Mathematics Teacher Education

Barbara Clarke
Barbro Grevholm
Richard Millman
Editors

Tasks in Primary
Mathematics
Teacher Education
Purpose, Use and Exemplars

123
Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education
MATHEMATICS TEACHER EDUCATION

VOLUME 4

SERIES EDITOR

Andrea Peter-Koop, University of Oldenburg, Germany

Patricia Wilson , University of Georgia, United States

EDITORIAL BOARD

Andy Begg, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

Chris Breen, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Francis Lopez-Real, University of Hong Kong, China
Jarmila Novotna, Charles University, Czechoslovakia
Jeppe Skott, Danish University of Education, Copenhagen, Denmark
Peter Sullivan, Monash University, Monash, Australia
Dina Tirosh, Tel Aviv University, Israel

SCOPE

The Mathematics Teacher Education book series presents relevant research and
innovative international developments with respect to the preparation and professional
development of mathematics teachers. A better understanding of teachers’ cognitions as
well as knowledge about effective models for preservice and inservice teacher education
is fundamental for mathematics education at the primary, secondary and tertiary level in
the various contexts and cultures across the world. Therefore, considerable research is
needed to understand what facilitates and impedes mathematics teachers’ professional
learning. The series aims to provide a significant resource for teachers, teacher educators
and graduate students by introducing and critically reflecting new ideas, concepts and
findings of research in teacher education.

For other titles published in this series, go to

[Link]
Barbara Clarke • Barbro Grevholm
Richard Millman
Editors

Tasks in Primary
Mathematics Teacher
Education

Purpose, Use and Exemplars

ABC
Editors
Barbara Clarke Richard S. Millman
Monash University Georgia Institute of Technology
Faculty of Education Center for Education Integrating Science,
Wellington Road Mathematics & Computing (CEISMC)
Clayton VIC 3800 Atlanta, GA 30332-0282
Australia USA
[Link]@[Link] millman@[Link]

Barbro Grevholm
University of Agder
Faculty of Engineering and Science
Department of Mathematical Sciences
NO-4604 Kristiansand
Norway
[Link]@[Link]

ISBN: 978-0-387-09668-1 e-ISBN: 978-0-387-09669-8

DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-09669-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008938622

c Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written
permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York,
NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in
connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software,
or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden.
The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are
not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject
to proprietary rights.

Printed on acid-free paper

[Link]
Preface

The idea for this book emerged from discussions at the Research Study Conference
15 organised by the International Commission for Mathematical Instruction. The
study focused on professional education and development of teachers of mathemat-
ics and brought together invited participants from around the world. The authors in
this book are a selection of presenters at that study conference, who subsequently
contributed chapters with examples and elaborations of tasks used in primary mathe-
matics teacher education. The authors first provided outlines that were subsequently
reviewed by the editorial group and then after a second review process revised to
produce the chapters you will find here.
This book is organised in three sections. The first section presents chapters with
tasks for teachers and teacher educators that indicate the cyclic character of the
work. The second section concerns tasks as a tool for developing mathematical
knowledge for teaching. The third section is related to tasks as a tool for developing
knowledge through and for practice. These three categories are of course overlap-
ping but help to focus key aspects of the purpose of the tasks. Each section begins
with an overview and the book ends with a concluding chapter.
The chapters in this book describe tasks that have been used successfully in math-
ematics teacher education for primary teachers in a range of contexts and countries.
These tasks are often exemplars of broader categories of tasks or illustrative of tech-
niques for developing particular understandings. While the tasks have a practical
and experiential focus, a theoretical or research-based justification is included for
each of them.
We do not see this as a book about how mathematics teacher education is con-
ducted in a particular country or institution or about the policy for that but rather as
a book about research-driven practices. The primary audience for this book will be
mathematics teacher educators who focus on the preparation of elementary/primary
teachers. The tasks are applicable across a range of contexts. While the tasks them-
selves are a useful resource, the rationales and discussions of the nature and purpose
of such tasks can provide richer understanding of the role of tasks in primary math-
ematics teacher education – tasks as the meta-level focus.

v
vi Preface

We acknowledge with much thanks the work of Nike Prince whose careful atten-
tion to the final editing, thoughtful liaising with authors and organised management
of the development of the manuscript made a very important contribution to this
book.
Barbara Clarke, Barbro Grevholm, and Richard Millman
Contents

Function, Form and Focus: The Role of Tasks

in Elementary Mathematics Teacher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Barbro Grevholm, Richard Millman, and Barbara Clarke

Section A Tasks as a Tool for Exploring the Cyclical Nature of Learning

and Developing Reflection in the Teaching of Mathematics

Using Lesson Study to Develop an Appreciation of and Competence

in Task Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Joanne Lieberman

Reflecting on the Process of Task Adaptation and Extension:

The Case of Computational Starters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Theresa J. Grant and Jane-Jane Lo

Tasks for Primary Student Teachers: A Task of Mathematics Teacher

Educators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Victoria Sánchez and Mercedes Garcı́a

The Mathematics Teaching Portfolio: A Reflective Tool for Developing

Professional Growth and Improving Classroom Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Rose Spanneberg

Section B Tasks as a Tool for Developing Mathematical Knowledge

for Teaching

Pushing Probability and Statistics Tasks in a New Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Dan Canada

Logic in Wonderland: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

as the Context of a Course in Logic for Future Elementary Teachers . . . . . 85
Nitsa Movshovitz-Hadar and Atara Shriki

vii
viii Contents

Tasks using Video Clips of Children in a Content Mathematics Course

for Future Elementary School Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Richard Millman, Kelly Svec, and Dana Williams
Teacher Tasks for Mathematical Insight and Reorganization
of What it Means to Learn Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
George Gadanidis and Immaculate Namukasa

Teaching and Understanding Mathematical Modelling through

Fermi-Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Andrea Peter-Koop

A Research-Based Workshop Design for Volume Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Mariana Sáiz and Olimpia Figueras

Task-Based Lessons: The Central Focus of a Mathematics Content

Course for Future Elementary Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Anne R. Teppo

Section C Tasks as a Tool for Developing Knowledge

through and for Practice

The Use of Relational Games in Initial Teacher Education: Bringing

the Classroom into the Lecture Theatre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Solange Amorim Amato

Using Mathematically Rich Tasks to Deepen the Pedagogical Content

Knowledge of Primary Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
George Ashline and Regina Quinn

