Miriam Gamoran Sherin

Conducting Video Research in the Learning Sciences: Guidance on Selection, Analysis, Technology, and Ethics

Focusing on expanding technical capabilities and new collaborative possibilities, we address 4 challenges for scientists who collect and use video records to conduct research in and on complex learning environments: (a) Selection: How can researchers be systematic in deciding which elements of a complex environment or extensive video corpus to select for study? (b) Analysis: What analytical frameworks and practices are appropriate for given research problems? (c) Technology: What technologies are available and what new tools must be developed to support collecting, archiving, analyzing, reporting, and collaboratively sharing video? and (d) Ethics: How can research protocols encourage broad video sharing and reuse while adequately protecting the rights of research participants who are recorded?

Describing Levels and Components of a Math-Talk Learning Community.

The transformation to reform mathematics teaching is a daunting task. It is often unclear to teachers what such a classroom would really look like, let alone how to get there. This article addresses this question: How does a teacher, along with her students, go about establishing the sort of classroom community that can enact reform mathematics practices? An intensive year-long case study of one teacher was undertaken in an urban elementary classroom with Latino children. Data analysis generated developmental trajectories for teacher and student learning that describe the building of a math-talk learning community—a community in which individuals assist one another’s learning of mathematics by engaging in meaningful mathematical discourse. The developmental trajectories in the Math-Talk Learning Community framework are (a) questioning, (b) explaining mathematical thinking, (c) sources of mathematical ideas, and (d) responsibility for learning.

Fostering communities of teachers as learners: disciplinary perspectives

Education research in learning and teaching has alternated historically between periods in which subject matter disciplines were used as the organizing framework for investigation and implementation, and other periods in which the content areas nearly disappeared in favour of a quest for generic principles of instruction that could transcend disciplinary boundaries. There are few examinations of how these factors interact in the context of specific classroom‐ and pedagogy‐centred school reform. The papers that follow in this issue of JCS examine this issue through the lens of the pedagogic reform, ‘Fostering a Community of Learners’. This introduction outlines the key characteristics of this reform and describes the main issues in subsequent examinations of teachers learning to implement ‘Fostering a Community of Learners’ in science, social studies, English language arts, and mathematics.

Curriculum strategy framework: investigating patterns in teachers' use of a reform-based elementary mathematics curriculum

The goal of this paper is to introduce the curriculum strategy framework as a way to characterize teachers’ interactions with curriculum materials. The framework focuses on three key interpretive activities: reading, evaluating, and adapting curriculum materials. Describing an individual teacher’s curriculum strategy involves identifying the manner in which a teacher engages with each of these activities before, during, and after instruction. This paper presents the results of a study in which the framework was used to identify patterns in the curriculum strategies of 10 elementary‐school teachers who were using a reform‐based mathematics curriculum for the first time. It concludes with directions for further research using the curriculum strategy framework, and implications of this work for curriculum designers.

Creating Social Relationships : The Role of Technology in Preservice Teacher Preparation

In this article, the authors explore how the pervasive availability of technology allows for new social arrangements in teacher education by connecting preservice teachers, school-based personnel, university faculty, and others in deep and engaging ways. The authors illustrate this perspective and then propose four implications for teacher education institutions that build on this view. Specifically, the authors recommend that technology be used in teacher education to (a) create technically literate education professionals, (b) strengthen the practice—theory connection, (c) provide more practice-centered training, and (d) reflect deeply into the scholarship and practice of teaching. The authors discuss each of the four implications in turn and provide examples of institutional practices aligned with these goals.

