The Role of Design in Community College Mathematics Instructors' Learning

• In Event: Problem-Disciplined Practice-Based Inquiry for Improving Mathematics Teaching and Learning: Plan-Do-Study-Act Cycles as Tools for Improvement

Abstract

Mathematics faculties rarely come to mathematics instruction prepared to teach with language. Sociocultural studies of teaching and learning in mathematics (cf, Celedon-Pattischis, 2004), studies of language and its use in mathematics (Donlan, 2009; Edwards, Maloy, & Anderson, 2009; Moschkovich, 2010), and studies of strategic pedagogical practices aimed at supporting language in mathematics (Zawaiza & Gerber, 1993; Schleppegrell, 2007, Blessman & Myszczak, 2011; Campbell, Shulberger, & Pate,1997) have found that community college and K-12 mathematics faculty have limited experience with supporting language in mathematics. By and large, mathematics instructors look to other disciplines, for example, English Language Arts, to support students’ language needs. Yet we know that facility with language, with mathematical language, and language in mathematical contexts can support student learning and success. Too often, when mathematics faculty are consulted about language, or language and its role in mathematics are brought into view, faculty argue that it is not their role to teach language, as if language is a skill separate from mathematics. This perspective is particularly troubling in community college contexts, where many students are trying to acquire the mathematics necessary to support transitions into careers. Mathematics in these career settings like nursing is critically coupled to being able to use and express mathematical reasoning and understanding through language. In this paper, we discuss how faculty, as part of a collaborative design team, built facility in using language supports in their mathematics teaching. These faculty designed, enacted, and modified Quantway® lessons, to couple the lessons more tightly to the context of three career areas – healthcare, information technology, and environmental science. The aim of this activity was to create deeply contextualized quantitative reasoning lessons that were part of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s Quantway Pathway’s program. Faculty used rapid cycles of testing and revision (Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, & LeMahieu, 2015; Langley, Moen, Nolan, Nolan, Norman, & Provost, 2009) to iteratively refine these lessons toward the aim. The focus of this report is an analysis of the impact of iterative design activity on faculty learning, using a Professional Developmental model originally proposed by Clarke and Hollingsworth (2002). Our analysis suggested that engagement in iterative design is coupled to the faculty learning about practice. Using the language of the Clarke and Hollingworth’s (2002) model, our analysis suggests that the faculty’s willingness to experiment in their classrooms is tightly coupled to the development of knowledge and belief structures about the role of language in mathematics teaching. In particular, as we considered faculty experience, we saw faculty move from skepticism about their role as teachers of language in mathematics, to an abiding belief in the power of teaching with language to help developmental students make progress.

Authors

• Louis M. Gomez, University of California - Los Angeles

• Kimberley Gomez, University of California - Los Angeles