Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Developing Preservice Teachers' Capacity to Teach Students with Learning Disabilities in Algebra I

Principal Investigator:

Project researchers are training pre-service teachers to tutor students with learning disabilities in Algebra 1, combining principles from special education, mathematics education, and cognitive psychology. The trainings emphasize the use of gestures and strategic questioning to support students with learning disabilities and to build students’ understanding in Algebra 1.

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SPIRAL: Supporting Professional Inquiry and Re-Aligning Learning through a Structured e-Portfolio System

Principal Investigator:

The SPIRAL project seeks to develop and test a new model for vertical-team professional development, along with a set of electronic tools enabling collaboration among these teams to support instructional improvement aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). We seek to better understand how teachers use a custom-designed digital portfolio to better understand students' learning trajectories across K-8 science so as to shape their own instructional practice with relation to the spiraled NGSS.

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Transforming Scientific Practices to Promote Students Interest and Motivation in the Life Sciences: A Teacher Leadership Development Intervention

Principal Investigator:

How Do Teacher Leaders Transform Scientific Practices to Promote Students Interest and Motivation in STEM? Formal and informal K-12+ educators learn to employ strategies of community mapping, curricular mapping and place-based, culturally sustaining pedagogy to write, teach, and evaluate NGSS lessons that engage underrepresented students in mathematics, life, earth, and physical sciences. Two case studies highlight how educators apply these strategies to intersect three domains: experiential/place-based learning, culturally sustaining learning, and disciplinary learning .

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In the Classrooms of Newly Hired Secondary Science Teachers: The Consequences of Teaching In-field or Out-of-field

Science teachers must sometimes teach outside of their expertise, and this type of teaching assignment is referred to as being out-of-field. Among newly hired teachers, this type of assignment may have a detrimental impact in the development of their instruction. This study explored the classroom instruction of 17 newly hired teachers who were teaching both in-field and out-of-field in the physical sciences during their first three years.

Author/Presenter

Jessica B. Napier

Julie A. Luft

Harleen Singh

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2020
Short Description

Science teachers must sometimes teach outside of their expertise, and this type of teaching assignment is referred to as being out-of-field. Among newly hired teachers, this type of assignment may have a detrimental impact in the development of their instruction. This study explored the classroom instruction of 17 newly hired teachers who were teaching both in-field and out-of-field in the physical sciences during their first three years.

The Power of Interviewing Students

A teacher uses formative assessment interviews to uncover evidence of students’ understandings and to plan targeted instruction in a mathematics intervention class. Authors present an example of a student interview, a discussion of the benefits and challenges of conducting interviews, and actionable suggestions for implementing them.

MacVicar, T. J., Brodesky, A. R., and Fagan, E. R. (2021). The power of interviewing students. Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12, 114(6), 436–444.

Author/Presenter

Theresa J. MacVicar

Amy R. Brodesky

Emily R. Fagan

Year
2021
Short Description

A teacher uses formative assessment interviews to uncover evidence of students’ understandings and to plan targeted instruction in a mathematics intervention class. Authors present an example of a student interview, a discussion of the benefits and challenges of conducting interviews, and actionable suggestions for implementing them.

PBS News Hour Student Reporting Labs StoryMaker: STEM-Integrated Student Journalism

Principal Investigator:
Sneak peek at StoryMaker, a video storytelling platform /educator co-learning community supporting students to produce videos about STEM projects.
PI: Leah Clapman, PBS NewsHour
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Target Audience:

Learning Trajectories as a Complete Early Mathematics Intervention: Achieving Efficacies of Economies at Scale

Principal Investigator:
The ULTIMATE (Understanding Learning Trajectories In Math: Advancing Teacher Education) project will evaluate Learning Trajectories as a complete early mathematics intervention by supporting teachers in deepening their understanding of how children learn mathematics and how to incorporate this understanding. Drs. Clements and Sarama have built a professional development tool, called Learning and Teaching with Learning Trajectories, or [LT]2. The team will investigate the positive impacts both in supporting teachers and on students' learning of mathematics.
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Fostering Equitable Groupwork to Promote Conceptual Mathematics Learning

Principal Investigator:
This project will document how middle grades mathematics students learn equitable collaboration through an ongoing effort to implement groupwork using the model of Complex Instruction. The primary purpose of this study is to describe how 6th-7th grade students learn to collaborate with one another to make sense of mathematics, and how students and their teacher negotiate what constitutes equitable collaboration.
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The Development of ePCK of Newly Hired In-field and Out-of-field Teachers during their First Three Years of Teaching

This study explored the potential impact of teaching outside of one’s field of expertise. This longitudinal cross-case study examined the development of enacted pedagogical content knowledge (ePCK) among a group of in-field and out-of-field (OOF) physical science teachers during their first 3 years of teaching. The components of ePCK investigated included the knowledge and skills related to conceptual teaching strategies and student understanding of science. Seventeen newly hired teachers teaching in and outside their field of expertise participated in the study.

Author/Presenter

Harleen Singh

Julie A. Luft

Jessica B. Napier

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2021
Short Description

This study explored the potential impact of teaching outside of one’s field of expertise. This longitudinal cross-case study examined the development of enacted pedagogical content knowledge (ePCK) among a group of in-field and out-of-field (OOF) physical science teachers during their first 3 years of teaching.

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.