Professional Development

Improving Grades 6-8 Students' Mathematics Achievement in Modeling and Problem Solving through Effective Sequencing of Instructional Practices

Principal Investigator:

With operating title Researching Order of Teaching (ROOT), this project brings together 100 middle grades mathematics teachers in a teacher-researcher alliance to articulate effective instructional practices for promoting modeling and problem-solving achievement. Strategies center around Explicit Attention to Concepts and Student Opportunities to Struggle, culminating in a randomized cluster crossover trial. The poster includes results from the first two years, featuring professional development materials, a video observation tool, and findings from classroom studies.

Click image to preview:
Target Audience:

Design Research on the Teaching and Learning of Conceptual Understanding in High School Chemistry Though the Use of Dynamic Visualizations of Physical and Chemical Changes

Principal Investigator:
To move from an emphasis on description of phenomena to deep understanding consistent with the NGSS, this project develops new teaching and research scholars with expertise in building conceptual understanding through the effective use of visualization to help their students build accurate molecular-level mental models to explain phenomena. VisChem Institutes employ carefully produced animations with teaching strategies informed by a cognitive learning model. Research thus far has explored early teacher chemistry and pedagogical learning.
Click image to preview:
Target Audience:

Theory to Practice: Prospective Mathematics Teachers’ Recontextualizing Discourses Surrounding Collective Argumentation

Teacher education programs have a critical role in supporting prospective teachers’ connections between theory and practice. In this study, we examined three prospective secondary mathematics teachers’ discourses regarding collective argumentation during and after a unit of instruction addressing collective argumentation and ways they recontextualized their on-campus coursework (theory) into their student teaching (practice) as demonstrated by their support for students’ mathematical arguments during student teaching.
Author/Presenter

Carlos Nicolas Gomez Marchant

Hyejin Park

Yuling Zhuang

Jonathan K. Foster

AnnaMarie Conner

Year
2021
Short Description

Teacher education programs have a critical role in supporting prospective teachers’ connections between theory and practice. In this study, authors examined three prospective secondary mathematics teachers’ discourses regarding collective argumentation during and after a unit of instruction addressing collective argumentation and ways they recontextualized their on-campus coursework (theory) into their student teaching (practice) as demonstrated by their support for students’ mathematical arguments during student teaching.

How Science Teachers DiALoG Classrooms: Towards a Practical and Responsive Formative Assessment of Oral Argumentation

We present lessons learned from an ongoing attempt to conceptualize, develop, and refine a way for teachers to gather formative assessment evidence about classroom argumentation as it happens. The system—named DiALoG (Diagnosing Argumentation Levels of Groups)—includes a digital scoring tool that allows teachers to assess oral classroom argumentation across two primary dimensions: one to capture the Intrapersonal, discipline-specific features of scientific arguments, and another to capture the Interpersonal, group regulatory features of argumentation as a dynamic social act.

Author/Presenter

J. Bryan Henderson

Nicole Zillmer

April Holton

Steven Weiner

Eric Greenwald

Megan Goss

M. Lisette Lopez

Christina Morales

P. David Pearson

Katherine L. McNeill

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2021
Short Description

This article presents lessons learned from an ongoing attempt to conceptualize, develop, and refine a way for teachers to gather formative assessment evidence about classroom argumentation as it happens.

How Science Teachers DiALoG Classrooms: Towards a Practical and Responsive Formative Assessment of Oral Argumentation

We present lessons learned from an ongoing attempt to conceptualize, develop, and refine a way for teachers to gather formative assessment evidence about classroom argumentation as it happens. The system—named DiALoG (Diagnosing Argumentation Levels of Groups)—includes a digital scoring tool that allows teachers to assess oral classroom argumentation across two primary dimensions: one to capture the Intrapersonal, discipline-specific features of scientific arguments, and another to capture the Interpersonal, group regulatory features of argumentation as a dynamic social act.

Author/Presenter

J. Bryan Henderson

Nicole Zillmer

April Holton

Steven Weiner

Eric Greenwald

Megan Goss

M. Lisette Lopez

Christina Morales

P. David Pearson

Katherine L. McNeill

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2021
Short Description

This article presents lessons learned from an ongoing attempt to conceptualize, develop, and refine a way for teachers to gather formative assessment evidence about classroom argumentation as it happens.