From Professional Tasks in Collaborative Environments to Educational

Tasks in Mathematics Teacher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
José Carrillo and Nuria Climent

The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes as a Key Task in Teacher

Training for the Approach to Early Algebra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Nicolina A. Malara and Giancarlo Navarra

Outdoor Mathematical Experiences: Constructivism, Connections,

and Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Meg Moss
From Teacher Education to Teacher Practice: A Gap Affecting
the Implementation of Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Pedro Palhares, Alexandra Gomes, Paulo Carvalho, and Valter Cebolo

Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Barbara Clarke, Barbro Grevholm, and Richard Millman
Contents ix

Author Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

Contributors

Solange Amato, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Braslia, Brasil

George Ashline, Professor of Mathematics, Saint Michaels College, Vermont,
USA
Dan Canada, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, Eastern
Washington University, USA
José Carrillo, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University
of Huelva, Spain
Paulo Carvalho, Institute of Child Studies, University of Minho, Portugal
Valter Cebolo, Institute of Child Studies, University of Minho, Portugal
Barbara Clarke, Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Staff, Faculty of
Education, Monash University, Australia
Nuria Climent, University of Huelva, Spain
Olimpia Figueras, Researcher, Mathematics Education Department of the Cen-
ter for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Poly-technique Institute
(Cinvestav), Mexico
George Gadanidis, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, The University
of Western Ontario, Canada
Mercedes Garcı́a, Professor, Department of Didactic of Mathematics, University
of Seville, Spain
Alexandra Gomes, Assistant Professor, Institute of Child Studies, University
of Minho, Portugal
Theresa Grant, Professor, Department of Mathematics, Western Michigan
University, USA

xi
xii Contributors

Barbro Grevholm, Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Agder,

Norway
Joanne Lieberman, Assistant Professor, Mathematics and Statistics Department,
California State University Monterey Bay, USA
Jane-Jane Lo, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, Western
Michigan University, USA
Nicolina A. Malara, Professor, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science,
University of Modena & Reggio Emilia, Italy
Richard Millman, Director, Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathemat-
ics and Computing, and Professor of the Practice of Mathematics, Georgia Institute
of Technology, USA
Meg Moss, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Teacher Education Coordina-
tor, Pellissippi State Technical Community College in Knoxville, TN, USA
Nitsa Movshovitz-Hadar, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics Education, Technion –
Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
Immaculate Namukasa, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, University of
Western Ontario, Canada
Giancarlo Navarra, Department of Mathematics, University of Modena
& Reggio E, Italy
Pedro Palhares, Assistant Professor, Institute of Child Studies, University
of Minho, Portugal
Andrea Peter-Koop, Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Olden-
burg, Germany
Regina Quinn, Project Director and co-PI of the Vermont Mathematics Partner-
ship, USA
Mariana Sáiz, Professor, Learning and Teaching of sciences, humanities and arts,
Universidad Pedagógica Nacional México City, Mexico
Victoria Sánchez, Professor, Department of Didactic of Mathematics, University
of Seville, Spain
Atara Shriki, Oranim – Academic College of Education, Israel
Rose Spanneberg, Director, Rhodes University Mathematics Education Project
(RUMEP), South Africa
Kelly Svec, Student, University of Kentucky, USA
Anne Teppo, Independent scholar who collaborates with other mathematics
educators around the world
Dana Williams, Graduate, University of Kentucky, USA
Function, Form and Focus: The Role of Tasks
in Elementary Mathematics Teacher Education

Barbro Grevholm, Richard Millman, and Barbara Clarke

The choice of tasks and the associated pedagogies is a key aspect of teaching and
learning mathematics (see, e.g., Brousseau, 1997; Christiansen & Walther, 1986).
We argue that what students learn is largely defined by the tasks they are given. For
example, we assume that tasks designed to prompt higher order thinking are more
likely to produce such thinking than tasks designed to offer skills practice (see, e.g.,
Doyle, 1998; Hiebert & Wearne, 1997). We agree with Ames (1992) that tasks are
more likely to be effective when students have meaningful reasons for engaging in
the activity, when there is enough but not too much challenge, and that variety is
important. This is equally true when the teachers are the learners of mathematics.
Ensor (2000) described the content of any preservice or inservice course as a
privileged repetoire, because
it involves a particular selection and combination of mathematics for the production of
pedagogic tasks, a particular selection of pedagogic resources to facilitate this, and the
arrangement of these tasks into sequences as lessons. The privileged repertoire also includes
features of classroom arrangement, the regulation of teacher-pupil communication and the
deployment of appropriate forms of assessment. (p. 235)

Clearly the tasks we choose and how we use them have an impact on the learning of
teachers.
Tasks have function, form and focus. They have an aim in relation to the learn-
ing expected from student teachers, they are given a form to inspire, challenge and
motivate students, and they have specific foci chosen by the constructors of the task.

B. Grevholm
Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Agder, Norway
R. Millman
Director, Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing, and Professor
of the Practice of Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
B. Clarke
Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Staff, Faculty of Education, Monash University,
Australia
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
2 B. Grevholm, R. Millman, and B. Clarke

