128 research outputs found
Ball, Deborah Loewenberg, and Fancesca M. Foryani, What Makes Education Research \u27Educational\u27? Educational Researcher, 36(December, 2007), 529-540.
No full textPosits a formulation of multiple interactions named the instructional dynamic and argues that research in colleges of education should relate in some manner to these kinds of interactions at the heart of educational practice and policy; gives examples
Ball, Deborah Loewenberg, and David K. Cohen, Reform by the Book: What Is - or Might Be - the Role of Curriculum Materials in Teacher Learning and Instructional Reform? Educational Researcher, 25 (December, 1996), 6-8; 14. *
No full textSummarizes what is known from research on curriculum materials and identifies how curriculum materials could be designed so they serve better both students and teachers
Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching Teachers: The Mathematical Work of and Knowledge Entailed by Teacher Education.
No full textThis dissertation investigates the mathematical work and knowledge demands of this work to teach mathematics to teachers. The last 20 years have seen progress in the study of the specialized knowledge of mathematics needed for the work of teaching, as well as much discussion about the importance of strengthening teachers’ mathematical preparation. However, less attention has been paid to the mathematical work and the knowledge demands of the work for those who must teach the courses, write textbooks, or develop programs to help teachers learn mathematics. This study investigated the work of teaching teachers and the mathematical knowledge entailed by that work.
The overarching question of the study is: What is the work of teaching teachers mathematics and what are the mathematical knowledge demands entailed by this work? Two sub-questions are:
• What are some of the key tasks of teaching mathematical knowledge for teaching that are involved in teaching teachers mathematics?
• What are the mathematical knowledge demands entailed by teaching teachers mathematics?
This study examines the teaching of two mathematics teacher educators, educators significantly different in professional training. Their students are different. One teaches in-service teachers. The other teaches student teachers. The contrasting sites provided data to probe recurrent tasks and demands of the work of teaching mathematics to teachers.
First, I identified several task domains within the work of both teacher educators. Three appeared to be central: selecting interpretations and representations, selecting examples, and managing mathematical tasks. Four cases of teaching, two from each teacher educator were analyzed for elements of these task domains. Based on my cross case analysis I differentiate elements that seemed to be consistent and idiosyncratic across the cases. I proposed a framework for the study of the work of teacher education.
Second, I examined the mathematical work of these cases for the mathematical knowledge demands. I proposed a domain of mathematical knowledge, mathematical knowledge for teaching teachers (MKTT), discussed distinctive qualities of MKTT that appeared to characterize the ways MKTT is held and used for the work of teacher education.PhDEducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/77702/1/dzopf_1.pd
The Purloined Education
No full textThis dissertation examines the curriculum of white supremacy (Loewenberg Ball, 2020) as a learned system of classification, comparison, and control, one that shapes not only institutional structures, but the identities and perceptions of individuals. Rather than focusing on overt acts of racism or isolated policy failures, this work analyzes white supremacy as a relational and internalized curriculum that is often hidden in plain sight.
Using Hawkins’s (1974) instructional triangle as a guiding framework - comprising the “It” (curriculum), “Thou” (teacher or intermediary), and “I” (learner) - the study traces how racialized lessons are taught, received, and absorbed through everyday educational interactions. Drawing on sculptural portraiture and in-depth interviews with Asian American millennial women, the dissertation explores how participants metabolize the curriculum of white supremacy over time. Metabolization, in this context, refers to the internal processing of racialized experiences, whether through striving, resistance, dissociation, or release.
The central finding is not merely that white supremacy is learned, but that some participants undergo a shift from unconscious absorption to conscious metabolization. This shift disrupts the grip of the curriculum and reveals what this study names the I - a form of selfhood not governed by fear, classification, or comparison, but marked by love, goodness, and power.
This work contributes a conceptual framework for understanding how white supremacy shapes identity and offers a language for the processes by which it can be seen, engaged, and released. It holds implications for education and personal transformation, inviting a reframing of racism not as a solely political problem, but as a learning problem rooted in what has been unconsciously internalized.PhDEducational StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/199135/1/ahnka_1.pd
Teaching as invisible work.
