Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: Teacher Education
- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
Description
In this mixed-methods study, I examined the relationship between professional development based on the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and teacher knowledge, classroom practice, and student learning. Participants were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The 50-hour professional development treatment was administered to the treatment group during one semester, and then a follow-up replication treatment was administered to the control group during the subsequent semester. Results revealed significant differences in teacher knowledge as a result of the treatment using two instruments. The Learning Mathematics for Teaching scales were used to detect changes in mathematical knowledge for teaching, and an online sorting task was used to detect changes in teachers' knowledge of their standards. Results also indicated differences in classroom practice between pairs of matched teachers selected to participate in classroom observations and interviews. No statistical difference was detected between the groups' student assessment scores using the district's benchmark assessment system. This efficacy study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it provides an evidence base for a professional development model designed to promote effective implementation of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. Second, it addresses ways to impact and measure teachers' knowledge of curriculum in addition to their mathematical content knowledge. The treatment was designed to focus on knowledge of curriculum, but it also successfully impacted teachers' specialized content knowledge, knowledge of content and students, and knowledge of content and teaching.
ContributorsRimbey, Kimberly A (Author) / Middleton, James A. (Thesis advisor) / Sloane, Finbarr (Committee member) / Atkinson, Robert K (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This study contributes to the ongoing discussion of Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT). It investigates the case of Rico, a high school mathematics teacher who had become known to his colleagues and his students as a superbly effective mathematics teacher. His students not only developed excellent mathematical skills, they also developed deep understanding of the mathematics they learned. Moreover, Rico redesigned his curricula and instruction completely so that they provided a means of support for his students to learn mathematics the way he intended. The purpose of this study was to understand the sources of Rico's effectiveness. The data for this study was generated in three phases. Phase I included videos of Rico's lessons during one semester of an Algebra II course, post-lesson reflections, and Rico's self-constructed instructional materials. An analysis of Phase I data led to Phase II, which consisted of eight extensive stimulated-reflection interviews with Rico. Phase III consisted of a conceptual analysis of the prior phases with the aim of creating models of Rico's mathematical conceptions, his conceptions of his students' mathematical understandings, and his images of instruction and instructional design. Findings revealed that Rico had developed profound personal understandings, grounded in quantitative reasoning, of the mathematics that he taught, and profound pedagogical understandings that supported these very same ways of thinking in his students. Rico's redesign was driven by three factors: (1) the particular way in which Rico himself understood the mathematics he taught, (2) his reflective awareness of those ways of thinking, and (3) his ability to envision what students might learn from different instructional approaches. Rico always considered what someone might already need to understand in order to understand "this" in the way he was thinking of it, and how understanding "this" might help students understand related ideas or methods. Rico's continual reflection on the mathematics he knew so as to make it more coherent, and his continual orientation to imagining how these meanings might work for students' learning, made Rico's mathematics become a mathematics of students--impacting how he assessed his practice and engaging him in a continual process of developing MKT.
ContributorsLage Ramírez, Ana Elisa (Author) / Thompson, Patrick W. (Thesis advisor) / Carlson, Marilyn P. (Committee member) / Castillo-Chavez, Carlos (Committee member) / Saldanha, Luis (Committee member) / Middleton, James A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The principle purpose of this research was to compare two definitions and assessments of Mathematics Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) and examine the development of that knowledge among pre-service and current math teachers. Seventy-eight current and future teachers took an online version of the Measures of Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) - Mathematics assessment and nine of them took the Cognitively Activating Instruction in Mathematics (COACTIV) assessment. Participants answered questions that demonstrated their understanding of students' challenges and misconceptions, ability to recognize and utilize multiple representations and methods of presenting content, and understanding of tasks and materials that they may be using for instruction. Additionally, participants indicated their college major, institution attended, years of experience, and participation in various other learning opportunities. This data was analyzed to look for changes in knowledge, first among those still in college, then among those already in the field, and finally as a whole group to look for a pattern of growth from pre-service through working in the classroom. I compared these results to the theories of learning espoused by the creators of these two tests to see which model the data supports. The results indicate that growth in PCK occurs among college students during their teacher preparation program, with much less change once a teacher enters the field. Growth was not linear, but best modeled by an s-curve, showing slow initial changes, substantial development during the 2nd and 3rd year of college, and then a leveling off during the last year of college and the first few years working in a classroom. Among current teachers' the only group that demonstrated any measurable growth were teachers who majored in a non-education field. Other factors like internships and professional development did not show a meaningful correlation with PCK. Even though some of these models were statistically significant, they did not account for a substantial amount of the variation among individuals, indicating that personal factors and not programmatic ones may be the primary determinant of a teachers' knowledge.
ContributorsJohnson, Jeffrey (Author) / Middleton, James A. (Thesis advisor) / Marsh, Josephine P (Committee member) / Sloane, Finbarr (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016