Creating and Using VMCAnalytics for Preservice Teachers' Studying of Argumentation

• In Event: Cyber-Enabled Research That Repurposes a Major Video Collection on Students' Mathematical Reasoning

Abstract

Objectives

Our research investigates how creating and using multimedia artifacts (VMCAnalytics) can support pre-service teachers’ understanding of mathematical argumentation. Guiding research questions include:
1. How can VMCAnalytics be created to show students in K-12 mathematics educational settings participating in argumentation about mathematical ideas?
2. How do secondary pre-service teachers view argumentation in mathematics prior to the intervention?
3. What changes in secondary pre-service teachers’ views about argumentation in mathematics are revealed after the intervention?

Theoretical framework
Argumentation is an important mathematical practice for the K-12 mathematics classroom. Standards for mathematics emphasize the importance of including argumentation in the K-12 classroom (NCTM 1989; 2000; CCSS, 2010). An important component of teacher knowledge is understanding and recognizing student mathematical argumentation.

Video has been used successfully in teacher education programs to support the learning of in-service and pre-service teachers (Borko, Jacobs, Eiteljorg, & Pittman, 2008; Sherin & Han, 2004). Furthermore, the RUanalytic tool (Authors, 2010) has been used effectively in university courses to encourage students to engage with complex issues, collaborate, discuss, and build representations, and can help instructors gain insight into student thinking (Authors, 2013). How VMCAnalytics can be used to support pre-service teachers in their understanding of mathematical concepts, such as argumentation, however, is still an open question.

Methods and Data Sources
In this design-based research study (Brown, 1992; Kelly, Lesh, & Baek, 2008) episodes of student argumentation from the Video Mosaic Collaborative (VMC) video collection were used to construct video narratives using the RUanalytic tool of students engaged in argumentation across the grades. Data were collected online from 13 pre-service secondary teachers, enrolled in Secondary Methods and Practicum courses at a major university. They were given two VMCAnalytics that attended to students’ argumentation and were asked to respond to guiding questions in an online discussion format. To gain further insight into their understanding of argumentation, before and after the intervention, they created titles and description texts that detailed the argumentation they observed in events in a “skeleton” VMCAnalytic that was created specifically to assess understanding of argumentation. Students’ understanding of argumentation was evaluated through monitoring their online discussions and evaluating their VMCAnalytic text descriptions.

Results
Data analysis of pre- and post-assessments show that pre-service teachers’ understanding of students’ argumentation became more focused in terms of their use of the mathematical register. Their vocabulary use from pre- to post-assessments indicated more use of precise terms such as claims, counterclaims, backing, evidence and warrants as they identified the flow of students’ argumentation. The presentation will include the intervention VMCAnalytics, as well as the assessment VMCAnalytics and rubrics for scoring.

Significance
Studying VMCAnalytics show promise of being a useful tool to support pre-service teachers’ understanding of argumentation. The text component of the VMCAnalytic allows for independent study, which supports online learning. If VMCAnalytics can be shown to support pre-service teachers’ understanding of argumentation, they may also be able to support in-service teachers’ understanding of argumentation and pre-service and in-service teachers’ understanding of other mathematical practices.

Author

• Cheryl K. Van Ness, Rutgers University