Embedding Mathematics
Teaching mathematics is ultimately about engaging in mathematics. So
teaching mathematics requires attention to the mathematical content as
we engage in detailing high-leverage practices. What becomes difficult
in a mathematics methods class is to find ways to have the content of
the mathematics not sit separately but be interwoven in all that we
address with teacher education students. We want teacher education
students to be learning content while in methods, to be thinking about
what it means as a teacher to be using content knowledge in your
teaching, to see all the places where mathematical content makes a
difference in understanding the situation and so on. We want the
teacher education students to see mathematical content and teaching
consistently intertwined.
We see examples of embedding the mathematics in the focus on tasks and
how the teacher educators talk about the tasks. We see it in the
questions we ask about pedagogy and student thinking. We see it in our
response to our students focus on pedagogy. You will see in each of the
sites the mathematical content provides the foundation for the
pedagogical work.
Sonoma State University
Rick Marks provides a rich example of embedding the content of
mathematics throughout an analyses of the teaching of tasks. He starts
with content as he asks students to analyses the content of the task
posed but then weaves content throughout the remainder of the analyses
including what students find in what students say about the
mathematics.
University of Michigan
It is the first principle of the work of the Mathematics Methods
group… It is a key element in the Mathematics Task framework the
teacher education students make use of on Franke’s sites (here she
pushes on how the content interacts with the problem posing, the
students as they participate and so on.).
We as a mathematics teacher education group talked at length about
the role of mathematical content in our methods classes. We looked to
see how the websites could help accomplish the goals of learning to
teach while not loosing the mathematical content. We looked for
particularly rich opportunities to delve in to the mathematics along
with the pedagogy. We worried together about how difficult it was to
accomplish all the mathematics content one would want in a teacher
education program. We recognized that embedding the mathematics content
within supporting students to develop their high leverage practices
would allow us to help students learn from and in practice in ways that
support the continued learning of mathematics.
Perspectives