CAREER: Learning to Support Productive Collective Argumentation in Secondary Mathematics Classes

Research has shown that engaging students, including students from underrepresented groups, in appropriately structured reasoning activities, including argumentation, may lead to enhanced learning. This project will provide information about how teachers learn to support collective argumentation and will allow for the development of professional development materials for prospective and practicing teachers that will enhance their support for productive collective argumentation.

Full Description

Doing mathematics involves more than simply solving problems; justifying mathematical claims is an important part of doing mathematics. In fact, proving and justifying are central goals of learning mathematics. Recently, the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics has again raised the issue of making and critiquing arguments as a central practice for students studying mathematics. If students are to learn to make and critique arguments within their mathematics classes, teachers must be prepared to support their students in learning to argue appropriately in mathematics. This learning often occurs during class discussions in which arguments are made public for all students in the class. The act of creating arguments together in a classroom is called collective argumentation. Teachers need to be able to support students in productively engaging in collective argumentation, but research has not yet shown how they learn to do so. This project will document how mathematics teachers learn to support their students in engaging in productive collective argumentation. The research team will follow a cohort of participants (college students majoring in mathematics education) through their mathematics education coursework, observing their engagement in collective argumentation and opportunities to learn about supporting collective argumentation. The team will continue to follow the participants into their first two years of teaching, focusing on how their support for collective argumentation evolves over time. During their first two years of teaching, the research team and participants will work together to analyze the participants' support for collective argumentation in order to help the participants develop more effective ways to support collective argumentation.

Research has shown that engaging students, including students from underrepresented groups, in appropriately structured reasoning activities, including argumentation, may lead to enhanced learning. This project will provide information about how teachers learn to support collective argumentation and will allow for the development of professional development materials for prospective and practicing teachers that will enhance their support for productive collective argumentation.

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Project Materials