Herman + Rasiej Mathematics Initiative
FUNDED STUDIES
Investigating Reversibility (InReV) Project
Ibrahim Burak Olmez & Michael Lawson
June 1, 2020
Regarding persistent difficulties that teachers and their students experience in reasoning about fractions, there is an urgent need to understand such difficulties. Investigating Reversibility (InReV) is a research study that investigates elementary/middle grades (K-8) mathematics teachers’ understanding of reversibility, a central component of reasoning about fractions (e.g., Izsák, Jacobson, & Bradshaw, 2019). Reversibility can be defined as reconstructing the whole from either a proper or an improper fraction. The purpose of the present study is to identify distinct latent classes of U.S. mathematics teachers on reasoning about reversibility. Administering a measure that targets only reasoning about reversibility to U.S. in-service mathematics teachers and analyzing the national sample data using a mixture item response theory model will provide finer-grained information about particular strengths and weaknesses of teachers in terms of reasoning about reversibility. Furthermore, this study will examine the relationships between latent class membership and aspects of teachers’ professional preparation and histories teacher such as years of teaching experience. This, in turn, will inform about teachers with which particular aspects of professional preparation and histories are more likely to reason about reversibility. This study will administer a survey that consists of demographic information questions about teachers’ professional preparation and histories, and items that target reasoning about fractions from the literature (e.g., Izsák et al., 2019, Wilkins, Norton, and Boyce, 2013). Currently, we are collecting data from a national sample of 250 mathematics teachers across the United States.
Mathematics Teachers’ Gender-Specific Beliefs About Mathematical Aptitude
Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, David Quinn, & Ian Thacker
June 16, 2019
Persisting stereotypes and beliefs that certain disciplines require innate ability and individuals from different ethnic backgrounds or genders have different ability levels seriously impede students’ academic career paths. In this study, we examined mathematics teachers’ beliefs about mathematical aptitude and identified teacher characteristics associated with these beliefs. An analysis of data from 434 K-8 teachers indicated that teachers did not see mathematical aptitude and girls’ mathematical ability as two different constructs. Those who believed mathematics requires brilliance also thought girls have less on average than boys. Although most teachers did not believe that mathematics requires innate ability, teachers who were more experienced and who worked with students at risk seem to hold beliefs that could impede their students’ career paths. This research study was presented at the American Education Research Association (AERA) in Toronto and a manuscript is under review.
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The Role of Warm Constructs in Fraction Learning
Ian Thacker, Jessica Rodrigues, & Gale Sinatra
May 20, 2019
Mathematics teaching and learning does not occur in an emotional vacuum. The extent to which people engage in and learn difficult content is influenced by motivational and emotional factors, also called warm constructs. However, there is limited research that investigates the extent to which warm constructs predict mathematics learning outcomes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of motivational and emotional factors during teachers’ mathematics learning about fraction arithmetic. Ian Thacker and Jessica Rodriguez found that teachers’ math-specific beliefs about their ability to succeed (self-efficacy) was associated with greater learning about fraction arithmetic while their mathematics-anxiety was not. This initial exploration provides promising evidence that emotional and motivational constructs are indeed important predictors of mathematical conceptual change. Teacher educators might therefore target improving teachers’ mathematics self-efficacy in order to improve learning outcomes.
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Proficiency in Teaching Mathematics Study
Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, Jessica Rodrigues, and Shauna Campbell
Proficiency in teaching mathematics has several important components: content knowledge, mathematical knowledge for teaching, pedagogical content knowledge, and the ability to notice important aspects of the mathematics instruction. Although scholars have focused on some of these components, no research to date has investigated how all these different constructs are related to one another. In this study, we aimed to fill this gap in our field. We investigated the relationships among these constructs by collecting data from the same teachers on these key aspects of mathematics teaching proficiency. Furthermore, we refined what we meant by content knowledge. Rather than focusing only on what teachers know, we also captured how teachers reason mathematically and how teachers solve mathematical problems. We are extremely excited about this project because we mainly used open-ended items to capture these constructs!
This project had two phases. In the first phase, we developed items to capture teachers’ mathematical reasoning, conceptual understanding, and problem-solving skills. We also identified video clips that captured teachers’ noticing skills as well as their knowledge of students’ mathematical thinking and knowledge of instructional practices. During this phase, several prominent scholars (Andrew Izsak, Chandra Orrill, Randy Phillip, Erik Jacobson, and Sarah Lubienski), many of whom attended our first Initiative meeting, provided feedback on the items we developed. We then interviewed 20 teachers to test our items and partnered with the Qualtrics panel to recruit teachers from across the United States. We collected data from hundreds of teachers.
