Middle

A middle school mathematics teacher taught native English speakers for the first fifteen years of her career. As immigrants from other countries moved into the community and student demographics began to change, she realized that she was not prepared to teach mathematics to students who were English language learners (ELLs).
The demands that she faced are not unique. The recent growth of the ELL population in the United States has challenged teachers to identify effective strategies to meet the needs of ELL students and their families.

Equity in mathematics education should be one of the most important concerns of
teachers, administrators, policy makers, mathematicians, and mathematics educators. In fact, the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educator (AMTE), the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM), and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics NCTM), three national organizations that support teacher educators, mathematics teachers, and teacher leaders, have made equity a priority for their organizations (Gutierrez et al. 2008). Position statements, standards documents, and various books identify key equity issues and recommend directions compelling all involved in the mathematics education of students to become aware of equity issues and to take steps toward eliminating the inequities that plague K-16 education.

In this paper, we present an overview of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Knowledge for Algebra Teaching for Equity (KATE) Project and experiences from preservice teachers who are preparing for teaching middle grades mathematics. We highlight findings from a preliminary analysis of the effectiveness of virtual simulations of problem-based teaching of algebra concepts in enhancing preservice teachers' knowledge and skill in teaching diverse students.

This article presents our plans and initial work to explore how mathematics teacher education programs can prepare teachers for diverse middle grades classrooms. It describes the start-up of a five-year National Science Foundation project to design, develop, and test technology-enriched teacher preparation strategies to address equity in algebra learning. The participants in this pilot group demonstrated a need to develop their mathematical problem-solving skills, but they also exhibited strong beliefs about their own potential to be successful in the mathematics classroom. Preliminary results appear to indicate that Second Life (software) simulations can provide rich settings for teacher development on specific mathematics teaching skills and challenge them to apply their ideas about diversity. (Contains 5 tables and 4 figures.)

Despite evidence that it can help students learn higher-order thinking skills and gain deep content knowledge, problem-based learning (PBL) is not deployed on a large scale in K-12 classrooms. This conceptual chapter explores teacher’s past experiences, and resulting habitus, to explain the minimal extent of PBL in K-12 schools. Central to teachers’ abilities to implement PBL is their ability to provide scaffolding, and their habitus may interfere with this process. Implications for teacher education and teacher change are discussed.