What We Do
How Do Pre-Service Elementary Teachers Develop Essential Mathematical and Pedagogical Knowledge?
One line of Mid-Atlantic Center work is focused on understanding how pre-service elementary and middle school teachers might develop more effective content and pedagogical knowledge for mathematics teaching and how they might also develop positive dispositions to continue that knowledge development through habits of critical reflection on their own teaching.
Research methods used to address the overarching question about development of mathematical and pedagogical understanding by K-8 pre-service teachers include teaching experiments, case studies, structured interviews, and written assessments.
Faculty researchers for this line of work are: Dawn Berk, James Hiebert, Anne Morris, Martin Simon, and Tad Watanabe.
Using Lesson Study to Improve Teacher Preparation
Mid-Atlantic Center work on development of teacher knowledge aims to help pre-service elementary and middle school teachers develop mathematical understandings essential for effective teaching by emphasizing the ability to analyze classroom teaching to learn directly from practice. This approach to mathematics teacher preparation is based on the assumption that expertise in mathematics teaching can develop gradually over time if teachers know how to learn from their practice and how to build knowledge that can be used by others.
A unique aspect of this research program is that faculty and doctoral fellows are also applying the concept of learning from practice to the development and implementation of four pre-service content/methods courses. Using a type of “lesson study,” course instructors are studying their own practice to improve the courses and to learn more about this process so that it can be made transparent for the pre-service teachers.