savoy081

Mikyung Kim Wolf, Jenny C. Kao, Nichole M. Rivera and Sandy M. Chang have written an article about " Accommodation Practices for English Language Learners in States’ Mathematics Assessments ". This article was recently published in Teachers College Record . Here are their conclusions: Despite the limitation of the small sample in this study, the findings of the study offer practical implications for policymakers and educators in the use of accommodations for ELL students. The study found considerable variation reported by teachers with regard to the perception of accommodation decision makers, selection criteria, and the types of accommodations allowed in each state’s math assessment. This variation raised serious concerns regarding the adequacy of the accommodation uses and the comparability of accommodated test results across schools. In this paper, we discussed a number of possible reasons for teachers’ reported difficulty in keeping up with state policies: (a) lack of cl...

Since early 2008, I have used this blog as well as my twitter account to communicate things related to research in mathematics education. I started doing this mostly for myself, because I wanted a place to write about new articles, journal issues, conferences etc. from my field. I did this for myself, because when I wrote about it in my blog (or on twitter), there was a bigger chance that I would remember it. It also forced me to use English frequently, since this is not my mother tongue (it is, however, the main language in which I write most of my own academic publications). Quite early on, I was surprised to learn that lots of people from all over the world was interested in what I did. So, what I was trying to do (aside from the personal aspects of it), with the blog as well as my twitter account, was obviously appreciated by many. It appeared then, that there was a need for somewhere you can go to learn about new things that happen within such a limited field of research as mathe...

The final plenary session at PME-NA was “Reexamining some widely promoted ideas: What do we know, and what do we believe?” by Suzanne Wilson and Deborah L. Ball. They started off by talking about urban myths vs. knowledge. After having described these two concepts, they listed seven popular themes in our field that they wanted to discuss in relation to those two terms – urban myths and knowledge. The first theme they started discussing was teachers’ mathematical knowledge. They started off by presenting some of the main issues in the discussion. Do teachers need college level mathematics courses to be properly prepared for teaching? Knowing the material in depth, knowledge beyond the curriculum, perspectives on mathematics as a discipline are some aspects to it. There also seem to be an unclear relationship between academic study and SCK, PCK. Another perspective is that mathematics needed for teaching is not well-aligned with curriculum for college level mathematics. SW had some inter...

Yesterday, I finished my own presentation at PME-NA in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I presented a paper on behalf of my colleague, Janne Fauskanger and myself. The title of our paper (and my presentation) was: "Wrong, but still right" – Teachers reflecting on MKT items . Obviously, I was a little bit nervous before the presentation – positive kind of being nervous, that is – but I ended up enjoying both my own presentation and the following discussion/comments session. If you want to see the slides I made for the presentation, you can download them here . I also made audio recordings of my presentation, so when I get home I plan on embedding the audio and the slides and post them here. So, stay tuned for that if you are interested :-) For now, I just want to thank everyone of those who came to my presentation! Thanks a lot for all the positive feedback, the comments and the questions!!!

The second plenary at PME-NA was “Articulating a learning sciences foundation for learning trajectories in the CCSS-M” by Jere Confrey . In her presentation, Professor Confrey explained how the learning trajectories were connected with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. Having been a member of the National Validation Committee for the Common Core State Standards, she was able to give some more personal (and very interesting) insights into the development of the common core standards. The details are laid out in her paper (see the proceedings ). As part of her talk, she also shared some of her own experiences with the math war that appears to be going on (and which Jo Boaler talked about in her plenary yesterday). Having listened to her presentation, however interesting it was, I am happy to be a spectator from another country - both when it comes to the CCSS and the ongoing math wars :-) Towards the end of her presentation, she shared some ideas about the importance of u...

The 34th annual conference of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education ( PME-NA 2012 ) takes place in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The conference started today – Thursday afternoon – with a plenary lecture of Jo Boaler . Boaler is professor of mathematics education at Stanford University, and she is one of the most prominent researchers in our field of research. The topic for her plenary lecture was: "Scaling up innovation: using research to make a difference". The two main foci of her talk was on research design and the communication of research results. Our aim is for research to have more impact. A question then is how to conduct research so as to have more impact on practice? An interesting observation that she made: researchers who are critical about teaching as telling, often do the exact same thing when communicating the results of their research to teachers. We need to translate our research results into “records of pra...