The function, form and focus of a task are key to the implementation of what the
teacher educators choose to emphasise. In reading the chapters the intentions of the
teacher educators become clear, particularly how they have reasoned during the de-
sign and redesign of the task. The theoretical foundations or research base for the
development of the task are discussed by the teacher educators in the chapters in
the book. Often research has been linked to the design and redesign of the task and
the learning process of the teacher educator is revealed in some of the chapters.
The tasks are used to promote the development of specific competencies, proper-
ties or skills for mathematics teachers. There are different ways to perceive what is
the goal of mathematics teacher education. A model for teacher education in math-
ematics (Grevholm, 2006) based on a longitudinal study of mathematics teacher ed-
ucation in Sweden helped to frame the structure of this book as well as the focus for
editing and discussion. In the model, teacher education is seen as the development of
a professional identity as a mathematics teacher. This identity development is com-
plementing the private identity of the teacher and it is governed by social demands,
culture and the national identity (Grevholm, Even, Szendrei, & Carillo, 2004). The
model has five key components of the professional identity:
• A professional language
• A personal view on and beliefs about knowledge and learning
• Knowledge about classroom management, methods and material
• Competence to judge and diagnose pupils’ learning in mathematics
• Knowledge in mathematics related to teaching.
All these five main elements are interrelated and closely linked to each other. The
model (Fig. 1) also indicates the basis for the five main areas and the sources for the
knowledge and competencies, and how they are interrelated in a complex system.
Student teachers’ experiences, earlier knowledge, observations, reflections, practice,
research and theoretical studies during the education contribute to the development
of the five aspects of the teacher identity.
Tasks have features with the potential to promote development across a range
of components of the teachers’ professional identity and particularly in relation to
professional language. Other categorisations or components of teacher development
required in both pre-service and in-service teacher education are given in work by
Barbara Clarke and colleagues in the development of teacher professional standards
in Australia (Clarke, 2005). There the focus is on teacher professional attributes,
professional knowledge and professional practice. Using such categorisations as a
basis provides a way to reflect on different tasks particularly on their function and
their form but also importantly on their mathematical focus.
In order to illustrate how we see the tasks fitting into the categories of teacher
competencies we will use a few of the tasks from the book. For example, the task
proposed by Rose Spanneberg involves aspects of the development of a professional
language. She discusses how she can identify the language of reflective writing for
teachers on three levels: descriptive, dialogic and critical reflection. In the suggested
task to create mathematics teaching portfolios, students are offered many different
opportunities to develop their professional language in the writing of artefacts for the
The Role of Tasks in Elementary Mathematics Teacher Education 3

Teacher education in
mathematics
governs Societal demands,
culture and
national identity
develops

a private identity
complements
a professional identity

means means
expressed with contains means

knowledge about competence to

a personal view on class room knowledge in
judge and is
a professional and beliefs about management, mathematics
diagnose pupils' part
language knowledge and methods and related to
learning in of
learning material teaching
mathematics

stored in
contains consists of way of builds on builds on
working
concept builds on builds on
uses
termino- uses structures pupils'
pupils' knowledge
logy develop-
results about learning in
ment
mathematics
theories work
expressed the
about forms
structure
ability to founded in learning
tools, of mathe-
communicate founded in
aids and orally written matics
theories artefacts
influence
about
knowledge own experience
research results in confirmed in and
mathematics education observations

Fig. 1 Concept map showing a model of mathematics teacher education seen as the development
of a professional identity (Grevholm, 2006, p. 184)

portfolio. Focus for the portfolio is the teaching of mathematics and its development.
The portfolio becomes a tool for professional growth and an instrument to improve
classroom practices and links to two other aspects in the model above: classroom
management and knowledge of mathematics related to teaching. Many of the tasks
presented in the book have this quality to promote development related to several
aspects of teachers’ professional knowledge.
Two chapters use games as a mediating artefact in the learning process of stu-
dents. Solange Amato exposes trading games for number work and Dan Canada
uses The River Crossing Game to introduce a context for exploring the sum of
two dice. Canada indicates that offering students opportunities to informally no-
tice and describe the variability arising from the tasks will build a foundation for
more robust conceptions of probability to develop in the future. The two authors
use their knowledge about classroom material to create mathematical situations that
offer powerful learning for students, which they can then offer to their prospective
4 B. Grevholm, R. Millman, and B. Clarke

students. The situations that are created also open for student communication in
different ways, again a link to the professional language of a teacher.
Many different aspects need to be considered in the selection of tasks for prospec-
tive teachers. Richard Millman, Kelly Svec and Dana Williams use the concept tasks
with learning envelopes and set the following criteria for such tasks: they should
establish a community of teachers; establish learning through research in future
teachers; have a clear purpose that is not just doing a mathematical problem; de-
velop mathematical intuition and the notion of surprise, and may have a social or
mathematical environmental learning goal. A task with learning envelope is defined
to be a complex activity carried out in a pre-service class, which has clearly defined
learning goals and either can be modified and transported into a school classroom
or is a meta-task/second order ‘in school’ exercise. The intention is that a task with
a learning envelope should affect teachers directly through their future classroom
activities. Prospective teachers should obtain an enriched knowledge of practice and
content.
In many of the tasks the teacher educators show their competence to link theory
and practice of mathematics teaching, thus being what Bergsten & Grevholm (2008)
call knowledgeable teacher educators. The authors who have written the chapters in
this book convince us that there is hardly any limitation for how the combined aims
or purposes for teacher education can be achieved through the work with tasks.
Teacher education must be seen as a life-long learning process and so these kinds of
tasks can be used for in-service teachers as well as pre-service teachers and inspire
them to use tasks in productive ways with their own students. We invite readers to
enjoy the variation and richness in the suggested tasks for primary teachers.
We hope that the readers of this book will find many possibilities from the tasks in
the following chapters, that they will see opportunities for the construction of alter-
native or extended tasks adjusted to the needs of each specific group of prospective
teachers and possibly include them in their privileged repertoire.

References

Ames, C. (1992). Classrooms: Goals, structures and student motivation. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 84(3), 261–271.
Bergsten, C., & Grevholm, B. (2008). Knowledgeable teacher educators and linking practices. In
T. Wood & B. Jaworski (Eds.), The mathematics teacher educator as a developing professional
(pp. 223–246). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Brousseau, G. (1997). Theory of didactical situations in mathematics. Dordrecht: Kluwer Aca-
demic Publishers.
Christiansen, B., & Walther, G. (1986). Task and activity. In B. Christiansen, A. G. Howson, & M.
Otte (Eds.), Perspectives on mathematics education (pp. 243–307). The Netherlands: Reidel.
Clarke, B. A. (2005). Assessing highly accomplished teachers of mathematics. In M. Coupland,
J. Anderson, & T. Spencer (Eds.), Making mathematics vital (Proceedings of the 20th Bien-
nial Conference of the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers, pp. 87–92). Sydney:
Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers.
The Role of Tasks in Elementary Mathematics Teacher Education 5

