Mathematics Education

In preparing future elementary educators in mathematics, helping them overcome their anxieties of mathematics and teaching mathematics is paramount.  This study examined how different instructional practices (in-class lecture, flipped learning with teacher-created videos, flipped classroom with Khan Academy videos) compared in improving students’ mathematics anxiety and anxiety about teaching mathematics.  Results suggest that, while all three methods improved students’ anxieties related to mathematics, flipped learning with teacher-created videos significantly had the greatest decreases in mathematics anxiety and anxiety about teaching mathematics.  Survey responses and class interviews also suggested that flipped learning with teacher–created videos better aligned with course content and activities, thus helping students feel prepared and more confident before entering the classroom.

Online teacher professional development is becoming more prevalent as the ability to harness technology to bring teachers and resources together becomes easier. Research is needed, however, to determine the effectiveness of models and to share practices that increase teacher knowledge of content and pedagogy. This study examines how a hybrid professional development model impacted secondary teachers’ implementation of handheld graphing technology through an analysis of the participants’ perceived growth in skill with the technology and their perceived ability to provide support to other teachers using the same technology. Participant surveys as well as follow-up observations and interviews of selected participants indicated an increase in handheld graphing technology use prompted by participation in the professional development workshop.

This article presents an overview of the ways technology is presented in textbooks written for mathematics content courses for prospective elementary teachers. Six popular textbooks comprising a total of more than 5,000 pages were examined, and 1,055 distinct references to technology were identified. These references are coded according to location within the textbook, role of technology, and type of technology. The treatment of technology varied across the textbooks in the sample. The number of references to technology ranged from 71 to 451. Two textbooks mentioned technology on less than 10% of the pages, while one mentioned technology on over one fourth of the pages. For each textbook, the majority of references were to mathematical action technologies. Across the sample, calculators, websites, and e-manipulatives were most frequently mentioned. Examples of textbook activities that may influence the development of technological pedagogical content knowledge in prospective elementary teachers are provided. Recommendations are made for future directions in curriculum development and research to address the challenge of preparing teachers to effectively teach mathematics in the digital age.

Prospective elementary teachers at three universities engaged in online modules called the Virtual Field Experience, created by the Math Forum. The prospective teachers learned about problem solving and mentoring elementary students in composing solutions and explanations to nonroutine challenge problems. Finally, through an asynchronous online environment, the prospective teachers mentored elementary students. The researchers assessed the prospective teachers’ solutions and explanations to problems at the beginning of the semester, at the middle of the semester after completing the training in mentoring, and again at the end of the semester after the mentoring was completed. The researchers observed improvements in the prospective teachers’ abilities to write explanations to problems. Specifically, growth was seen in prospective teachers’ communication of their explanations and their ability to construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010, Standard for Mathematical Practice 3), and attend to precision (Standard for Mathematical Practice 6).