Education Commons^™

Using A Pedagogical Content Knowledge Assessment To Inform A Middle Grades Mathematics Teacher Preparation Program, Woong Lim, Paula Guerra

Georgia Educational Researcher

This study provided a springboard for teacher preparation evaluation studies by examining what content and pedagogical content knowledge mathematics pre-service teachers demonstrated in the 4 – 8 mathematics teacher preparation program at an urban research university. Twenty nine pre-service students participated in an assessment called Diagnostic Mathematics Assessments for Middle School Teachers. The study found that pre-service teachers displayed the highest scores for Memorized/Factual Knowledge, followed by Conceptual Understanding, Reasoning/Problem Solving, and Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Pre-service teachers had higher Memorized/Factual Knowledge than Pedagogical Content Knowledge. The pre-service teachers’ overall content knowledge was not strong, and the two lowest-performing content knowledge …

Teaching The Complex Numbers: What History And Philosophy Of Mathematics Suggest, Emily R. Grosholz

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The narrative about the nineteenth century favored by many philosophers of mathematics strongly influenced by either logic or algebra, is that geometric intuition led real and complex analysis astray until Cauchy and Kronecker in one sense and Dedekind in another guided mathematicians out of the labyrinth through the arithmetization of analysis. Yet the use of geometry in most cases in nineteenth century mathematics was not misleading and was often key to important developments. Thus the geometrization of complex numbers was essential to their acceptance and to the development of complex analysis; geometry provided the canonical examples that led to the …

The Scope Of Numeracy After Five Years, H. L. Vacher, Dorothy Wallace

Numeracy

The purpose of this editorial is to provide an efficient way for readers and potential authors to see (a) what type of papers are published in this journal and (b) what subjects are appropriate. The editorial consists mainly of about a dozen pages of tables including live links to the papers’ access/abstract pages to facilitate easy browsing. In the first table, the 85 papers that have been published in the journal’s first five years are classified into: review papers; research papers; case studies; essays; book reviews; columns; and editorials about the journal. In the second table, the papers are inventoried …

Proceedings Of The Seventh Annual Meeting Of The Georgia Association Of Mathematics Teacher Educators Introductory Texts

Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Georgia Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators

Contents of 7th Annual GAMTE Proceedings Front Matter:

• Proceedings Committee
• Officers of GAMTE
• Purposes and Goals of GAMTE
• Table of Contents
• Letter from President

How Differing Interpretations Of Making Mathematics Fun Influence Teaching Practice, Amanda Sawyer

Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Georgia Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators

I investigated an experienced teacher and a beginning teacher who held similar beliefs about making mathematics learning fun yet held different interpretations of implementation. I found when a teacher equated fun with problem solving, her classroom practice included activities with higher-level thinking skills. In contrast, a teacher who defined fun as students’ enjoyment layered manipulatives and group work on top of procedures. Therefore, teachers need opportunities to reflect on the nature of student understanding as a precursor to shaping their views of fun.

Negative phrases and attitudes toward mathematics have become commonplace in popular culture. Perhaps in response to this …

The Mathematics Teacher Educator’S Reflection On Edtpa: The Basics And The Complexity Of Georgia’S Implementation, Lynn Stallings, Woong Lim

Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Georgia Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators

Beginning in fall 2015, Georgia will require that all teacher candidates pass the edTPA, a performance-based assessment, as a requirement for initial certification. With the potential to impact teacher preparation programs in a profound way, the questions and issues related to the implementation of edTPA merit some critical reflection. In this article, we introduce the brief history of the instrument and review the basics of edTPA with a particular interest in middle grades mathematics. Furthermore, drawing upon our experience with edTPA during a pilot program and the extensive knowledge base of edTPA rubrics and scoring process, we present issues related …