Classroom Practice

Work in secondary mathematics education takes many approaches to content, pedagogy, professional development and assessment. This session aims to illuminate the richness of hte content of secondary mathematics and the field of secondary mathematics education by sharing two such approaches and reflecting on the differences and commonalities between the two.   

“Solution diversity” has been proposed as one key characteristic that distinguishes engineering design from other disciplinary pursuits. Engineering designers recognize that for any design problem, there will be multiple acceptable solutions, and informed designers have been found to strive for “idea fluency” through divergent thinking techniques that assist them in exploring the design space (Crismond & Adams, 2012).

In contrast to evaluative research that uses accountability measures, improvement science research (Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, & LeMahieu, 2015), using practical measures is designed to provide practitioners with frequent, rapid feedback that enables them to assess and adjust instruction during the process of implementation. The resulting data is potentially of use to multiple stakeholders. For example, practical measures can orient teachers to attend to key aspects of the classroom that might be invisible to them.

Quality elementary science programs are faced with the challenge of adapting and/or building upon the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in order to provide an essential foundation for student learning and interest in science. As such, these science programs must address how the practices of science can be linked with cross-cutting concepts through meaningful learning contexts that, of necessity, evolve progressively across grades.

The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) offer an opportunity for districts to push teachers to enact ambitious practices around instruction and curriculum use. However, taking up ambitious practices entails a number of challenges, some of which were evident during the NCTM Standards reform movement in the 1990s and early 2000s, and some of which reflect new approaches and new policy contexts.

The Next Generation Science Standards present important shifts for science teaching, assessment, and curriculum materials—focusing on core explanatory ideas, a central role for science and engineering practices, and coherence across time and science disciplines. These challenges for practice require new theoretical advances.

Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) and project partners are developing an online course for high school science teachers. The purpose of the course is to help teachers understand key energy concepts in alternative energy contexts. The course includes three interactive learning experiences (interactives) that use life cycle data from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).