Mathematics Teacher Educator Podcast

In this episode, we explore a recent article, titled “Preservice Teachers’ Evolving Knowledge Around Technology for Teaching Mathematics”, from Volume 14, Issue 2 of the Mathematics Teacher Educator journal. In this discussion we will focus on the problem addressed in the article, the work behind it, and what it means for practice. This discussion is led by Joel Amidon and article authors, Kelly N...

In this episode, we explore a recent article, titled “Adapting Messages and Materials for Multiple Communities: Using Teacher Recruitment Materials With Integrity”, from Volume 14, Issue 2 of the Mathematics Teacher Educator journal. In this discussion we will focus on the problem addressed in the article, the work behind it, and what it means for practice. This discussion is led by Joel Amidon an...

In this episode, we explore a recent article, titled “Engaging in Equity-Oriented Mathematics Teaching Together: A Tool to Support Mentor and Teacher Candidate Learning”, from Volume 14, Issue 2 of the Mathematics Teacher Educator journal. In this discussion we will focus on the problem addressed in the article, the work behind it, and what it means for practice. This discussion includeds article...

This article details the development of design principles to support teachers in planning for a Community-Based Mathematical Modeling task with a focus on social justice in the elementary grades. By reflecting on the dilemmas we encountered in the design and enactment of the tasks, we developed five design principles that allowed us to address issues of social justice as well as attend to powerful...

The authors began this work with the understandings that (a) there is no “neutral” when it comes to the teaching of mathematics, and (b) mathematics teacher educators need to do something to help produce teachers of mathematics that develop students’ relationships with mathematics and push against the inequities that exist both within and outside of the classrooms in which they will teach. In resp...

This article focuses on using simulations of practice in teacher education. We studied preservice teachers’ engagement with a popular simulations platform, which creates mixed-reality simulations of five digital avatars controlled by a single live interactor. Because simulations are only an approximation of real practice, our overarching goal was to understand how mathematical stereotypes might ar...

We introduce a teacher learning practice called EQUIP-ing, which aims to foster sociopolitical noticing by leveraging EQUIP, an equity-oriented classroom observation tool. We detail our iterations of EQUIP-ing to a field-based Number Talk experience in a secondary mathematics methods course with 25 White prospective teachers (PTs). We offer empirical accounts of how EQUIP-ing empowered PTs to conn...

Two broad categories of instructional practices, (a) explicitly attending to concepts and (b) fostering students’ opportunities to struggle, have been consistently linked to improving students’ mathematical learning and achievement. In this article, we describe an effort to build these practices into a framework that is useful for a diverse set of professional development (PD) offerings. We descri...

Learning to teach mathematics is a complex endeavor, requiring sustained focus and time. Yet time is especially scarce in elementary teacher education programs, where preservice teachers (PSTs) learn all content areas. Through a collaborative self-study, five teacher educators identified three time-related tensions in elementary mathematics methods courses: (a) teaching mathematics content and ped...

Issues of equity in mathematics classrooms existed prior to COVID-19. For many students, however, meaningful participation in mathematical discussions became nearly impossible in online settings during the pandemic. In this study, we note the diversity in and nature of participation in mathematical discourse in an online course for preservice teachers (PSTs). We investigate the influence of implem...

This article explores one novice mathematics teacher educator’s initial use of the Mathematical Quality in Planning Protocol, an innovative tool that was developed to assist in providing feedback on the mathematical quality of novice mathematics teachers’ lesson plans. The protocol was devised to help mathematics teacher educators bridge the gap between prospective teachers’ mathematical content k...

This Perspectives on Practice manuscript focuses on an innovation associated with “Engaging Teachers in the Powerful Combination of Mathematical Modeling and Social Justice: The Flint Water Task” from Volume 7, Issue 2 of MTE. The Flint Water Task has shown great promise in achieving the dual goals of exploring mathematical modeling while building awareness of social justice issues. This Perspecti...

The spaces we inhabit and the physical communities in which we learn all affect how we come to experience the world, construct what mathematics is to us, and develop how we teach mathematics. In this theory-to-practice article, we discuss why explicitly considering spatial ways of knowing is important in mathematics teacher education. We begin by providing theoretical arguments for the importance...

There is a lack of teacher education materials that develop equity literacy in content courses for preservice secondary mathematics teachers. In response, we created teacher education curriculum materials for introductory statistics that include an integrated focus on developing equity literacy and critical statistical literacy. In this article, we provide an overview of our materials’ design alon...

This Perspectives on Practice manuscript focuses on an innovation associated with “Engaging Teachers in the Powerful Combination of Mathematical Modeling and Social Justice: The Flint Water Task” from Volume 7, Issue 2 of MTE. We built on Aguirre et al.’s (2019) integration of mathematical modeling and social justice issues in mathematics teacher education to similarly integrate statistical invest...

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has entered into public discourse at an accelerated rate. Instead of using CRT as a basis to produce a more racially conscious populace, the latest hysteria, unfortunately, has centered on ban- ning CRT. Governmental actions have been instituted to establish executive orders to forbid CRT training. Administrators and educators have been written up, sus- pended, and even...

A group of mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) began a lesson study to develop a research-based lesson to engage elementary preservice teachers with professional teacher noticing within the context of multidigit multiplication. Afterward, MTEs continued teaching and revising the lesson, developing an integrated process that combined lesson study with the continuous improvement model. This article...

Preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) often enter their teacher preparation programs with procedural and underdeveloped understandings of area measurement and its applications. This is problematic given that area and the area model are used throughout K–Grade 12 to develop flexibility in students’ mathematical understanding and to provide them with a visual interpretation of numerical ideas. This...

In this article we detail a research study using the Instructional Quality Assessment (IQA) Rubrics (Boston, 2012) as the frame for a professional development with mathematics teachers in grades 3-8. We wanted to create a professional development around a tool that was typically used in research as a way to observe teachers, as a tool to use with teachers on their reflection of instruction. In thi...

Mathematics standards and practices highlight the vital role that language plays in mathematics education. However, there remains a common misconception that mathematics is somehow language- free or less linguistically demanding than other content areas. This qualitative study describes an intervention implemented in six elementary mathematics methods courses. The intervention was designed to attu...

Special Guests: Kate Johnson and Michael Steele .

In this article, we share results from a field experience model in which junior-year methods classes were held in an elementary school and preservice teachers (PSTs) worked with a single student (a “Math Buddy”) on mathematics for 30 minutes per day. We focus on the development of PSTs’ skills for exploring children’s thinking and the structures and tools that we used to support this development....

Special Guests: Barbara Swartz and Esther M. H. Billings.

Prospective and practicing elementary teachers have historically demonstrated anxiety about mathematics, which can affect their mathematics teaching and their students’ math anxiety. Yet, developing productive dispositions prior to teacher preparation programs is rarely addressed in the research. We propose mindset messaging in mathematics courses as an intervention to influence prospective teache...

This article describes an innovation in an elementary mathematics education course called SEE Math (Support and Enrichment Experiences in Mathematics), which aims to support teacher candidates (TCs) as they learn to teach mathematics through problem solving while promoting equity during multiple experiences with a child. During this 8-week program, TCs craft and implement tasks that promote proble...