Doyle, W. (1998). Classroom organisation and management. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook

of research on teaching (pp. 392–431). New York: Macmillan.
Ensor, P. (2000). Recognizing and realizing “best practice” in initial mathematics teacher education
and classroom teaching. In J. Bana & A. Chapman (Eds.), Mathematics education beyond 2000
(Proceedings of the 23rd annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of
Australasia, pp. 235–242). Fremantle, Western Australia: MERGA.
Grevholm, B., Even, R., Szendrei, J., & Carillo, J. (2004). From a study of teaching practices to
issues in teacher education. Thematic Working Group 12, CERME3. In M. A. Mariotti et al
(Eds.), Proceedings of CERME3. Electronic publication. Pisa: University of Pisa.
Grevholm, B. (2006). Matematikdidaktikens möjligheter i en forskningsbaserad lärarutbildning. In
S. Ongstad (Ed.), Fag og didaktikk i lærerutdanning. Kunnskap i grenseland (pp. 183–206).
Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
Hiebert, J., & Wearne, D. (1997). Instructional tasks, classroom discourse and student learning in
second grade arithmetic. American Educational Research Journal, 30(2), 393–425.
Section A
Tasks as a Tool for Exploring the Cyclical
Nature of Learning and Developing
Reflection in the Teaching of Mathematics
Barbro Grevholm

This section of the book includes four chapters, all illustrating the cyclic character
of work done by mathematics teachers or teacher educators. The lesson study cycle
consists of the outline of a unit and a lesson, teaching the lesson, analysing the lesson
and student thinking, and critical design and redesign of the lesson. This cycle is
discussed in the first chapter by Joanne Lieberman. In the chapter by Theresa Grant
and Jane-Jane Lo, the process of task creation, reflection on students’ reactions to
the tasks and task alteration creates a working cycle that helps the teacher educators
and their students develop better understanding of the issues the classroom students
face in solving the tasks. In chapter three Victoria Sánchez and Mercedes Garcı́a
explore three phases of their own work as teacher educators that are repeated in a
cyclic way with different mathematical practices as content. In the chapter by Rose
Spanneberg the cyclic character of a course in teacher education becomes visible
through the portfolio that students create by collecting artefacts that illustrate their
work from the beginning to the end of the course.
Lesson study is one of the central concepts in the chapter of Joanne Lieberman.
She describes a lesson study cycle used to assist teachers in the critical design of
tasks to make mathematics more meaningful for their students. The cycle begins
with the outline of a unit and lesson. Teams of teachers produce a lesson plan which
includes the goals of the lesson, where it is made visible what student behaviour the
lesson is trying to foster, and what the students are expected to be able to do after
the lesson. The second part is assessment and evaluation of the lesson and the third
part about the progression of lesson to highlight students’ learning activities. This
part includes lesson introduction, main activities for the lesson, lesson closure and
a short assessment. Based on this plan the lesson is taught and then collaboratively
B. Grevholm
Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Agder, Norway

B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
8 B. Grevholm

analyzed from the video by the teachers. They discuss student thinking during the
lesson and how the lesson met its goals. Based on common reflections teachers then
critically redesign the lesson and it is tried out again. Lieberman gives two concrete
examples of the design of a lesson: ‘Sum of angles in a triangle’ and ‘The division
meaning of fractions’. She also exemplifies the transformation the team of teachers
has undergone thanks to the work with lesson study. In the second year teachers have
been asked to make student thinking visible in different types of lessons. A crucial
element of designing tasks is to critically assess curricular materials or lessons and
then be able to adapt them to better meet the students’ needs. Lieberman claims that
lesson study gives teachers permission to help them to focus on their students and
their students’ thinking.
The chapter by Theresa Grant and Jane-Jane Lo deals with reflections on the
process of task adaptation and extension and they discuss the case of what they
call computational starters. They point out that teachers must understand the basic
mathematical ideas that underlie computational fluency and to use tasks in which
students develop these ideas. The teachers must also recognize opportunities in stu-
dents’ work to focus on such ideas. One example they discuss is the situation where
a student is supposed to work out 1004 minus 97. They call a starter an expression
that is equivalent with the first expression but easier to solve. The student could
for example figure out how many steps there are from 1007 to 100. An example
given is a journal writing assignment for students, where they were asked to take
their solution to a starter problem and come up with two different justifications
of the procedure based on two interpretations of the subtraction observation. The
starter problem was: Solve 1018 − 395 = by using 1000 − 400. Different an-
swers from students are discussed in the chapter. The authors themselves have been
helped by the process of task creation, reflection on students’ reactions to the tasks
and task alteration to better understand issues the students face as they work to learn
mathematics with understanding. They claim that developing the tasks and the tasks
themselves illustrate the importance of making connections among representations
and the role it can play in developing flexible mathematical thinking.
Victoria Sánchez and Mercedes Garcı́a in their chapter highlight the conceptual-
ization and development of a primary mathematics teacher education programme.
Thus it is the task of the teacher educator they are dealing with. Building on work by
Llinares (2004) the authors identify systems of activity that enable teachers to solve
the task in their profession: plan a lesson, assess, chose a textbook and instruction
material and so on. The three systems they find in relation to this work are: to or-
ganize the mathematical content for teaching, to manage the mathematical content
and discourse in the classroom, and to analyze and interpret mathematics students
thinking. Thus, the systems refer to the pre-lesson, during lesson and after lesson
activities by the teacher. These three phases are repeated again and again in a cyclic
way in the work of teachers and teacher educators. As another dimension they see
the actions teachers and students carry out in mathematics like defining, justifying,
modelling, symbolizing and algorithmatizing. In a matrix with these two dimensions
they find what they need to include in a mathematics methods course. Two concrete
tasks the authors have used are included in the chapter and discussed. They claim
Cyclical Nature of Learning and Developing Reflection in the Teaching of Mathematics 9

that their practice and research have shown that the learning environment generated
in primary school teacher training enabled some of the student teachers to identify
individually and collectively the conceptual tools that were provided. If students
also succeed in integrating the tools in their work the tasks are carried out differ-
ently and the students are more aware of and evaluated distinct feature that led to
different decisions for the classroom work.
Rose Spanneberg writes about the use of teaching portfolios and sees them as a
reflective tool for developing professional growth as well as improving classroom
practices. Much of her discussion is based on the importance of the concept of re-
flection in teachers’ professional work. To identify the language of reflective writing
she uses the levels: descriptive reflection, dialogic reflection and critical reflection.
Excerpts from students portfolios are given and discussed. A number of strong fea-
tures in using teaching portfolios are mentioned: they enhance teacher professional
development; they integrate all aspects of teaching; they support learning; they pro-
mote collegiality and social interaction among teachers, and they are reflective of
a constructivist paradigm. The portfolios contain: lesson plans, analyses of own
teaching, reflections on professional contact sessions at the university, reflections
of learners work, a peer reflective report, and reflections on learners’ reflections.
The author describes how a teaching portfolio can be an effective task for mathe-
matics educators to use both in initial training of students and for practising teachers
of mathematics in primary schools.

