We investigate resources on TeachersPayTeachers and discuss how what is available affects our tea... more We investigate resources on TeachersPayTeachers and discuss how what is available affects our teaching practices.
Internet resources abound for preservice teacher (PST) use today, but we do not know how they cho... more Internet resources abound for preservice teacher (PST) use today, but we do not know how they choose and describe their implementation of them. This study investigates 158 elementary PSTs’ lesson plans across eight courses to describe plan inspiration and justification. PSTs reported being inspired by cooperating teachers (CTs), friends and family members, university courses, and Internet resources. In some cases, these PSTs simply followed lesson plans given to them. In other cases, they collected, curated, synthesized, and applied ideas based on inspirations, showing dispositions of New Literacies Theory. This study provides evidence that teacher educators need to engage PSTs in intentionally developing the skills of curation by acknowledging and modeling the depth and breadth of resources, including those that are not necessarily sanctioned. Implications include ways that teacher educators can frame PSTs’ understandings as they critically consume online resources through Critical...
When implementing STEM activities, such as model rockets blasting off or paper airplanes flying a... more When implementing STEM activities, such as model rockets blasting off or paper airplanes flying across the room, the mathematical or scientific content can get lost as we focus on the “wow factor.” However, meaningful learning experiences can be implemented anytime by employing the components of the 4E×2 instructional model. In essence, the model promotes students exploring their ideas before constructing an explanation for their concept, allowing the development of deeper understanding and connections with multiple conceptions.
Instructors in many colleges and universities are responsible for supporting their preservice tea... more Instructors in many colleges and universities are responsible for supporting their preservice teachers' understanding of mathematics curriculum to best serve elementary students' needs. As such, preservice teachers are taught how to critically analyze curriculum materials. However, with the advent of technologies like ChatGPT, preservice teachers are utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) tools in new ways to collate and construct mathematical curricula. As of now, little is known about how to adapt these new resources for the classroom. ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, can create a mathematics curriculum based on user questions, which teachers can then adapt to their classrooms. Although this AI chatbot can produce a quick response, researchers have identified that ChatGPT can produce biased responses and inaccurate mathematical data. This study evaluates the quality of the mathematics curriculum created by ChatGPT's responses, how preservice teachers adapted those resources, and their perceptions of using ChatGPT. Overall, ChatGPT's responses tended to construct high levels of cognitive demand with age-inappropriate text for elementary students. Despite formally teaching how to be critical of resources, the majority of preservice teachers' adaptations merely changed visual appeal alone, demonstrating how some preservice teachers have overconfidence in the abilities of AI tools. This implies that preservice teachers should be cautious of ChatGPT and be taught specific mathematical prompt engineering techniques to create innovative tasks.
Growing Problem Solvers provides four original, related, classroom-ready mathematical tasks, one ... more Growing Problem Solvers provides four original, related, classroom-ready mathematical tasks, one for each grade band. Together, these tasks illustrate the trajectory of learners’ growth as problem solvers across their years of school mathematics.
Teaching Disciplinary Literacy in Grades K-6, 2021
A week ago Thursday, I participated in an open forum for AUC faculty where Dr Duane Gruen (Direct... more A week ago Thursday, I participated in an open forum for AUC faculty where Dr Duane Gruen (Director, Center for Learning and Teaching Excellence and Prof. of English, Arizona State University) and Dr Christine Hult (Associate Dean and Prof. of English, Utah State University) answered questions about “writing in the disciplines”. Dr Gruen and Dr Hult were visiting AUC on an invitation from Dean Hopkins (School of HUSS).
In this essay, we describe some challenges that mathematics teacher educators may face when teach... more In this essay, we describe some challenges that mathematics teacher educators may face when teaching content courses for future elementary and middle school teachers. We summarize research that suggests students in content courses may have fixed mindsets, unproductive beliefs, and mathematics anxiety that can interfere with their ability to learn mathematics content. We suggest possible interventions to address these affective issues, including student-centered instruction, valuing mistakes, process praise, self-directed learning, and activities that inspire student reflection related to his or her own mathematical understandings. Introduction Mathematics content courses are an opportunity for future elementary and middle school teachers to engage deeply with mathematical content and improve their understanding so they will be comfortable and effective in helping children learn mathematics in the future. Instructors of content courses are tasked with supporting these individuals, so...
This guide provides basic information about using and producing open access scholarship for stude... more This guide provides basic information about using and producing open access scholarship for students and faculty.
I investigated a reform based teachers’ beliefs about the nature of mathematics, teaching mathema... more I investigated a reform based teachers’ beliefs about the nature of mathematics, teaching mathematics, and learning mathematics, and the factors leading to their formation. I interviewed and observed a reform-based elementary mathematics teacher with 13 years’ experience teaching first grade. She held a Platonist/problem solver view of mathematics, explainer view of teaching, and an active view of learning and was influenced by her husband, preschool son, past teachers, certification, professional development, and teaching experience. I found personal factors outside of education could significantly support beliefs in reform-based teaching and speculate that reflection on personal factors could initiate belief change.
Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 2018
This study examined 158 lesson plans at one institution across two teacher education programs, in... more This study examined 158 lesson plans at one institution across two teacher education programs, inclusive early childhood and elementary education, to determine the impact of Internet usage as inspiration on preservice teachers' lesson plans. Fisher's exact test determined statistically significant differences between the Internet use of preservice teachers in the two programs. The data revealed that the preservice teachers in the elementary education program used more Internet resources when planning lessons compared to the preservice teachers in the inclusive early childhood program. Follow-up interviews suggest that the preservice teachers in the inclusive early childhood program had more practicum field experiences, thus increasing their use of physical resources and reducing their use of Internet resources.
Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2018
Working at a teaching intensive university, it is often challenging to balance the demands of tea... more Working at a teaching intensive university, it is often challenging to balance the demands of teaching and research. It is even more difficult to incorporate undergraduate research into the mix, despite knowing the benefits of this practice, when that culture is not present in your particular program. This article offers insight into how one group of teacher educators embedded undergraduate research into an existing research project and the lessons the faculty and students learned along the way.
As educators, we know that to have effective mathematics instruction, we must promote mathematica... more As educators, we know that to have effective mathematics instruction, we must promote mathematical problem solving while encouraging discourse (NCTM 2014), yet finding tasks that both challenge and engage students can be difficult. We discovered that the Yohaku, a Japanese number puzzle, provides a format that was both challenging and thought-provoking when implemented in a secondgrade class in a Virginia elementary school. The number puzzle involves having students fill in squares with numerical values such that each column and row creates the same value. We discovered that students enjoyed the puzzle and that it supported their own construction of number sense.
From 2007 to 2009, the United States experienced one of the greatest economic declines reported i... more From 2007 to 2009, the United States experienced one of the greatest economic declines reported in the previous decades, known as the Great Recession (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). While a great deal of media attention focused on the immediate financial effects of the recession, little discussion was made about the influence of this crisis upon students’ lives and education (Isaacs & Healy, 2012). Therefore, I investigated what happened to the education of these students. In this case study, three elementary teachers who taught over 10 years identified how the Great Recession affected their teaching practices. This investigation highlights how economic situations change how teachers address students’ emotional, physical, and academic needs and how educators can assist teachers in these changing environments by providing differentiated strategies to reach their evolving student population. Every day, Americans are waking up to headlines such as“Bond King Says the U.S. Economy Is...
We investigate resources on TeachersPayTeachers and discuss how what is available affects our tea... more We investigate resources on TeachersPayTeachers and discuss how what is available affects our teaching practices.
Internet resources abound for preservice teacher (PST) use today, but we do not know how they cho... more Internet resources abound for preservice teacher (PST) use today, but we do not know how they choose and describe their implementation of them. This study investigates 158 elementary PSTs’ lesson plans across eight courses to describe plan inspiration and justification. PSTs reported being inspired by cooperating teachers (CTs), friends and family members, university courses, and Internet resources. In some cases, these PSTs simply followed lesson plans given to them. In other cases, they collected, curated, synthesized, and applied ideas based on inspirations, showing dispositions of New Literacies Theory. This study provides evidence that teacher educators need to engage PSTs in intentionally developing the skills of curation by acknowledging and modeling the depth and breadth of resources, including those that are not necessarily sanctioned. Implications include ways that teacher educators can frame PSTs’ understandings as they critically consume online resources through Critical...
When implementing STEM activities, such as model rockets blasting off or paper airplanes flying a... more When implementing STEM activities, such as model rockets blasting off or paper airplanes flying across the room, the mathematical or scientific content can get lost as we focus on the “wow factor.” However, meaningful learning experiences can be implemented anytime by employing the components of the 4E×2 instructional model. In essence, the model promotes students exploring their ideas before constructing an explanation for their concept, allowing the development of deeper understanding and connections with multiple conceptions.
Instructors in many colleges and universities are responsible for supporting their preservice tea... more Instructors in many colleges and universities are responsible for supporting their preservice teachers' understanding of mathematics curriculum to best serve elementary students' needs. As such, preservice teachers are taught how to critically analyze curriculum materials. However, with the advent of technologies like ChatGPT, preservice teachers are utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) tools in new ways to collate and construct mathematical curricula. As of now, little is known about how to adapt these new resources for the classroom. ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, can create a mathematics curriculum based on user questions, which teachers can then adapt to their classrooms. Although this AI chatbot can produce a quick response, researchers have identified that ChatGPT can produce biased responses and inaccurate mathematical data. This study evaluates the quality of the mathematics curriculum created by ChatGPT's responses, how preservice teachers adapted those resources, and their perceptions of using ChatGPT. Overall, ChatGPT's responses tended to construct high levels of cognitive demand with age-inappropriate text for elementary students. Despite formally teaching how to be critical of resources, the majority of preservice teachers' adaptations merely changed visual appeal alone, demonstrating how some preservice teachers have overconfidence in the abilities of AI tools. This implies that preservice teachers should be cautious of ChatGPT and be taught specific mathematical prompt engineering techniques to create innovative tasks.
