savoy081

Fien Depaepe, Erik De Corte and Lieven Verschaffel have written an interesting article about Teachers’ metacognitive and heuristic approaches to word problem solving: analysis and impact on students’ beliefs and performance . The article was published online in ZDM last Friday. Here is the abstract of their article: We conducted a 7-month video-based study in two sixth-grade classrooms focusing on teachers’ metacognitive and heuristic approaches to problem solving. All problem-solving lessons were analysed regarding the extent to which teachers implemented a metacognitive model and addressed a set of eight heuristics. We observed clear differences between both teachers’ instructional approaches. Besides, we examined teachers’ and students’ beliefs about the degree to which metacognitive and heuristic skills were addressed in their classrooms and observed that participants’ beliefs were overall in line with our observations of teachers’ instructional approaches. In addition, we investi...

Keith Leatham from Brigham Young University in Utah, U.S., is one of the scholars who have made important contribution to research of teachers' beliefs in mathematics education research in the last couple of years. I very much like his proposed framework for viewing teachers' beliefs as sensible systems (from his 2006 article in Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education ). Now he has written a new article with focus on beliefs (or this time it is referred to as perceptions), and he has co-written this article with a colleague from Brigham Young University: Blake E. Peterson. Their article is entitled Secondary mathematics cooperating teachers’ perceptions of the purpose of student teaching , and it was published online in Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education last week. Here is their article abstract: This article reports on the results of a survey of 45 secondary mathematics cooperating teachers’ perceptions of the primary purposes of student teaching and their roles in acc...

David S. Bolden, Tony V. Harries and Douglas P. Newton have written an article entitled Pre-service primary teachers' conceptions of creativity in mathematics . This article was recently published online in Educational Studies in Mathematics . The issues concerning creativity that are raised in this article are interesting. I also find it interesting to observe how the authors make use of concepts like "beliefs" and "conceptions". As far as I can tell, they don't make a distinction between these concepts, and they also talk about teachers "views" without making a clear distinction between this concept in relation to the two former. Although attempts have been made in the past by researchers to define and distinguish between these concepts, I think we still have a challenge here! Here is the abstract of their article: Teachers in the UK and elsewhere are now expected to foster creativity in young children (NACCCE, 1999; Ofsted, 2003; DfES, 2003; DfE...

Murat Bursal has written an article about Turkish preservice elementary teachers' self-efficacy beliefs regarding mathematics and science teaching . This article was published online in International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education on Thursday. A key finding is that the preservice teachers in this study had "adequate" self-efficacy beliefs when they graduated. These findings are linked with a recent reform in Turkish teacher education. Here is the abstract of the article: This study investigated Turkish preservice, elementary teachers’ personal mathematics teaching efficacy (PMTE), and science teaching efficacy (PSTE) beliefs at the end of their teacher education program. A majority of the participants believed they were well prepared to teach both elementary mathematics and science, but their PSTE scores were significantly lower than their PMTE scores. However, a significant correlation was found between the PMTE and PSTE scores. No significant gender effec...

Dionne I. Cross has written an article called Alignment, cohesion, and change: Examining mathematics teachers’ belief structures and their influence on instructional practices . This article was recently published online in Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education . Here is the abstract of the article: This collective case study reports on an investigation into the relationship between mathematics teachers’ beliefs and their classroom practices, namely, how they organized their classroom activities, interacted with their students, and assessed their students’ learning. Additionally, the study examined the pervasiveness of their beliefs in the face of efforts to incorporate reform-oriented classroom materials and instructional strategies. The participants were five high school teachers of ninth-grade algebra at different stages in their teaching career. The qualitative analysis of the data revealed that in general beliefs were very influential on ...

Mark Boyland at Sheffield Hallam University (UK) has written an article about Engaging with issues of emotionality in mathematics teacher education for social justice . The article was recently published online in Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education . In the article, Boyland reports on a study where student teachers are encouraged to reflect on relationships and practices in the classroom that can promote social justice. In the article he relates to affective issues like emotions, beliefs and values, and he refers to some interesting literature on this. The interventions that were used in the study are referred to as "creative action methods", and they were originally developed by psychotherapist Jacob Moreno . This is a very interesting approach to research on affective issues, and to me it is a new approach that I hadn't heard of before. Here is the abstract of Boyland's article: This article focuses on the relationship between social justice, emotionality and ...