THE MATHEMATICS EDUCATOR

Front Matter

TME Editors — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0500

A Note to Reviewers

TME Editors — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0500

Preservice Teachers’ Conceptualizations of Mathematical Tasks

Bima Kumari Sapkota — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0500

This study reports how 12 secondary mathematics preservice teachers (M-PSTs) described characteristics of Mathematical Tasks after participating in instructional activities, including reading, reflecting, and discussing task characteristics from two mathematics task frameworks and related book chapters. The findings demonstrated that after engaging in these activities, M-PSTs used formal, research-informed language in a way that highlighted student-related factors (e.g., student prior knowledge) and contextual factors (e.g., class time constraints), suggesting that the language and concepts offered through the task frameworks initiated M-PSTs’ nuanced task descriptions. The implications of the instructional activities in teacher education programs to enhance M-PSTs’ conceptions of tasks are discussed.

Does the Choice of Observation Instrument Matter?

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0500

Does the choice of observation instrument make a difference in the feedback and ratings that teachers receive? This study explores how lessons are rated differentially across various observation instruments. To investigate this question, ten randomly selected mathematics lessons were rated using six different observation instruments. Overall scores varied little across instruments. Our analyses indicate that differences in scores can be attributed to what we call instrumental occlusion, instrumental emphasis, and element density. This article concludes with implications for the selection and use of observation instruments in school settings.

Scholarly Practice and Inquiry

Andrew Tyminski, McKenzie H. Brittain — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0500

This paper presents research that exists at the crossroad of scholarly practice and scholarly inquiry. We outline the process in the design, enactment, and empirical examination of an elementary methods course activity, Exploring and Supporting Student Thinking (ESST), which engaged 18 elementary prospective teachers (PTs) in two sessions of one-on-one problem posing with 3^rd grade students. Our results mirror outcomes from existing literature focused on student interviews and letter exchanges as well as reveal other potential PTs experiences from such interactions. We end by describing implications for future activity design and with a call for researchers to continue to contribute to scholarly inquiry in this area.