Growing Problem Solvers provides four original, related, classroom-ready mathematical tasks, one ... more Growing Problem Solvers provides four original, related, classroom-ready mathematical tasks, one for each grade band. Together, these tasks illustrate the trajectory of learners’ growth as problem solvers across their years of school mathematics.
Teaching Disciplinary Literacy in Grades K-6, 2021
A week ago Thursday, I participated in an open forum for AUC faculty where Dr Duane Gruen (Direct... more A week ago Thursday, I participated in an open forum for AUC faculty where Dr Duane Gruen (Director, Center for Learning and Teaching Excellence and Prof. of English, Arizona State University) and Dr Christine Hult (Associate Dean and Prof. of English, Utah State University) answered questions about “writing in the disciplines”. Dr Gruen and Dr Hult were visiting AUC on an invitation from Dean Hopkins (School of HUSS).
In this essay, we describe some challenges that mathematics teacher educators may face when teach... more In this essay, we describe some challenges that mathematics teacher educators may face when teaching content courses for future elementary and middle school teachers. We summarize research that suggests students in content courses may have fixed mindsets, unproductive beliefs, and mathematics anxiety that can interfere with their ability to learn mathematics content. We suggest possible interventions to address these affective issues, including student-centered instruction, valuing mistakes, process praise, self-directed learning, and activities that inspire student reflection related to his or her own mathematical understandings. Introduction Mathematics content courses are an opportunity for future elementary and middle school teachers to engage deeply with mathematical content and improve their understanding so they will be comfortable and effective in helping children learn mathematics in the future. Instructors of content courses are tasked with supporting these individuals, so...
This guide provides basic information about using and producing open access scholarship for stude... more This guide provides basic information about using and producing open access scholarship for students and faculty.
I investigated a reform based teachers’ beliefs about the nature of mathematics, teaching mathema... more I investigated a reform based teachers’ beliefs about the nature of mathematics, teaching mathematics, and learning mathematics, and the factors leading to their formation. I interviewed and observed a reform-based elementary mathematics teacher with 13 years’ experience teaching first grade. She held a Platonist/problem solver view of mathematics, explainer view of teaching, and an active view of learning and was influenced by her husband, preschool son, past teachers, certification, professional development, and teaching experience. I found personal factors outside of education could significantly support beliefs in reform-based teaching and speculate that reflection on personal factors could initiate belief change.
Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 2018
This study examined 158 lesson plans at one institution across two teacher education programs, in... more This study examined 158 lesson plans at one institution across two teacher education programs, inclusive early childhood and elementary education, to determine the impact of Internet usage as inspiration on preservice teachers' lesson plans. Fisher's exact test determined statistically significant differences between the Internet use of preservice teachers in the two programs. The data revealed that the preservice teachers in the elementary education program used more Internet resources when planning lessons compared to the preservice teachers in the inclusive early childhood program. Follow-up interviews suggest that the preservice teachers in the inclusive early childhood program had more practicum field experiences, thus increasing their use of physical resources and reducing their use of Internet resources.
Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2018
Working at a teaching intensive university, it is often challenging to balance the demands of tea... more Working at a teaching intensive university, it is often challenging to balance the demands of teaching and research. It is even more difficult to incorporate undergraduate research into the mix, despite knowing the benefits of this practice, when that culture is not present in your particular program. This article offers insight into how one group of teacher educators embedded undergraduate research into an existing research project and the lessons the faculty and students learned along the way.
As educators, we know that to have effective mathematics instruction, we must promote mathematica... more As educators, we know that to have effective mathematics instruction, we must promote mathematical problem solving while encouraging discourse (NCTM 2014), yet finding tasks that both challenge and engage students can be difficult. We discovered that the Yohaku, a Japanese number puzzle, provides a format that was both challenging and thought-provoking when implemented in a secondgrade class in a Virginia elementary school. The number puzzle involves having students fill in squares with numerical values such that each column and row creates the same value. We discovered that students enjoyed the puzzle and that it supported their own construction of number sense.
From 2007 to 2009, the United States experienced one of the greatest economic declines reported i... more From 2007 to 2009, the United States experienced one of the greatest economic declines reported in the previous decades, known as the Great Recession (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). While a great deal of media attention focused on the immediate financial effects of the recession, little discussion was made about the influence of this crisis upon students’ lives and education (Isaacs & Healy, 2012). Therefore, I investigated what happened to the education of these students. In this case study, three elementary teachers who taught over 10 years identified how the Great Recession affected their teaching practices. This investigation highlights how economic situations change how teachers address students’ emotional, physical, and academic needs and how educators can assist teachers in these changing environments by providing differentiated strategies to reach their evolving student population. Every day, Americans are waking up to headlines such as“Bond King Says the U.S. Economy Is...
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