CMP at Regional & National Conferences
2023 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Conference
Digital technology is increasingly common in mathematics classrooms, with the potential to enhance instruction and teaching. This study concerns how networks of teachers use a digital collaborative platform to engage students in problem-centered mathematics. We examined teachers’ digital curriculum resource use in two different networks of teachers, including logged data on digital platform use, surveys about typical resource use, and interviews. We found that teachers used the digital platform to access curriculum resources and student work to enhance instruction and began to engage with digital tools for planning outside of instructional time. Teachers’ digital collaboration can take different forms depending on network context, and our project’s ongoing work develops digital tools to complement and enhance existing collective practices.
The evolution of digital technologies has led to an abundance of resources, particularly in online spaces where information and communication tools are combined with conventional mathematical tools like tables, symbols, and graphs. In this study, we use inscriptions to refer to external representations of thinking that exist in material forms such as paper and pencil or the computer screen. Students’ inscriptions practices are an important disciplinary practice because they include behaviors such as expressing, interpreting, predicting, critiquing, reasoning, and communicating mathematical and scientific ideas. In this study, we provide a framework and highlight its use for describing student inscriptional practices where students explore and solve mathematics problems in a small group setting.
Productive Disciplinary Engagement in Collaborative Work Within Mathematics Classrooms
Working collaboratively in small groups can support students to engage meaningfully in disciplinary practices in mathematics classrooms. Researchers have defined this as productive disciplinary engagement (PDE), which is supported in classrooms that embody four principles: problematizing, authority, accountability, and resources. Based on data analysis of middle grade students’ engagement with problem-based curriculum embedded in a digital collaborative environment, we developed an analytic framework that conceptualizes the emergence of PDE during small group work. We articulate key elements of interdependency among principles of PDE, highlighting ways that the principles are mutually constructed. This framework inform research on PDE across contexts, and also for use within professional development settings to support teachers’ noticing of PDE in students’ collaborative work.