October 4, 2018

Prospective Elementary Teachers Making for Mathematical Learning

Steven Greenstein (PI) and Eileen Fernandez (Co-PI) received a grant from the National Science Foundation: Discovery Research K-12 for $422,195 effective from 08/21/2018 – 08/31/2020.

Posted in: Research Projects

This project seeks to generate new knowledge about the contributions that Making can offer for preparing mathematics teachers; for developing their technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge; and for authoring themselves as effective and agentive designers of mathematical instruction.

The project incorporates a novel Making experience into the preparation of prospective mathematics teachers (PMTs) that tasks them with digitally designing and fabricating new tools that support mathematics teaching and learning. Research objectives include: (1) describing the forms of knowledge invoked as the PMTs design and make new manipulatives to support mathematics teaching and learning, (2) tracing and elaborating the development of the PMTs’ technological, mathematical, pedagogical, and curricular knowledge as they engage in this work, (3) documenting what the PMTs’ discourse and design activity reveal about the nature and evolution of their identities as designers of mathematical instruction, and (4) employing an iterative design cycle to produce a curriculum module that will engage other PMTs in a similar Making experience.

Implementing the Making experience within a creative and collaborative design environment aims to demonstrate its influence on PMTs’ uses of knowledge during teacher education, to cultivate their identities as designers of mathematical instruction and as agents of curricular and pedagogical reform, and to alleviate the historic trend of anxiety that PMTs have suffered in relation to their understanding of mathematics and their acquisition of a student-centered model of mathematics pedagogy.

Learn more about the grant