Reference

Llinares, S. (2004). Building virtual learning communities and the learning of mathematics by
student teachers. Regular lecture, ICME 10 Denmark. [Link].
Using Lesson Study to Develop an Appreciation
of and Competence in Task Design

Joanne Lieberman

This chapter focuses on how lesson study can be used to assist teachers in the design
of meaningful mathematical tasks for their students. It describes strategies in de-
signing the lesson study process of “outline, teach, analyze, critically design” that
support teachers’ development of task design. The chapter explains how specifically
using critical design after observing the original lesson and having teachers’ focus
on making student thinking visible can impact teachers approach to designing tasks.
Participating in lesson study enables mathematics teachers to return to their original
service ethic, and provides them with structures to focus on their students and stu-
dents’ thinking. Examples of specific tasks that were developed using this method
are discussed, and how the method and prompts enabled teachers to challenge their
students to think on their own, rather than simply following their teacher’s thinking.
The chapter is based on data collected from lesson study work with hundreds of
teachers over a 6-year period.
Lesson study, a form of teacher professional development that is widely used
in Japan, has been cited as a crucial element in the improvement of mathemat-
ics and science education in that country (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). In recent
years, lesson study has become increasingly popular in the United States with
the hope that it can drastically improve the US educational system (Fernandez,
2002; Wang-Iverson & Yoshida, 2005). During the lesson study process teachers
work in groups to develop a lesson plan that one of the teachers will teach and have
others observe. After the teaching and observations, the group meets and analyzes
the lesson’s success in reaching its goals, and then makes revisions accordingly.
Thus, a central element of lesson study is task design. The lesson study process can
enable teachers to share and learn from each other ways to modify curriculum to
engage students in meaningful mathematics.
Lesson study by its very nature has teachers actively making decisions about
the curriculum and redesigning it. In the process, teachers first develop and adapt

J. Lieberman
Assistant Professor, Mathematics and Statistics Department, California State University Monterey
Bay, USA
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
12 J. Lieberman

curriculum based on their goals. They then collect data during the lesson to see if
indeed their decisions resulted in the intended student learning. Lesson study can
provide a structure for teachers to learn how to critically design – to critically assess
and alter existing curricular materials.
Research has not been conducted to demonstrate lesson study’s efficacy over-
all in improving mathematics instruction or student learning in the United States. At
this stage, such general research would not be fruitful, given the variation in the way
lesson study is conducted throughout the country (Lewis, Perry, & Murata, 2006).
Even within one project trying to draw a causal link between teacher’s participa-
tion in lesson study and improved student achievement would be difficult given that
teachers often engage in other professional development as well and because non-
participating teachers often gain some knowledge generated from lesson study by
interacting with participating teachers. The purpose of this chapter is to contribute to
needed lesson study research as described by Lewis et al. (2006) that provides “ex-
plication of the innovation mechanism” (p. 5). This chapter provides evidence that
specific aspects of lesson study can change teachers’ beliefs, goals, and strategies in
designing meaningful tasks for students.
California State University Monterey Bay professors have been working with
local teachers on lesson study for the past 7 years. Each year the number of par-
ticipants has varied, with the most recent number being ∼150 teachers from ten
different school districts. While the logistics of team meetings varied from school
to school, typically teams of teachers met for several days during the summer and a
few times after school to plan their lesson, and were paid a stipend for their partic-
ipation. Most teams took a day out of their classrooms to analyze and revise their
lesson. This chapter is based on data collected over the 7-year period from lesson
study planning meetings and debriefing sessions as well as from teacher interviews
and focus groups of participating teachers. Draft and final lesson plans were ana-
lyzed to highlight types of changes made after teaching the lesson, and also to see
how lessons changed as instructions to teachers changed in developing lessons over
the years.
This chapter focuses on how my colleagues and I have designed tasks to as-
sist teachers participating in our lesson study project in their design of meaningful
mathematical tasks for their students. By meaningful we mean that it helps stu-
dents makes sense of mathematics, connecting to, and building on prior knowl-
edge (Ausubel, 1963; Novak, 2002). Students make sense of mathematics, seeing
how and why it works, through their internal cognitive connections as well as
through social interactions (Carpenter et al., 1997). When mathematics makes
sense to students, they do not need to have the teacher judge the validity of
their solutions, they convince themselves and others of it (Carpenter, Franke, &
Levi 2003). I have summarized our approach as: outline, teach, analyze, critically
design with an emphasis on making student thinking visible. This cycle is similar to
the design cycle discussed by Gravemeijer and Cobb (2001) and Jaworski (2003).
Gravemeijer (2004) describes the process as having a research team develop a pre-
liminary design of instructional activities that are carried out in a classroom, then
the process of students’ mental activities are analyzed, and the activities are re-
vised. I first describe our specific process and then discuss the focus on making
Using Lesson Study to Develop an Appreciation of and Competence in Task Design 13

student thinking visible, and how that emphasis has effected how teachers approach
designing tasks. I describe examples of specific lessons that were developed using
this method, and how the method and prompts enabled teacher learning.

1 Designing a Lesson Study Cycle to Assist Teachers

in Critically Designing Tasks to Make Mathematics
Meaningful for Students

Curriculum development and task design traditionally have not been part of
American mathematics teachers’ responsibilities and thus, pose challenges for them
(Fernandez, Cannon, & Chokshi, 2003). Teachers typically are given a text and are
required (or expected) to follow it. My colleagues and I originally asked teachers
to fill out a detailed lesson plan template that asked for short and long term goals
as well as predicting student responses to teachers’ questions. These are standard
prompts commonly used in lesson study (Wang-Iverson & Yoshida, 2005) and are
consistent with a preliminary design phase in design research (Gravemeijer, 2004).
Most of the teachers in our project struggled with this prediction. They were adept
at recognizing lesson flaws when observing lessons or videos of the lessons, but
could not predict those flaws in advance. Our lesson study cycle has thus evolved to
shorten the original planning phase and lengthen the analysis and revision (critical
design) phase. Our current lesson study cycle includes: outline, teach, analyze,
critically design.

