Daniel Siebert

Quantitative reasoning in a reconceived view of transfer

Abstract This paper extends recent efforts to critique and reconceive transfer by using an empirical study to rethink the surface/structure distinction of the traditional transfer paradigm. The findings suggest that what researchers typically consider a surface feature can present conceptual complexities for students that are more structural in nature than previously understood. In particular, we investigated the quantitative reasoning (meaning reasoning with measurable properties of an object) that is involved in making sense of a typical transfer situation. Two related analyses — one focused on quantitative reasoning and one on transfer — were performed on a case study. The results document how a student reconstructed his understanding of the relationships among quantities in a complex transfer situation in such a way that he was able to see the situation as fundamentally proportional in nature and subsequently make connections with previous proportional-reasoning experiences from a teaching experiment. In our discussion of the findings, we identify four relationships between quantitative reasoning and transfer.

Why Content-Area Literacy Messages Do Not Speak to Mathematics Teachers: A Critical Content Analysis.

Much has been written to convince content-area teachers to include literacy instruction as part of their regular content instruction. The purpose of this study was to determine how the messages available in the literature are framed and how they might be viewed by content-area teachers, especially mathematics teachers. The analysis revealed that messages available to content-area teachers about literacy neglect, deemphasize, or misrepresent mathematics and/or mathematics education. These findings may help explain why content-area teachers, particularly mathematics teachers, resist ideas related to content-area literacy instruction

Different Goals, Similar Practices: Making Sense of the Mathematics and Literacy Instruction in a Standards-Based Mathematics Classroom.

This article describes both the process and products of a cooperative inquiry project between two educational researchers—one from literacy education and one from mathematics education. The collaboration took place in an undergraduate, inquiry-based mathematics classroom in which the researchers sought to develop a shared vision of learning and literacy. The researchers discovered that they each used a different learning model to make sense of mathematics instruction, and that both of these models obscured important aspects of learning in a Standards-based mathematics classroom. An alternative model of learning and literacy in mathematics that takes into consideration both models is presented, as well as the process through which the researchers negotiated this shared perspective.

What's More Important—Literacy or Content? Confronting the Literacy-Content Dualism

Abstract The literacy-content dualism, which suggests that teachers must decide whether to provide literacy or content instruction, is a false dualism and adherence to it is detrimental to student participation in content-area reasoning, learning, and communicating. This article describes the experiences that prompted the teacher educators who authored this article to reconsider content and literacy instruction and their first steps to help preservice and in-service teachers confront and eliminate the literacy-content dualism. Suggestions for future research are made.

Seeking renewal, finding community: participatory action research in teacher education

This narrative study describes the experiences of a group of teacher educators as they worked together in a collaborative research activity investigating theories of literacy and the preparation of secondary teachers. The collaboration was organized around the precepts associated with participatory action research (PAR). After four years of collaboration, the narratives of the members of the group revealed (a) changes to the practices and identities of the participants, (b) how the group formed a community, and (c) the ways in which the institution supported the work of the group. Organizing collaborative activities around PAR holds promise to not only produce quality research, but to support the improvement of teacher preparation programs and the development of teacher educators. However, this work requires institutional support that fosters collaborative work without mandating either collaborations or outcomes.