Collaborative Research: Developing Teacher Learning Theory with Teachers and Students Animating Mathematical Concepts

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This project will advance theory for understanding teacher learning as it relates to mathematics teacher knowledge and student knowledge. The research team theorizes that teacher knowledge and student knowledge are not distinct. Specifically, this work challenges the longstanding idea in teacher education that a knowledge base for teaching pre-exists as a static body of knowledge awaiting to be discovered by teachers. Instead, this project examines what happens when teacher and student knowledge bases are conceptualized as interdependent and capable of generating new knowledge in and for teacher learning. This project will build theory, grounded in feminist, Indigenous, and materialist perspectives, that explains how teacher knowledge and student knowledge interact to generate new knowledge that is relevant in and for racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse mathematics teaching contexts. This project is funded by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.This project will develop theory regarding a teacher learning approach that encourages teachers to teachers adopt and exchange flexible roles with their students as active observers and participants to contribute to teachers developing their teacher learning as a relational practice. Drawing on lesson study and Indigenous research design principles, researchers, teachers, and their students will collaborate to create animated concepts of mathematical ideas. Animated concepts include how students use mental images, material objects, and lived experiences that center Black, Native American, Latina, and newcomer knowledge bases related to mathematical concepts. Researchers across three sites in Michigan, Virginia, and New Mexico will immerse two teachers per research location and their students in this process both during the school year and during a summer program where teachers and students will collaborate with local artists to produce multimedia projects representative of their animated concepts. This research has implications for how mathematical teacher knowledge is conceptualized and how it is addressed via professional development.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.