1.1 Description of the Process

1.1.1 Outline a Unit and Lesson

The lesson study process begins by having teams agree upon some shared beliefs
about Mathematics instruction. Teams are provided a list of statements regarding
specific classroom practices and about how students learn that the teachers rank
from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. A few sample statements are: “Big,
organizing ideas and inquiry questions are used when teaching content”; “Students
spend more time involved in activities than listening to a teacher”; “Students have
opportunities to teach and learn from each other”.
From their individual responses, the team agrees upon two or three that they
share and can modify to serve as their overarching goals. The purpose of the over-
arching goals is to have teachers think about, and focus on, broader goals they have
for students. Instead of having them focus only on the content goals for the day,
these overarching goals can redirect teachers to their original goals as profession-
als. When teachers enter the profession, they maintain a service ethic to serve their
students (Yee, 1990). The technical culture of teaching mathematics to cover topics
can overshadow teachers’ original service ethic (Grossman & Stodolosky, 1994).
14 J. Lieberman

Professionals pledge their “first concern to the welfare of the clients” (Darling-
Hammond, 1990, p. 25). This intention to serve all students is continually reaffirmed
in lesson study as the primary purpose of teaching. By discussing their values and
beliefs and incorporating these into their lessons, teachers reaffirm their professional
purpose. They develop lessons that support this purpose to serve students, not just
cover curriculum.
Grouped by grade level, teachers then choose an important problematic mathe-
matics topic to research. They read through the California Mathematics Standards
for their grade, and discuss topics that they believe are both important mathemati-
cally and are problematic for their students. Participants should not choose a topic
just because they already know a fun activity for it. If the topic can be taught easily
and does not relate to other areas in the curriculum or if students typically do not
have trouble with it, then there is no reason to study that topic.
Teachers then develop a general unit plan and choose a lesson from the unit that
they believe is key for the unit. Because these lessons usually require teachers to
spend more time on the topic than usual, it is important for teams to choose a les-
son topic that is at the core of the unit and will enable teachers to spend less time
on other lessons because students will have a deeper conceptual knowledge that
will assist them in making other mathematical connections. Teams use as a theoret-
ical framework for designing their unit the five interwoven strands of mathematical
proficiency described in the National Research Council’s report (2001), Adding It
Up. The strands are: conceptual understanding; procedural fluency; strategic com-
petence; adaptive reasoning; and productive disposition. Teams may not be able to
address each of the five in the single lesson, but they plan how the lesson fits into
the development of the strands. The team then outlines a lesson plan that includes a
description of the primary task in which students will engage. Teams respond to the
questions found in Table 1 while writing their lesson plans.

1.1.2 Teach the Lesson

During this phase of the process at least one teacher from the team teaches the
lesson in order for the team to analyze how the students interacted with the task.
Other team members either watch it live as it is taught or watch it on videotape.
In some cases, multiple teachers teach the lesson and the team compares students’
responses. While teachers are observing, they are taking notes to provide evidence
of student thinking.

1.1.3 Analyze the Lesson and Student Thinking

In this phase, teachers collaboratively observe and analyze the lesson or video, dis-
cussing student thinking during the lesson and how the lesson met its goals. Uni-
versity professors participate in these discussions as well, asking the team critical
questions as the lesson progresses. The entire group discusses how well their goals
and methods served students.
Using Lesson Study to Develop an Appreciation of and Competence in Task Design 15

Table 1 Questions teachers address while planning their lesson

1. Goals of this lesson
• What student actions and thinking is the lesson trying to foster (e.g. independent
mathematical thinking, group cooperation)?
• What are the mathematical goals for this lesson? What do you want students to come
out of this lesson being able to know or do?
2. Assessment and evaluation
• How will you determine by the end of the lesson if the lesson met each of its goals?
(What problems or questions would you ask students?)
• What evidence of learning will be observed or collected during the lesson to make
student thinking visible? Examples of ways to make student thinking visible:
• Many students explaining their reasoning in a class discussion;
• Many students showing and explaining work at the board;
• Students using hand-held white boards to show their work, not just answers;
• Students explaining their thinking in small groups (with the teacher checking in
frequently with groups and asking questions).
• Students handing in a quick write (answering a conceptual question or showing
their work/thinking for one or two problems)
3. Progression of lesson highlighting students’ learning activities
• Lesson Introduction: What will hook students into thinking about this lesson and
connect to prior lessons?
• Main activities for the lesson: What rich problem or activities will the lesson use to
engage students, keeping them mentally active and thinking originally, whereby they
develop their own strategies, not passively follow procedures? How does the lesson
design make students’ thinking visible to the teacher and observers? What strategies
will makemathematics meaningful for all students? (Some examples include: using
multiple representations, connecting to students’ lives and prior knowledge, providing
structures for communication).
• Lesson Closure: How will you debrief the lesson, explicitly pulling out the important
mathematical ideas of the lesson?
• Short assessment if evidence has not been collected earlier in the lesson (e.g. a quick
write or solving one problem).

1.1.4 Critically Design

After the lesson or video has been analyzed, teachers reflect on the discussion. The
team is now prepared to carefully design the learning task. Design does not have to
mean developing teaching materials from scratch. In fact, a crucial element of de-
sign is the ability to critically assess and alter existing curricular materials or lessons.
I will, therefore, use the term critical design to refer to this active and critical role
of planning. Teachers’ original lessons can be designed from existing materials, and
their revised lessons are designed from the original. They critically analyze existing
plans to design their new lesson. By seeing how students interact with the origi-
nal task, teachers now have insight into students’ thinking about the concept. For
the “Main Activities” section of the lesson plan, teachers add columns “anticipated
16 J. Lieberman

Table 2 Main activities of the lesson plan

Learning activities Expected student responses Points of evaluation

student responses” and “evaluation points”. The teams re-write the main activities
with more detail and with responses in the new columns (Table 2).
In addition, during the original planning phase, teachers often have difficulty
uncovering the important mathematical concept underlying the mathematical goals
they have set for their class. During the critical design phase, the team can now
anticipate student responses to each part of the lesson, and when needed, redesign
the lesson and its goals to focus more on the important underlying mathematical
concept.

1.2 Examples of Insights Gained During Lesson Analyses

Below are specific examples of insights teachers gained when analyzing their
lessons or videotapes, and how those insights influenced the final, more detailed
lesson plan during the critical design phase of the process.

