Improving our practice as mathematics teacher educators through teaching research

• Published in: International journal for the scholarship of teaching and learning Vol. 13; no. 2
• Main Authors: Liang, Su, Prasad, Priya, Patterson, Cody, Mira, Raquel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centers for Teaching & Technology at Georgia Southern University 29.05.2019; Georgia Southern University
• Subjects: Concept Formation; Continuous Improvement; Elementary School Mathematics; Elementary School Teachers; Faculty Development; Geometric Concepts; Lesson Design & Development; Mathematics Education; Mathematics Teacher Educator; Mathematics Teachers; Pedagogical Content Knowledge; Pre-service teachers; Preservice Teacher Education; Preservice Teachers; Similarity; Teacher Competencies; Teacher Educators; Teacher Researchers; Teaching research
• ISSN: 1931-4744; 1931-4744
• DOI: 10.20429/ijsotl.2019.130212

Four mathematics teacher educators from a large, minority-serving university formed a teaching research group in Fall 2016. The goal for this project is to establish a repeated cycle of improving our mathematics content course for pre-service teachers and to contribute a shared knowledge base which rests on foundation of well-defined learning goals in mathematics courses for elementary pre-service teachers. Guide by the Continuous Improvement framework (Berk & Hiebert, 2009), we utilized a data-driven approach to improving teaching, as well as embedding a discussion of classroom implementation into an investigation of an innovation (or, in our case, a mathematical task). In this paper, we present an example of iterative task design for the topic of geometric similarity, we hope to share this as a model of professional development for mathematics teacher educators that highlights the benefits to our students and to ourselves.