Limin Jao

Moving beyond the Barriers: Supporting Meaningful Teacher Collaboration to Improve Secondary School Mathematics.

The Collaborative Teacher Inquiry Project was a professional development initiative that sought to improve the teaching and learning of Grade 9 Applied mathematics by encouraging teachers to work collaboratively. The project brought together Grade 9 Applied mathematics teachers from 11 schools across four neighboring public school boards in the same geographic area of a large urban city in Southern Ontario, Canada. Teachers formed learning communities as a result of the Collaborative Teacher Inquiry Project through active collaboration to further teachers’ knowledge about teaching the Grade 9 Applied mathematics course and in developing teaching materials. Although it was reported that there were barriers to collaboration, teachers described various strategies that were (or could be) implemented to overcome these barriers. Teachers were enthusiastic in continuing to creatively find solutions to combat barriers as they saw the overall benefits of collaboration to their professional growth and noticed an increase in student engagement and achievement.

Creativity and Giftedness: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Mathematics and Beyond by Roza Leikin & Bharath Sriraman (Eds.).

This edited collection of 16 chapters paints a broad picture of current research and views on creativity and giftedness through theoretical papers and empirical studies. As a result of varied perspectives, the chapters are diverse in their views on creativity, giftedness, and their mutual relationship. The book is international in scope, spanning different countries (e.g., Iceland, Romania, the United States, Cyprus, and Israel); it includes all grade levels (kindergarten through tertiary education) and draws from a variety of fields (e.g., mathematics education, neuroscience, psychology, and the arts). After the introductory chapter, the book is presented in three parts. Part I comprises nine chapters offering perspectives on creativity; Part II comprises five chapters focused on giftedness; and Part III contains commentary on the two previous parts. While reading the chapters, various themes, images, and stories emerged for us. In this book review, we share them with you.

Examining the Development of a Transdisciplinary Collaboration

The urban arts play a significant role in the lives of many of today’s youth and may thus be a powerful vehicle for students to engage in and with mathematics. The Urban Arts Project (UAP) aims to incorporate the urban arts across all curricular subjects in one secondary school in Eastern Canada. A key feature of the project is to bring in artists to partner with school teachers in designing and delivering lessons that integrate urban arts. In this paper, we describe the case of one urban street artist and one mathematics teacher and the development of their collaboration to teach two interdisciplinary units of study. Although both the artist and teacher articulated initial hesitations to work across disciplinary boundaries and to collaborate, interview data suggest that by the end of the collaboration, both members had developed mutual respect, an important component in a successful collaboration. In the paper, we describe three factors that were important in supporting the development of this mutual respect: (a) opportunities for the artist to watch the teacher teach prior to the unit, (b) a pivotal moment where the artist’s respect for the teacher was made explicit, and (c) an artist-teacher liaison who was able to help facilitate collaboration between the artist and teacher. Given the success of this transdisciplinary collaboration, we encourage (mathematics) educators to think more broadly about opportunities and options for collaboration. By extending beyond disciplinary boundaries, collaborators can learn and benefit from varied and diverse perspectives.