Correlating Mathematics Teachers' Generative Feedback Practices With Content Knowledge Development in Online Teacher Professional Development

• In Event: Exploring Student and Teacher Cognition in Mathematics Education

Abstract

This study examined mathematics teachers participating in an online collaborative and content-focused professional development course. The 10-week course focuses on supporting mathematics teachers’ development of reasoning skills for understanding function. Participants engaged in online asynchronous collaborative problem-solving via discussion forums. We characterized the quality of participants’ discussion posts and used social network analysis to measure the extent to which participants engaged with and had access to quality posts. Then we correlated individual network measures of engagement and access with the sophistication of participant reasoning exhibited on the course final. A key finding of this study is that more frequently providing quality feedback was significantly correlated with content knowledge development while receiving quality feedback was not significantly correlated with such development.

Authors

• Anthony Matranga, California State University - San Marcos

• Matthew Duvall, The University of Pennsylvania

• Jason Silverman, Drexel University