How Different Video Club Designs Support Teachers in "Learning to Notice"

Abstract Video is currently a key element of numerous professional development programs, yet relatively little is known about how video fosters changes in teachers’ thinking. This study examines how a particular type of videobased professional development, namely video clubs, supports teacher development. Video clubs are professional development environments in which groups of teachers come together to view and discuss videos of one another’s teaching. In this paper, we study how two different video club designs support teachers in “learning to notice” classroom interactions in new ways. Data for this study include a pre- and post-interview conducted with each participating teacher from the two video clubs. Analysis reveals that, for one group, the scope of their comments became focused on a particular issue, interpreting the mathematical ideas expressed by students in the video excerpts. In contrast, the second group developed a range of perspectives for discussing the video segments. We argue that the different designs of the video clubs influenced the ways in which the two groups of teachers “learned to notice.”

A discipline apart: the challenges of ‘Fostering a Community of Learners’ in a mathematics classroom

This is the fifth in a series that examines the challenges that teachers in different domains face as they attempt to implement the pedagogical reform ‘Fostering a Community of Learners’ (FCL). Here we focus on the relationship between FCL and the teaching of mathematics. We argue that it is possible to teach mathematics through the FCL pedagogy, but that doing so requires some rethinking of both mathematics instruction and FCL. In particular, we describe three shifts that aided a teachers implementation of FCL pedagogy with mathematics: the teacher developed a new perspective on mathematics that emphasized the importance of having students learn both mathematical concepts and processes; the teacher developed a new understanding of the role of the teacher in mathematics‐education reform; and the teacher modified his understanding of FCL, coming to believe that a discourse community could be the basis for FCL pedagogy in a mathematics classroom.

Exploring diverse accounts of teacher knowledge

Abstract This article explores the nature of teacher knowledge as it is portrayed by Schoenfelds model of teaching. We attempt to situate Schoenfelds work in the field of teacher knowledge and to elucidate the contribution that he makes to the growing body of research in this area. Towards this end, we explore two related issues. First, we distinguish between claims about the form of teacher knowledge and claims about the content of teacher knowledge. Second, we propose two families of theories of teacher knowledge, where each family shares common phenomena, methods, and theoretical forms. We argue that these two families capture much of the diversity that exists in the literature on teacher knowledge today. Our goal is to begin to develop a theoretical approach that will not only allow us to situate Schoenfelds research, but that will also help us to compare existing theories with each other.

Discussing Discussion: A Video Club in the Service of Math Teachers' National Board Preparation.

This paper examines a group of secondary mathematics teachers who met 16 times to discuss video excerpts of their teaching. The explicit purpose of the meetings was to assist the teachers in preparing video for submission to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Analysis of meeting transcripts reveals that teachers engaged in intensive discussions about mathematical discourse. Specifically, the teachers investigated three discourse‐related themes: techniques for facilitating discourse, contextual factors affecting discourse, and criteria for evaluating discourse. The meetings also supported the development of a professional community among participants as they collaboratively and substantively examined each other’s practices. This research adds to our understanding of teacher professional development and provides particular insights about how preparing for National Board Certification can facilitate teacher learning and the development of professional teacher communities.

Multiple Perspectives on the Development of an Eighth‐Grade Mathematical Discourse Community

In this article we examine the development, over 1 year, of mathematical discourse communities in 2 eighth‐grade mathematics classes in a suburban public middle school. The curriculum topics included probability, functions, graphing, data analysis, and pre‐algebra. The 50 students were heterogeneously placed; most were from upper‐middle‐class families. Data included videotaped classroom observations, field notes, and teacher reflections. We explored both the students’ growing competencies with mathematical discourse and changes in how the teacher attended to students’ ideas. We present the teacher’s impressions of the developing discourse community, and we applied 2 research‐based lenses, robust mathematical discussion to assess the strength of student discourse, and professional vision for classroom discourse to analyze the ways in which the teacher paid attention to, and reflected on, ideas students raised during discussion. Applying multiple perspectives highlighted the complex nature of developing a discourse community and the challenges facing the teacher as he worked to orchestrate constructive dialogue for learning mathematics and to become aware of what students were learning in this context. We also provide an analytic tool, the robust mathematical discussion framework, that will be useful for teachers, teacher educators, and researchers to evaluate the evolving nature of classroom discourse.