Mathematics Teacher Educator Podcast

Episode 44: Continuous Improvement Lesson Study: A Model of MTE Professional Development

October 19th, 2022  |  Season 10  |  27 mins 40 secs

A group of mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) began a lesson study to develop a research-based lesson to engage elementary preservice teachers with professional teacher noticing within the context of multidigit multiplication. Afterward, MTEs continued teaching and revising the lesson, developing an integrated process that combined lesson study with the continuous improvement model. This article introduces the continuous improvement lesson study process, shares an example of how the process was used, and discusses how the process serves as a collaborative professional development model for MTEs across institutions.

Episode 43: Developing Preservice Teachers’ Understanding of Area Through a Units Intervention

October 19th, 2022  |  Season 10  |  37 mins 25 secs

teachers; area model; visual representations

Preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) often enter their teacher preparation programs with procedural and underdeveloped understandings of area measurement and its applications. This is problematic given that area and the area model are used throughout K–Grade 12 to develop flexibility in students’ mathematical understanding and to provide them with a visual interpretation of numerical ideas. This study describes an intervention aimed at bolstering PSTs’ understanding of area and area units with respect to measurement and number and operations. Following the intervention, results indicate that PSTs had both an improved ability to solve area tiling tasks as well as increased flexibility in the strategies they implemented. The results indicate that PSTs, similar to elementary students, develop a conceptual understanding of area from the use of tangible tools and are able to leverage visualizations to make sense of multiplicative structure across different strategies.