How Science Teachers DiALoG Classrooms: Towards a Practical and Responsive Formative Assessment of Oral Argumentation

We present lessons learned from an ongoing attempt to conceptualize, develop, and refine a way for teachers to gather formative assessment evidence about classroom argumentation as it happens. The system—named DiALoG (Diagnosing Argumentation Levels of Groups)—includes a digital scoring tool that allows teachers to assess oral classroom argumentation across two primary dimensions: one to capture the Intrapersonal, discipline-specific features of scientific arguments, and another to capture the Interpersonal, group regulatory features of argumentation as a dynamic social act.

Author/Presenter

J. Bryan Henderson

Nicole Zillmer

April Holton

Steven Weiner

Eric Greenwald

Megan Goss

M. Lisette Lopez

Christina Morales

P. David Pearson

Katherine L. McNeill

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2021
Short Description

This article presents lessons learned from an ongoing attempt to conceptualize, develop, and refine a way for teachers to gather formative assessment evidence about classroom argumentation as it happens.

Teachers Collaborating in Communities of Mathematics Immersion

Beyond initial college preparation, secondary teachers in the United States have few professional opportunities to do and learn challenging mathematics, especially incollaboration with colleagues. The Mathematics Immersion for Secondary Teachers at Scale program engages sets of teachers in local school sites, connected synchronously and asynchronously to colleagues in other sites, in doing mathematics designed to promote experiences of mathematical immersion, community, and connection to the work of teaching.

Author/Presenter

Daniel J. Heck

Pippa Hoover

Evelyn M. Gordon

Matthew McLeod

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2020
Short Description

The Mathematics Immersion for Secondary Teachers at Scale program engages sets of teachers in local school sites, connected synchronously and asynchronously to colleagues in other sites, in doing mathematics designed to promote experiences of mathematical immersion, community, and connection to the work of teaching. This study of two groups of sites over one year examines fidelity to the program as a model for systematically providing these opportunities, and the extent to which teacher participants experienced immersion, community, and connection in their collaborative work with the course facilitator and their local and distant colleagues.

Networking Frameworks: A Method for Analyzing the Complexities of Classroom Cultures Focusing on Justifying

In this paper, we network five frameworks (cognitive demand, lesson cohesion, cognitive engagement, collective argumentation, and student contribution) for an analytic approach that allows us to present a more holistic picture of classrooms which engage students in justifying. We network these frameworks around the edges of the instructional triangle as a means to coordinate them to illustrate the observable relationships among teacher, students(s), and content.

Author/Presenter

Eva Thanheiser

Kathleen Melhuish

Amanda Sugimoto

Brenda Rosencrans

Ruth Heaton

Year
2021
Short Description

In this paper, authors network five frameworks (cognitive demand, lesson cohesion, cognitive engagement, collective argumentation, and student contribution) for an analytic approach that allows us to present a more holistic picture of classrooms which engage students in justifying.

Networking Frameworks: A Method for Analyzing the Complexities of Classroom Cultures Focusing on Justifying

In this paper, we network five frameworks (cognitive demand, lesson cohesion, cognitive engagement, collective argumentation, and student contribution) for an analytic approach that allows us to present a more holistic picture of classrooms which engage students in justifying. We network these frameworks around the edges of the instructional triangle as a means to coordinate them to illustrate the observable relationships among teacher, students(s), and content.

Author/Presenter

Eva Thanheiser

Kathleen Melhuish

Amanda Sugimoto

Brenda Rosencrans

Ruth Heaton

Year
2021
Short Description

In this paper, authors network five frameworks (cognitive demand, lesson cohesion, cognitive engagement, collective argumentation, and student contribution) for an analytic approach that allows us to present a more holistic picture of classrooms which engage students in justifying.

Preparing Paraeducators for the Teacher Pipeline: Building Confidence Through Professional Development in Mathematics

The article describes our project that was designed to provide experiences to support paraeducators' professional growth in a large urban district by building their mathematical knowledge for teaching and leadership. Providing paras with professional learning opportunities can open pathways to teaching positions, giving them the potential to diversify the teaching pool and address teacher shortages.

Author/Presenter

Judy Storeygard

Karen Mutch-Jones

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2020
Short Description

The article describes our project that was designed to provide experiences to support paraeducators' professional growth in a large urban district by building their mathematical knowledge for teaching and leadership. Providing paras with professional learning opportunities can open pathways to teaching positions, giving them the potential to diversify the teaching pool and address teacher shortages.