Podcast Corner

Here are the latest episodes of the Teaching Math Teaching Podcast:

Nicole Joseph: Making Black Girls Count in Math Education
Learning to teach math teachers better with Dr. Nicole Joseph, as she shares her experiences and advice on being a mathematics teacher educator. Nicole also shares her research on Black women and girls, their identity development, and their experiences in mathematics as well as sharing her work running the Joseph's Mathematics Education Lab.

Jeffrey Wanko: STaR Fellowship Program, Curriculum Development, and the Importance of Listening
Learning to teach math teachers better with Dr. Jeffrey Wanko, as he shares his experiences and advice on being a mathematics teacher educator. Jeff also shares his experiences with the STaR (Service Teaching and Research) Fellowship program and how listeners can apply to be a STaR or help fund the program.

J. Michael Shaughnessy: Mathematics Education Trust Grants, Getting Involved, and Getting Others Involved
Learning to teach math teachers better with Dr. J. Michael Shaughnessy, as he shares his experiences and advice on being a mathematics teacher educator, shares information about Mathematics Education Trust Grant Awards, statistics education, and a new opportunity for mathematics teacher educators to fund their research efforts.

Jennifer Suh: Professional Learning, Technology, and an Asset-Based Perspective of Teachers
Learning to teach math teachers better with Jennifer Suh as she shares her experiences and advice on being a mathematics teacher educator, shares an upcoming experience for early career mathematics teacher educators coming up in October, and shares the work that got her and her colleagues awarded the National Technology Leadership Initiative Fellowship.

More episodes of the Teaching Math Teaching Podcast can be found at teachingmathteachingpodcast.com, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Here are the latest episodes of the Mathematics Teacher Educator Podcast:

Continuous Improvement Lesson Study: A Model of MTE Professional Development 

With: Lara K. Dick, Bucknell University; Mollie H. Appelgate , Iowa State University; Dittika Gupta, Midwestern State University

 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. 

Developing Preservice Teachers’ Understanding of Area Through a Units Intervention 

With Megan H. Wickstrom, Montana State University                      

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. 

From Argumentation to Truth-Telling: Critical Race Theory in Mathematics Teacher Education 

With: Christopher C. Jett, University of West Georgia; Cathery Yeh, Chapman University; Maria del Rosario Zavala, San Francisco State University 

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has entered into public discourse at an accelerated rate. Instead of using CRT as a basis to produce a more racially conscious populace, the latest hysteria, unfortunately, has centered on ban- ning CRT. Governmental actions have been instituted to establish executive orders to forbid CRT training. Administrators and educators have been written up, sus- pended, and even terminated for teaching about race. The current landscape around CRT is about censoring race-related discussions and obstructing any advance- ments in service to racial equity and justice. In the edu- cational arena, more than 20 states have banned CRT from being taught in our nation’s public school class- rooms. A new report from the Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access found that 35% of all students in U.S. K–12 schools have been affected somehow by local anti-CRT efforts (Pollock & Rogers, 2022). CRT proper is not taught in K–12 schools, so these efforts clearly demonstrate that those who are championing them are ill-informed about where CRT is taught in the first place. 

Centering Professional Development Around the Instructional Quality Assessment Rubrics 

With Amber G. Candela, University of Missouri–St. Louis; Melissa Boston, Duquesne University 

In this article we detail a research study using the Instructional Quality Assessment (IQA) Rubrics (Boston, 2012) as the frame for a professional development with mathematics teachers in grades 3-8. We wanted to create a professional development around a tool that was typically used in research as a way to observe teachers, as a tool to use with teachers on their reflection of instruction. In this study we share both the researchers’ and teachers’ perspectives of affordances and constraints of the professional development and observational rubrics. 

Language Demands Tool: Attuning Prospective Teachers’ Vision to the Role of Language in Mathematics Education 

With: Amanda T. Sugimoto, Portland State University 

Mathematics standards and practices highlight the vital role that language plays in mathematics education. However, there remains a common misconception
that mathematics is somehow language- free or less linguistically demanding than other content areas. This qualitative study describes an intervention implemented in six elementary mathematics methods courses. The intervention was designed to attune prospective teachers’ noticing to the language modalities and supports in mathematics teaching and learning. The intervention began with an observation tool that prospective teachers completed in their field placement classrooms. This article classifies prospective teachers’ noticings and explicates how these noticing became a pedagogical catalyst for further learning and discussion in subsequent mathematics methods classes.