Mathematics

This article presents an instructional strategy called Mathematical Bet Lines that was designed to promote classroom discourse and sense-making for all students, in particular English Language Learners.  Introduced in Project AIM (All Included in Mathematics), a 40 hour professional development program focused promoting meaningful mathematical discourse, the Mathematical Bet Lines strategy supports comprehension of story problems by having students articulate to themselves and others their predictions regarding what is happening in the problem as it is revealed one sentence at a time.  With

Facilitating meaningful mathematical discourse is dependent on the launch of the lesson where teachers prepare their students to work on the task.

Get them talking: Your formula for bringing math concepts to life!

Mathematics standards in the United States describe communication as an essential part of mathematics. One outlet for communication is writing. To understand the mathematics writing of students, we conducted a synthesis to evaluate empirical research about mathematics writing. We identified 29 studies that included a mathematics-writing assessment, intervention, or survey for students in 1st through 12th grade. All studies were published between 1991 and 2015.

Students need basic mathematics to fully participate in and contribute to society throughout their lives; however, many of them are not developing the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need. The National Science Foundation’s DRK-12 projects are developing, implementing, and/or studying resources, models, and technologies for teacher and student learning that have the potential to expand our understanding and address some of the most compelling issues we face when challenged to improve student achievement in mathematics.

Arguments for significantly improving doctoral programs have long been made, both nationally (Bender, 1997; Jackson, 1996; Golde & Walker, 2006; Walker, et al., 2007) and internationally (Cumming, 2010). The nature and variety of doctoral programs makes it difficult to single out specific changes that would be equally applicable to every discipline-specific doctoral program. Therefore, this commentary will focus on doctoral programs and doctoral preparation in mathematics education.

Institutions in the United States have been producing PhDs in mathematics education for more than a century. Teachers College at Columbia University and the University of Chicago produced the first graduates in mathematics education in 1906 and 1912, respectively. In those institutions, doctoral students in mathematics education typically took courses along with doctoral students in mathematics. However, the dissertation research took a different direction as doctorates in mathematics education focused on issues related to mathematics learning, teaching, or curriculum.

Research has documented that doctoral preparation in mathematics education varies greatly across institutions of higher education (McIntosh and Crosswhite [13], Reys and Kilpatrick [18], Reys and Dossey [15]). This study reports data gathered from over 500 doctoral graduates in mathematics education from 23 institutions in the USA from 1997 to 2014 as they self-assessed their research preparation during their doctoral program. At least 80% of the doctoral graduates rated their preparation as adequate or very well addressed for qualitative methods and quantitative methods.

There are many paths to becoming an active researcher in mathematics education. This article describes one ideal path. It begins with identifying a useful educational background prior to entering a doctoral program. Then it offers some suggestions for selecting an institution to pursue a doctoral program. The article outlines some academic knowledge and intern experiences that will help prepare the next generation of researchers in mathematics education once a doctoral program has been entered.