1.2.1 Surface Area of Cylinders

The purpose of this lesson was for 6th-grade students to learn how to find the surface
area of a cylinder. The students used rulers to measure dimensions of a cylindrical
can that was placed on their desk. The teachers expected the students to be able to
see that the height of the can was the same as the width of a rectangle wrapped
around the can, and that the circumference of the can was the same as the length of
that rectangle. They expected the lesson to go smoothly, with students having little
difficulty. Instead, students struggled to figure out what to measure. After teach-
ing the lesson (and reviewing the video), teachers realized that the important and
challenging aspect of this lesson was not having students simply develop a formula
for surface area; it was having them visualize the 3-D lateral surface area in two
dimensions and make the connection between height in 3-D and width in 2-D, as
well as circumference in 3-D with length in 2-D. The planning phase of this les-
son study cycle was not as fruitful as the analysis phase. During the analysis, the
team discussed how they needed to spend more time with their class transforming
3-D objects to 2-D drawings. They needed to spend more time having their students
deconstruct 3-D objects into flat objects. Activities such as breaking down a cereal
box to see the 2-D figures from which it is composed or peeling off a rectangular
label from a cylinder would help students visualize drawing nets from 3-D objects.
Students had had some experience with these types of activities, but it was clear
from the lesson that they needed a firmer grasp of this type of visualization. Without
this background, students cannot successfully complete the task they were given.
Using Lesson Study to Develop an Appreciation of and Competence in Task Design 17

1.2.2 Sum of Angles of Any Triangle Is 180 Degrees

In another lesson, the teachers’ goal was for 5th grade students to understand that
the sum of the angles of any triangle is 180 degrees. Students used protractors to
measure the angles of several differently shaped and sized triangles. Students’ data
were often not accurate, and thus, incorrectly came to the conclusion that the sum
of the angles of any triangle is not always 180 degrees. The team needed to revise
the lesson, taking this into account. More importantly, though, the teachers learned
that students do not understand the concept of angle measurement generally. The
pre-knowledge necessary for this lesson was much greater than what teachers had
expected. Teachers learned that the concept of angle measurement is much more
complex than they had thought. Some students thought large triangles would have
larger angles. They were sure they could make a very small triangle with the mea-
sure of each angle being 10 degrees. The teachers had not realized that the important
mathematics necessary for this lesson was to understand what angles and their mea-
surement mean. The teachers could not make this realization until they observed
and listened to students.

1.2.3 Justifying Reasoning

The following task was designed by another group of teachers to have 4th and 5th
grade students justify their reasoning while exploring the fractions in a novel way.
The class had been working with fractions, but only looking at them as parts of a
whole. The class was a 4th/5th grade combination, so they needed to use a problem
that would be accessible for the 4th graders while also being challenging for the 5th
graders.

Mr. Smith’s brownie pan holds 20 brownies. Last night he baked three batches. He
and his wife ate 3 brownies each for dessert. Mr. Smith ate an extra half a brownie
as a midnight snack and another one for breakfast.
How many brownies did Mr. Smith bake?
How many does he have left to share with the thirty kids in his class?
How can you make sure that every person gets an equal share?
How much will each person get?
Be prepared to prove, present and explain your answer to the class using drawings,
pictures, numbers, or words. You may create your own brownies out of construc-
tion paper to help you solve this problem.

Teachers did not know how students would go about solving the problem. They
were surprised to find that most groups tried to solve the problem the same way,
but had difficulty. When analyzing the video and student work teachers found the
following issues. First, the wording was a little ambiguous. The last phrase of the last
sentence says “and another one for breakfast”. Some students interpreted the “one”
18 J. Lieberman

as a whole brownie (as it was intended) and others interpreted it as another one half.
That wording can be an easy change for the next version of the lesson.
More interestingly, the teachers were surprised that most students solved the
problem by dividing up brownies, and then halves. Most students correctly mul-
tiplied 20 by 3 to get 60 original brownies. They then subtracted 71/2 brownies from
60 and got 521/2. At this point, students realized that each student in the class could
have one whole brownie, so they subtracted 30 from 521/2 and got 221/2. This is
where the problem became quite challenging for most students. Before teaching the
lesson, the teachers were not able to anticipate student responses, and certainly did
not expect so many groups to use the same method. Groups often doubled their
numbers to see how many students they could feed if each ate a half. This allowed
them to give an equal share to each of the 30 students. The groups kept track, that
these shares were 1/2 brownies, not full brownies. They doubled the 221/2 and got
45 shares. The 30 students each got a share (that was now a 1/2 brownie), and they
were left with 15 shares (halves). Some of the groups realized that when they dou-
bled 15 they reached 30 again, and that each of these shares was now 1/4 of brownie,
so each student got 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 brownie, or 13/4 brownie. Some groups subtracted
incorrectly at the beginning of the problem and ended up with 61/2 brownies. They
then divided the 6 brownies into fifths so that they could have 30 pieces, and simply
dropped the 1/2. Those groups gave an answer of 1 + 1/2 +1/5 = 17/10.
This lesson showed how the analysis phase provided the richest opportunity
for the teachers’ learning experience. At first students focused on finding an an-
swer and wanted approval from the teacher. The teacher reminded them that the
task was to prove their answer with drawings, pictures, numbers or words, at
which time students re-engaged in order to justify their reasoning. The teachers
learned how powerful this type of task can be for developing students’ capacity
for justification by generalization versus “appealing to authority” as described by
Carpenter, Franke, & Levi (2003), and for developing the capacity of adaptive rea-
soning generally (National Research Council, NRC, 2001). The analysis phase of
the lesson provided the teachers with information about how students approached
the problem and justified their reasoning without instruction, and thus, what knowl-
edge they brought to the situation and what they can learn that will help them.

