Ambitious Curriculum Use: Coordinating the Use of Curriculum Materials With Responding to Children's Mathematical Thinking

• In Event: 70.057 - Prospects and Challenges in Teacher Curricular Adaptation Across Disciplines

Abstract

Purpose
Mathematics methods courses and professional development programs often focus on preparing and supporting teachers to be responsive to children’s mathematical thinking by developing teaching practices such as eliciting, building on, and responding to children’s problem solving strategies and mathematical understandings (e.g., Carpenter et al., 1999; Jacobs, Lamb & Philipp, 2010; Sleep & Boerst, 2012). However, teachers struggle to enact these practices in the context of using published curriculum materials that were written for broad and generic audiences, as opposed to specific children. In this presentation, we are conceptualizing the kinds of curriculum use strategies and adaptations that would comprise ambitious curriculum use - enacting ambitious teaching practices (Lampert et al., 2013) that are responsive to children’s mathematical thinking while using published curriculum materials.

Perspectives
In this paper, we build on Remillard (2005) in taking the perspective that the relationship between teachers and curriculum materials is both interactive and participatory. We further build on Remillard’s work by noting that reading curriculum materials is unlike reading any other genre of materials. In particular, we suggest specific strategies for reading and planning with curriculum materials that support teachers in being responsive to children’s mathematical thinking.

Methods
We have built on a series of interrelated studies to develop the strategies and principles described here. These studies have included a close examination of four expert teachers’ practices using curricular resources to respond to children’s mathematical thinking (Land, 2011); a textual analysis of eight elementary mathematics curriculum series (Drake et al., 2013); and a number of studies designed to support prospective teachers in learning from and about the use of Standards-based curriculum materials (summarized in Drake, Land, & Tyminski, 2014).

Results
In this presentation, we will share two principles for teachers’ ambitious use of curriculum materials and two curriculum use strategies embedded within those principles that have been useful in our work with teachers. The first principle is the coordinated noticing of curriculum features (Dietiker et al., 2014) and children’s mathematical thinking (Jacobs, Lamb, & Philipp, 2010). The second principle is the importance of small changes in teachers’ adaptations of materials that reflect coordinated noticing.

Within these two principles, we have focused on strategies for adapting curriculum materials in ambitious, responsive ways through 1) number choice and 2) attending more closely to marginal aspects of textbook lessons. By this, we mean aspects of lessons that are literally in or close to the margins of the textbooks, including opening routines and extension or differentiation problems.

Significance
We have found that teachers often face a significant challenge in teaching in ways that are responsive to children’s mathematical thinking within the constraints of using published curriculum materials. By focusing separately on only ambitious teaching practices or curriculum use practices, we leave teachers to do the challenging work of integrating these two sets of practices on their own. As an alternative approach, we have worked with teachers to develop principles and strategies for ambitious curriculum use that support teachers in responding to children’s mathematical thinking.

Authors

• Corey Drake, Michigan State University

• Tonia Jo Land, Drake University