to language, research location, and institutional support, highlighting the complexities of navigating the global academic community and the academic publishing culture. We propose actionable suggestions to foster a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive publishing environment.

Research on Mathematics Teacher Educators (MTEs) is crucial for enhancing the professional development of prospective mathematics teachers. However, there is a dearth of recent studies focusing on MTEs’ preparedness for technology integration, particularly within the Zambian educational context, and the wider Sub-Saharan African region. This study assessed the readiness of MTEs in Zambia to effectively integrate digital technology into mathematics education, examining their perceived technological proficiency and familiarity, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use. Using a predominantly quantitative cross sectional research design, responses were gathered from 104 MTEs across 16 colleges of education and 12 universities in Zambia through an online semi-structured questionnaire. The findings revealed that, on average, MTEs exhibited low to moderate familiarity with various mathematics-related software applications, e-learning management systems, and web-based video conferencing tools. Although technological proficiency and perceived ease of use were somewhat lacking, MTEs demonstrated awareness of the value of digital technology and expressed willingness to ensure that preservice mathematics teachers acquire the necessary information and skills for technology integration in mathematics teaching and learning. Furthermore, willingness to use technology in the classroom was significantly predicted by perceived usefulness of, and proficiency with, various digital tools. The study also revealed that individuals tend to perceive technology as easier to use as they become more technologically proficient. In light of these findings, it is suggested that access to technological support not only enhances MTEs’ perception of technology’s ease of use but also positively influences their inclination to incorporate it into instructional strategies.

There is a growing research interest in examining how mathematics teacher educators grow professionally in their practice. In this study, we focus on the experiences of novice mathematics teacher educators who had been secondary mathematics teachers before becoming instructors of an elementary methods course. During individual, semi-structured interviews, the participants (n = 6) described their general experience in teaching the course and shared specific incidents that informed their practice. Our analysis reveals that this specific group of mathematics educators experienced multiple layers of unfamiliarity with the methods course, including unfamiliarity related to the elementary school context and to the course students, in response to which they adopted various coping strategies. We illustrate what novice mathematics teacher educators learned from their experiences of unfamiliarity, and how their expanded personal knowledge was reflected in their subsequent teaching.

Despite the evidence of its effectiveness on student learning, ambitious mathematics instruction has proven to be challenging for teachers to enact. Increasingly, instructional coaching programs have become a way of providing intensive one-on-one support to teachers to improve the quality of mathematics instruction. Researchers have identified various design features of effective mathematics coaching programs (e.g., lesson planning, co-teaching, deep and specific discussions of instruction). However, there is a lack of theoretical explanation for how and why these design features support teacher learning, which is critical for successfully implementing and adapting what works. Motivated by the need to illuminate what current research has left in the shadows, we first identify the processes of teacher learning based on past research and then illustrate how specific design features of a new coaching model can work together to activate these processes and consequently produce teacher learning. We use the conjecture mapping approach to achieve our goal, informed by a research-based high-level conjecture: Effective coaching programs engage teachers in learning processes similar to the learning processes that students experience in ambitious classrooms. This work will guide the development of an empirically grounded theory for teacher learning through coaching. The reification of teacher learning processes is particularly important for the adaptation of coaching practices in different contexts and content areas. We also argue that focusing on these processes will bring a new perspective to coach navigation of tensions, for example, between responsiveness and directiveness.

Although there has been increasing attention to the importance of teacher agency in professional development, there has been little attention to what it takes to facilitate collaborative work that both centers teachers’ assets and expertise and leads to productive learning. This paper presents a framework for focused and responsive facilitation of productive discourse around instructional practice in teacher learning communities. Drawing on a situative perspective, we trace the development of six novice teacher leaders as they were mentored to lead online collaborative lesson design groups focused on analyzing artifacts of K-8 mathematics instruction in a large urban district in the US. Our framework articulates how leaders facilitated the discussions in ways that both built on teacher knowledge, experiences, and contributions while also focusing on professional learning goals. Our analysis also shows how rich learning opportunities were co-constructed and sustained by the mentors, teacher leaders, and participants in each group over time. Through narrative descriptions of one group, we show how the teacher participants began to take on some of the facilitation practices themselves as they apprenticed into the practices of the community. This approach to professional learning positions teachers’ experience and knowledge as important assets while supporting them to try out and reflect on new classroom practices.

Research–practice partnerships around educational research may have beneficial outcomes but also present tensions. By considering the dynamics of manifested tensions, our study aims to understand how teachers engage with the various stages of the research in an inquiry-based professional development community consisting of eleven in-service teachers and three mathematics education researchers. In light of Heider's Balance Theory, we identify and analyze tensions expressed by teachers in the community discourse. Findings indicate that epistemic tensions related to teachers' and researchers' different cultural orientations act as powerful generators of inclusionary and exclusionary actions shaping community members' participation paths. While downplaying epistemic tensions can evoke individual actions detrimental to learning and destructive to the community's existence, awareness of and well-timed coping with tensions can become a springboard for community development.

In this study, we examine the real-time decision-making processes of a teacher in a UK post-16 mathematics classroom focusing on the integration of student-centred teaching methods. The contribution of this study is a transdisciplinary theoretical discussion which links teachers’ actual classroom practices (often traditional and teacher centred) with their professed student-centred perspectives. Utilising Abductive Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, this research incorporates cognitive, social psychological, sociocultural theory and perspectives on affect in the context of in-the-moment decisions. Through co-construction, we identify distinct but overlapping agentic and ecological dimensions of decisions. Recognising that teachers’ spontaneous decisions in the classroom are shaped by both their agency and the social and physical ecology of the classroom, this study provides a structured approach to understanding how diverse disciplinary concepts are related, and paints a dynamic picture of the process of teacher decision-making. This is crucial for identifying both limitations and possibilities in teacher education and professional development.

Rough draft math [RDM] (Jansen, 2020a) occurs when a teacher invites students to share their in-progress thinking and provides opportunities for students to revise their thinking. RDM could be viewed as an approach to ambitious teaching because it is a practice when teachers elicit and respond to students’ thinking to support their learning, which is productive, and their positive identity development, which is powerful. The purpose of this study was to identify salient and feasible enactments of rough draft math, as described by teachers after they have learned about RDM through a book study and/or professional development. We interviewed 32 teachers in eight states in the USA, and we identified variations among the two most feasible and salient enactments of RDM: (1) inviting students to revise and (2) purposeful task selection and implementation. Variations in revising enactments included providing students with structured or unstructured revision opportunities and different ways teachers incorporated revising into their assessment practices (either test corrections or student self-assessment). Variations in task selection included modifying curricular tasks or using instructional routines intentionally. Variations in task implementation included implementing tasks to reinforce content or develop new understandings. We developed conjectures about the ways in which these variations could provide powerful or productive opportunities for students.

Experienced P-12 teachers play a crucial role in the learning of preservice mathematics teachers, though the preparation provided them can be inconsistent or even lacking. In this paper, we share two case studies of secondary mathematics teachers serving as mentor teachers as they engage in a professional development experience designed to shift both their mentoring practice and their perceptions of their roles as mentor teachers. To this end, we simultaneously leveraged Feiman-Nemser’s vision of educative mentoring and NCTM’s effective teaching practices to create a semester-long professional development opportunity focused on practice-based educative mentoring. Drawing on written reflections and video recorded planning and debriefing discussions between two sets of mentors and preservice teachers, we developed profiles of two mentor teachers as they refined their mentoring practice. Based on our findings, we suggest a set of key elements for a professional development framework for practice-based educative mentoring.