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We analyzed the data on teachers’ noticing. We wish to acknowledge Miriam Sherin, Beth Van Es, Randy Phillips, and Lisa Lamp, who provided feedback on how to conceptualize the key aspects of teachers’ noticing. We would also like to thank Nicole Kersting for letting us use her videos in this study. Our paper on teacher noticing, written by Copur-Gencturk and Rodrigues (2021) is the first large-scale study on teacher noticing.
Problem Solving Findings
Yasemin Copur-Gencturk and Tenzin Doleck
We also coded the data detailed above for teachers’ problem-solving strategies. We identified common strategies elementary school teachers used to solve word problems. Our paper written by Yasemin Copur-Gencturk and Tenzin Doleck (2021) informs teacher educators about how teachers deal with mathematics problems and reveals insights into their mathematical thinking.
Learning From Teachers Study
Yasemin Copur-Gencturk & Paul Lepe
Teachers gain invaluable experience over time regarding the struggles their students are having and strategies that are effective in helping them overcome such struggles. In this study, we aimed to update the present knowledge base regarding students’ struggles and effective teaching strategies. Specifically, we asked teachers to list the struggles they noticed their students having when learning fraction concepts and operations and the strategies they found useful in helping their students overcome these struggles. We collected data from almost 200 teachers.
Mathematics Teachers' Implicit Race- and Gender -Biases
Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, Ian Thacker, Joe Cimpian, & Sarah Lubienski
April 14, 2019
Mathematics teachers can significantly affect students’ perceptions of their mathematical ability and future career choices. Hence, it is important for teachers’ assessments of students’ mathematical abilities to be free from bias. Still, most research conducted on teacher bias has failed to discern whether teachers are biased or if their assessments of their own students’ abilities are based on valid evidence not captured by researchers. In this experiment, 390 mathematics teachers evaluated 18 mathematical solutions to which gender- and race-specific names were randomly assigned. Teachers displayed no detectable bias when assessing the correctness of students’ solutions; however, they perceived White students’ ability to be higher, especially relative to Black and Latina girls. Surprisingly, non-White teachers displayed greater bias favoring White-sounding names. You can find further details on these findings in our publications (Copur-Gencturk et al., 2020).
An Instructional Approach for Remediating a Fraction Misconception
Jessica Rodrigues, Ian Thacker, & Gale Sinatra
March 14, 2019
Our study explored a brief instructional approach for helping teachers overcome a mathematics misconception. We know from prior research that some teachers incorrectly overgeneralize the whole number rule of “multiplication always makes bigger” to multiplication with fractions. To our knowledge, our study is the first to evaluate an intervention for addressing this misconception. A sample of 100 in-service and pre-service elementary teachers completed a fractions task that assessed the presence of the misconception. Teachers were then randomly assigned to read either a refutation text that we designed to directly refute the misconception or a control text. Finally, teachers completed the fractions task again to assess for changes in their understanding. Results showed that (a) the misunderstanding was even present among items with familiar denominators such as halves and fourths, demonstrating the pervasiveness of the misconception and (b) the refutation text supported teachers in overcoming the misconception. Findings suggest that teachers have misconceptions that may be limiting their readiness to support their students’ mathematics understanding, and reading a short refutation text may be a powerful approach for remediating these misconceptions.
Epistemic Cognition and Mathematics Teaching and Learning
Ian Thacker, Gale Sinatra, & Richard Rasiej
March 14, 2019
Over the last three decades, there has been increased attention to the problem of how students should convince themselves and others that mathematical statements are true. For example, the Common Core State Standards considers the construction and evaluation of formal arguments to be an essential mathematical skill that cuts across all topics in mathematics. Cognitive processes involved in constructing and evaluating arguments — called epistemic cognition — has been well studied in the educational psychology literature. However, while much attention has been devoted to understanding the role of epistemic cognition in disciplines such as science and history, there is little research that explores its role in mathematics learning. The purpose of this literature review was to synthesize the existing work on epistemic cognition in mathematics teaching and learning and to highlight future directions for theoretical and empirical work.