Examining Expert Secondary Mathematics Teachers’ Thinking About Mathematics Instruction

• In Event: Poster Session 2
  In Poster Session: Analyzing In-Service and Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge, Identities, and Agency

Abstract

In recent years, professional organizations have released policy documents outlining what teachers need to know in order to enact effective mathematics instruction. While helpful to teacher educators in designing programs mathematics teachers, these documents contain a hypothesized/theoretical perspective on what mathematics teachers should know as opposed to an empirically-grounded accounting of what teachers with expertise in the profession do know. Based on analyses of lesson-planning interviews (Van Der Valk & Broekman, 1999) and considered through a pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) lens (Magnusson, Krajcik, & Borko, 1999), findings from this research document that expert secondary mathematics teachers think in complex and integrated ways, which is contradictory to the ways beginning mathematics teachers think. Implications for mathematics teacher education are discussed.

Authors

• Fran Arbaugh, The Pennsylvania State University

• Cynthia E. Taylor, Millersville University of Pennsylvania

• Rebecca Bruton, University of Missouri

• Kathryn B. Chval, University of Missouri - Columbia

• John K. Lannin, University of Missouri

• Matthew Michael Webb, University of Northern Iowa