Teacher Practice

Productive use of student mathematical thinking is a critical yet incompletely understood dimension of effective teaching practice. We have previously conceptualized the teaching practice of building on student mathematical thinking and the four elements that comprise it. In this paper we begin to unpack this complex practice by looking closely at its first element, establish.

This preliminary study explored how many representations of standard videos, animations/comics, and 360 videos are being used in mathematics methods courses to teach future teachers. Drawing on knowledge from prior studies on standard videos, this study aimed to address the gaps in literature to encompass other representations that are being utilized and obtained. Analyses show that standard videos are the primary medium being used to teach future teachers in math methods, followed by animations/comics, and then 360 videos.

The use of video is commonplace for professional preparation in education and other fields. Research has provided evidence that the use of video in these contexts can lead to increased noticing and reflection. However, educators now have access to evolving forms of video such as 360 video. The purpose of this study was to adapt and validate an instrument for assessing immersive 360 video use in an undergraduate preservice teacher university training program.

Professional noticing is an essential skill for teachers that is enacted by teachers via their embodied senses (sight, sound, etc.). To better understand the nature of teacher noticing, 44 preservice teachers (PSTs) viewed a 360 video of an elementary mathematics lesson while wearing virtual reality headsets. PSTs writings of what they noticed and recordings of where they turned their head while wearing the headsets during the recorded scenario were examined.

Scholarship on extended reality (XR) in teacher education is emerging at an increasing rate. As additional forms of XR become more common in the profession, there is a need for teacher educators to consider how the various forms of XR-based representations of practice are conceptualized. The papers in this special issue of JTATE on XR in teacher education each define XR in similar ways, but often with different terminology. In this editorial, we note how such definitions are characteristic of much of the good scholarship on XR in teacher education.

The purpose of the Reasoning Language for Teaching Secondary Algebra (ReLaTe-SA) project is to understand teachers' use of reasoning language for teaching concepts and procedures in middle and high school algebra. Previous studies on algebra and algebraic reasoning have investigated other aspects, including students’ conceptions and discourse. The link between students' discourse and conceptual understanding has been explored (Chesnais & Constantin, 2020; Reinhardtsen, 2020). However, less is known about middle and high school teachers' language in the algebra classroom.

This study explored how two professional development approaches to reforming math instruction with different mechanisms for fostering change might have valuable synergies when used in tandem to support take-up, i.e., teachers’ acceptance, adoption, and incorporation of ideas into practice. This investigation of Practice-Based Professional Development and Collaborative Lesson Design found that take-up was a recursive process that occurred across both PD types as teachers iteratively moved between building and deploying knowledge.

The researchers conducted a qualitative analysis of the perceptions of school personnel and pre-service teachers about an Algebra I tutoring program for students with learning disabilities. The researchers surveyed and interviewed the participants about the effectiveness of the program for the mathematics learning of the students with LD at the school and as a learning experience for the pre-service teachers. The school personnel indicated there was a mutually beneficial relationship between the tutors and the school.

Flipped instruction, in which information typically conveyed through in-class lectures is delivered remotely through video or text, is being used increasingly by teachers at all levels. However, there is little research documenting how elementary teachers think about, plan for, and use flipped instruction. In this article, we use data from interviews, class observations, and an analysis of instructional videos to describe an elementary mathematics specialists' efforts to incorporate flipped instruction for mathematics in her fifth grade class.

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has consistently emphasized the importance of curricular coherence in mathematics education. However, the predominance of the Internet has led to a lack of consistency in the use and quality of curricular materials. We drew on teachers’ self-report of their use of curriculum materials and conducted a Latent Class Analysis to examine patterns in 56 elementary teachers’ selection, use, and perceptions of materials for teaching mathematics, including the role that teacher expertise may play in these patterns.