No full textThis dissertation explores a fundamental problem of teacher education - namely, that key features of teaching work are invisible. What is meant here is not the usual sense of invisible---that what goes on in the teacher's head is physically unseen. Instead, this study contends that although many crucial aspects of the work of teaching are actually visible to the eye, they nonetheless evade notice. This is a problem for the professional education of teachers because although observation is a mainstay in teacher education, students of teaching miss some critical aspects of the work when they watch. The study begins with an analysis of the cognitive, sociological, and occupational forces that conspire to make features of teaching hard to see. I designed and conducted an intervention in a preservice teacher mathematics education course using key elements and principles of Japanese lesson study. Data from the intervention were analyzed with a threefold aim: (1) To uncover more about the invisibility of teaching, (2) To probe what it would take for me, the instructor, to make invisible features more visible, (3) To learn what student teachers notice and do when such features become more visible to students. Preservice students' work in the modified lesson study revealed that working closer to practice as they did in the intervention made visible three aspects of the work of teaching: (1) the disposition of mathematical care; (2) specific pedagogical moves connected to a dynamic view of instruction; and (3) attention to the professional self. I argue that the qualities of this intervention contributing to student learning include its grounding in particulars of practice, its collaborative nature, and its structures for colocation in the classroom. For the instructor, drawing back the curtain on teaching work entails narration that links thought and action, a deliberate use of the self, and the ability to anchor professional study within the world of practice. This study suggests that further research is needed to identify categories of invisibility in teaching, and that the contours of these categories will provide direction for teacher education.PhDEducationMathematics educationTeacher educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/126479/2/3253326.pd
Proof and proving in school mathematics instruction: Making the elementary grades part of the equation.
No full textThe concept of proof and the practice of proving have not typically been a focus of attention by those involved in the teaching and learning of mathematics in the elementary grades. This constitutes a serious lack in the way we conceptualize elementary school mathematics. Because proof and proving are at the core of doing and knowing mathematics, we cannot have a viable elementary school mathematics curriculum, or opportunities for students to learn it that have integrity, without having a way to incorporate proof and proving into a coherent conception of mathematics instruction in the early grades. This study investigates (1) how proof and proving might be conceptualized in the context of elementary mathematics instruction, and (2) how this conceptualization can inform the work that elementary teachers would need to do, and the knowledge that they would need to have, to promote proof and proving in their classrooms. The study is structured around three interrelated strands of work. The first strand illuminates the nature of proof in the early grades by identifying and exploring parameters potentially determinant of which arguments qualify as proofs. The second strand capitalizes on the first and sets forth a framework about the meaning of proof in K-12 mathematics instruction. Additionally, it uses this framework as a tool to examine instruction in the early grades in order to clarify aspects of teachers' role in fostering proof and proving. As a result, the second strand also develops a framework about instructional practices for cultivating proof and proving that make sense even in the early grades. The third strand investigates the knowledge of proof needed for cultivating proof and proving in elementary mathematics instruction. It advances a classification of different kinds of knowledge of proof that elementary teachers might need, paying particular attention to what is involved for teachers as they mobilize opportunities for their students to engage in proving. The study pursues the three strands of work both conceptually, using scholarly work on proof (including work on mathematical practice), and empirically, using data from the teaching practice of an elementary teacher who was trying to cultivate her students' reasoning skills. The products of the study offer insight into what it might mean, and what it would take, to make proof and proving central to elementary children's learning of mathematics. The conceptual analytic tools developed by the study contribute to theory building in the teaching and learning of proof and proving in the early grades but also more broadly. Furthermore, these tools can support the design of materials for the professional education of elementary teachers, and provide guidance for mathematics teacher educators who might implement them.PhDEducationElementary educationMathematics educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/125229/2/3186765.pd
Constructing and using a measure of teaching for mathematical proficiency.
No full textInstructional measures can be valuable tools for improving educational policies, learning about instructional practice, and evaluating school improvement efforts. This dissertation is about instructional measures, particularly measures of mathematics instruction. In this dissertation I review previous measures of mathematics instruction and create a new measure of effective instruction. The new measures is based on the definition of high quality instruction given in the National Research Council Report Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn Mathematics (NRC, 2001). In this report high quality instruction is referred to as teaching for mathematical proficiency (TMP). Based on the hypotheses in Adding It Up about what effective instruction entails I point out three characteristics that measures of TMP should include. They should not be dependent on surface level features of instruction, should focus on the mathematical substance of instruction, and should be multi-dimensional. I create a measure of TMP using the mathematics instructional logs and data collected by the Study of Instructional Improvement (SII) and show how this measure fits the three characteristics of measures of TMP. I use my measures of TMP to explore what school, teacher, and classroom factors influence instruction as well as explore the effect that my instructional scales have on student achievement. I summarize my findings and reflect on what this work has contributed in both the knowledge about instruction and the process of improving measures of mathematics instruction.PhDEducationMathematics educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/126657/2/3276124.pd
Mathematics textbooks for elementary teachers as a resource for teacher learning: The case of multiplication of integers.
