What We Do
How Do Teachers Draw on and Continue to Develop Their Mathematical and Pedagogical Knowledge in the Course of Their Professional Work?
To better understand and explain the ways that teacher knowledge influences teaching practice, Mid-Atlantic Center researchers are engaged in case-studies that involve extensive classroom observations, interviews, and investigations of the mathematical knowledge of 32 teachers from Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania—12 at the elementary level, 12 at the middle school level, and 8 at the high school level.
The aim of these case studies is to generate hypotheses about the ways that mathematical and pedagogical knowledge affects the decisions and actions of mathematics teachers. To test the hypotheses that the case studies yield, we will next conduct exploratory observational studies to see whether the patterns that seem critical to success or failure in case-study teachers are noticeable in classroom work of a broader sample of teachers in action.
Faculty researchers for this line of work are: Dan Chazan, Aisling Leavy, John Benedetto, Dawn Berk, Anne Morris, Glendon Blume, Rose Mary Zbiek, Janet Bobango, and M. Kathleen Heid.
Knowledge Development and Use in Teaching
Differences in classroom performance, professional growth, and effectiveness of teachers reflect differences in their understanding of mathematics and pedagogy. They also reflect differences in the community and school contexts in which the teachers work and the levels of professional experience that they bring to their classroom assignments. Because a variety of alternative teacher preparation routes are now gaining significant roles in the teacher supply system, it is also important to see how those different paths to teaching are related to classroom performance.
Relationships between professional background, contextual variables of school settings, and mathematics teacher performance are especially critical in the first years of teaching. Thus we are focusing our case studies of knowledge applied to teaching practice and of knowledge acquired from practice on teachers in the internship and first years of teaching. We are also examining ways that early-career teachers respond to the challenges of mathematics teaching in schools of rural and high poverty urban districts. By selecting case-study subjects with contrasting knowledge, experience, and teacher preparation profiles, we will also be able to generate hypotheses about the effects of differing routes into teaching.