Co-Learning Math Teaching Project: Collaborative Structures to Support Learning to Teach Across the Professional Teaching Continuum

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An ongoing challenge for the preparation of new mathematics teachers is creating quality experiences in classrooms for student teaching. The project will design and study an innovative model of collaborative learning for pre-service and experienced secondary mathematics teachers. Multiple pre-service teachers will collaborate in the same secondary mathematics teacher’s classroom for their field placements. The partnership between the school and the university will allow for professional development for the pre-service teachers and the experienced teachers. A particular focus of the project will be equity in mathematics teaching and learning. Developing equitable mathematics teaching practices includes better understanding students’ knowledge, math understandings, and experiences they bring to the classroom. Improving the student teaching experience may improve retention in the teaching profession and help pre-service teachers be better prepared for their first years of teaching.This is an exploratory project about mathematics teaching and teacher development in field experiences for pre-service teachers. The project introduces collaborative learning structures for pre-service teacher education that focus on equitable mathematics teaching practices. The collaborative learning structures include both the cooperating teacher and multiple pre-service teachers working in the same classroom. The project will use a design-based research model to systematically study the process of co-learning and the critical features of collaborative learning structures as they are designed to support co-learning between novice and experienced teachers. Multiple universities are included in the project in order to compare the model in different settings. The project will use Math Studio as a model for the teachers to focus on a lesson taught by one teacher but the group plans, observes, and reflects about the lesson together. A facilitator or math coach supports the group’s work during the Math Studio process. The project has two research questions. First, how do pre-service teachers and cooperating teachers co-learn? More specifically, what vision, dispositions, understandings and practices of justification and generalization does each teacher develop during their time together? How does each teacher’s vision, dispositions, understandings, and practices of mathematics teaching shift during their time together? Second, what are the design characteristics of the collaborative learning structures that support or inhibit pre-service teachers and cooperating teachers in learning? The qualitative study will collect video recordings and artifacts from the Math Studio, assessments of math teaching practices, and data from the leadership team in order to compare the model’s implementation at different sites. The data analysis will occur iteratively throughout the project to refine the coding framework to describe learning and shifts in teacher practice. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.