No full textDespite broad concern about the mathematics knowledge of elementary teachers and evidence that textbooks influence the mathematics they are taught, little is known about the content of books used in their mathematics courses. Research efforts have been limited by the lack of shared guidelines about what the texts should convey and the lack of analytic techniques applicable to texts for future teachers, who need new understanding of the mathematics they studied as schoolchildren. This dissertation introduces a method for analyzing the content of these texts. The method is based on construction of a content map that functions as an analytic tool, showing what could be in the texts according to comprehensive review of the literature for the focal topic multiplication of integers and what should be in the texts according to policy documents. The map is used to compare what could and should be in the texts with what is in them. The content map method thus offers a way to uncover and characterize different ways mathematics is developed by authors, facilitating useful comparisons that can help improve teachers' opportunities to learn mathematics. Multiplication of integers was used to develop and test the method because of the wide variation in how this challenging topic can be developed. However, although one mathematics topic was used for the dissertation, the method can be used with other topics. The primary finding about the method is it produced a useful representation for analyzing the content of mathematics books designed for teaching teachers. For multiplication of integers in particular, the dissertation contributes a bibliography and a detailed inventory of the mathematical ideas. The primary finding about the textbooks themselves is that although all authors emphasize understanding of calculation procedures and principles used for multiplication of integers, opportunities to learn more about multiplication of integers varies by text. Some knowledge suggested as important within the literature receives only sporadic treatment in or is missing from the books.PhDEducationElementary educationMathematics educationTeacher educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/127167/2/3429490.pd
Situating teacher learning in the practice of mathematics and science teaching.
No full textEducation reforms propose new content and pedagogy for students. Making such reforms possible in schools depends on creating new content and pedagogy for teachers' learning. This study investigated an approach to support teachers' learning which has been rapidly growing in popularity. Specifically, the study was designed to learn how a collaborative professional development experience, situated in teachers' own practice, might help elementary teachers develop knowledge for teaching. Eleven fourth and fifth grade teachers from two public schools participated in this professional development which was modeled after Japanese Lesson Study. A qualitative research methodology of critical inquiry was used to analyze the data. The researcher was both designer and participant. This intervention gave these teachers opportunities to learn content, pedagogy, and skills for collaborative inquiry, but not all the teachers continued their involvement. Challenges of time, talk and individualism were problems for all and were among the main reasons teachers in one group gave for leaving the program. Three characteristics of the teachers who completed the project included: (a) dissatisfaction with the learning outcomes of their students; (b) participation with colleagues in social activities throughout the school year; (c) an existing trusting relationship with the program facilitator. The features of this new pedagogy of professional development require teachers to break from typical orientations to practice. This produces a paradox. On one hand, many American teachers do not have the skills needed to be expert at this, for the professional culture does not support such work. On the other hand, if teachers are not given opportunities to collaborate in meaningful ways, the skills they need cannot develop. Although, these teachers were not yet experts in this collaborative inquiry process, the skills required began to develop in the course of engaging in this professional development activity. Future research should seek to identify how to address these challenges more directly by design and how to develop structures to change teachers' environment, to help teachers learn to think of themselves as part of a collective rather than individuals, and to learn the language and the nature of criticism when talking to other professionals.PhDEducationElementary educationMathematics educationScience educationTeacher educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/124422/2/3138168.pd
Content knowledge for teaching reading.
No full textThis dissertation is composed of three journal articles. Each investigates the knowledge of text, language, and reading process needed to teach the elementary subject of reading---referred to as content knowledge for teaching reading (CKT-R). The three interlocking studies make use of an innovative set of multiple-choice survey items designed to measure CKT-R. Article 1. In this study, I present psychometric analyses of the CKT-R items. Results from ordinal factor analysis and two parameter item response theory scaling conducted with 1,542 elementary teachers indicate that CKT-R includes multiple dimensions defined by the topic areas of word analysis and comprehension and by how teachers use knowledge of reading in teaching practice. Items within constructs form reliable scales. Article 2. This study examines whether teachers hold specialized knowledge of reading that differs from common reading ability. Teachers in the study (n = 50) score significantly and substantially higher on the measure of CKT-R than non-teachers (n = 55) controlling for reading ability. These results suggest there is specialized knowledge for teaching reading and this knowledge can be studied in large-scale survey research using the CKT-R measures. Article 3. In this qualitative study, I investigate the content-specific knowledge and reasoning 19 teachers and 19 non-teachers use when responding to the teaching situations and questions presented in the CKT-R items. Teacher responses are characterized by use of knowledge of content, students, and teaching that goes beyond the immediate information provided in the teaching situation, while non-teachers draw on knowledge related to their own personal experience as readers. These differences suggest that teachers use a more relevant and robust knowledge base to reason about the situations encountered when teaching reading. Difficulties exhibited by participants fall primarily into two categories: difficulty diagnosing the teaching situation and lack of understanding of the language and terms used in teaching reading. Together these studies develop a conceptual framework for understanding CKT-R and advance a research tool for studying this knowledge in large-scale survey research. Implications for teacher education, the improvement of reading instruction, and related policies are discussed.PhDEducationReading instructionTeacher educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/125193/2/3186732.pd
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