2 Designing Key Prompts that Assist Teachers in Critically

Designing Tasks to Make Mathematics Meaningful
for Students

My colleagues and I have found that another key for enabling teachers to develop
challenging tasks that provoke student thinking is to focus teachers on making
students’ thinking visible during the lesson study process. The Cognitively Guided
Instruction (CGI) project has provided evidence that when students develop and
communicate new mathematical understandings based on their own knowledge, they
learn mathematics better (Carpenter, Fennema, Peterson, Chiang, & Loef, 1989;
Using Lesson Study to Develop an Appreciation of and Competence in Task Design 19

Villasenor & Kepner, 1993). CGI recognizes that children have intuitive mathematical
knowledge and that teachers can develop instruction that has students build on this
knowledge without being told or shown how to do mathematics (Carpenter, Fennema,
Franke, Empson, & Levi., 1999). Similarly, recent international studies have shown
that a key feature of successful mathematics instruction is providing students with
challenging tasks that provoke student thinking (Stigler & Hiebert, 1997; American
Institutes for Research, 2005). The challenge is to assist American teachers in making
that their priority and then assisting them in designing tasks that support the goal.
Based on our work with hundreds of teachers in multiple school districts, a key for
making this work is to focus teachers on making student’s thinking visible during the
Lesson Study process. As teachers develop lessons with the goal of making students’
thinking visible, by definition, the lesson must make students think. Examples of
strategies that are provided to teachers for making thinking visible are: having
students show/discuss their methods in groups, having students show/discuss their
method with the whole class, having students write out in words what they did and
why they did it that way. When I use the term visible I also mean audible. The
purpose is for the teacher and observers to be able to understand how the students
are thinking about the mathematics during the lesson.
Lesson study provides permission to take risks. The purpose of developing,
teaching, and analyzing the lesson is to learn about student learning. The lesson
study team learns a great deal from both failure and successes; the purpose is not to
develop a perfect lesson, it is for the team members to investigate how students think
about the mathematics of the lesson. During the process teachers design lessons that
often take them out of their comfort zone in order to produce evidence of student
thinking that can be analyzed. Team members then have the opportunity to observe
students learning math in ways that take some control away from the teacher. They
are provided with a new vision for mathematics instruction and student learning.
I will provide specific examples of teachers’ shift in their design of tasks by de-
scribing some of their earlier and more recent tasks, and what caused them to make
those shifts.
When my colleagues and I began our lesson study work, teachers tried to de-
velop the perfect lesson. As one teacher says, she and her colleagues tried to make
the lessons student proof. In other words, students could follow the task step by step
and end up discovering what the teacher intended. Even at this school that has been
diligently trying to improve mathematics instruction, teachers had not developed a
need for pushing students’ thinking. Teachers wanted to lead students to a discov-
ery, but not have students do original thinking. They wanted students to understand
why mathematics works the way it does, but they wanted to do so by having students
follow the teacher’s thinking. With the goal this year on making student thinking vis-
ible, their lesson did, indeed, require student to do original thinking. These teachers
are now challenging themselves by working towards having students develop ideas
themselves – think deeply about the ideas (not just understand). One of the teachers
describes this transformation,
The thing that I’ve really noticed the progression at Lincoln; when we first started doing
Lesson Study we tried to make these lesson plans that were like student-proof, where we
20 J. Lieberman

just walked the kids right through; and I don’t think we really had the understanding that we
could get kids to do the stuff successfully but it didn’t mean they were thinking about it at
all. It could just be that they were following a recipe. It’s almost like getting a MapQuest1
to go to somewhere and you follow the MapQuest exactly, it doesn’t mean you really know
how to get there next time. . . . So this year, I think we really got the point of, we just want
to see evidence of student thinking. . . let’s think about student thinking.

An example of the transformation this team has gone through can be seen in two
of the lesson study lessons. Two years ago, their lesson was about the sum of interior
angles of a polygon. The team wanted their students to “discover” the formula that
the sum is 180 times the quantity n = 2, where n is the number of sides of the
polygon, and wanted them to understand where the formula came from. Students
filled out a chart (Table 3) that had a column name of polygon, n-sides, number
of triangles, number of degrees. At the bottom of the table there was a row for an
n-gon. When filling out the chart, students could easily follow the pattern and get
the correct answer without understanding why it worked the way it did (Table 3).
The teacher showed the class how to draw lines from one vertex to the other
vertices, to create triangles within the polygon. The team realized later that students
could go through this lesson, come up with the correct answer, and still not be able
to re-create the formula. The students were able to fill out the table correctly, but did
not do the thinking necessary to set up the table and develop the formula, and thus,
would probably not be able to re-create the formula later.
This year, when teachers were given the prompt teachers to “make student think-
ing visible”, the team developed a very different type of lesson. They developed their
lesson with the goal of having students make connections between various represen-
tations of the same linear situation. They had students match cards with a real life
situation (word problem), linear equation, t-table, graph, and ordered pairs. Students
had to do the thinking in order to match the correct representations to each problem

Table 3 Sample template for “discovering” formula for sum of interior angles of a polygon
Name of Sketch Number of Number of Number of
polygon sides (n) triangles degrees
formed

Triangle
Quadrilateral
Pentagon
Hexagon
Heptagon
n-gon

1 Electronic system that provides street-level detail and/or driving directions for a variety of
countries (Wikipedia, [Link] accessed May 28, 2008).
Using Lesson Study to Develop an Appreciation of and Competence in Task Design 21

situation. In addition, students had to justify their answers (in words, through work,
or both). Below is an example of one of their situations:

Fred and Ethel have been saving for many months in order to pay for their parents’
50th wedding anniversary. They have a total of US $5,000. Fred and Ethel now
need to start paying for all of the food, music, flowers, hall rental and so forth. The
bills work out to be a total of US $300 each month.

This team did not do a lot of revision after analyzing their lesson, but had a
rich discussion based on their observations. They discussed questions students were
asking each other in groups as they worked on the task, and which representations
were causing the students the most difficulty. For example, they noticed that students
had the most difficulty with the ordered pairs and they were not used to fitting an
ordered pair with a situation. They also discussed the difficulty students had with
one of the problems due to ambiguity in the wording. In contrast, with the polygon
lesson, there was little evidence of student thinking to discuss. Teachers quickly
came to the conclusion that the students got it – they got the correct formula.
Another example of how the instructions to “make students’ thinking visible” for
study lessons had the effect of teachers planning lessons that make students do orig-
inal thinking was the “brownie problem” lesson described earlier. The teachers in
this group have shifted their focus to having students develop concepts themselves,
rather than be shown them. A key feature of the “brownie problem” lesson was that
students had to convince each other (using their model) that they had the correct
answer. This lesson was rich with evidence of student thinking. Students calculated
answers and wanted to share them with the teacher. The teacher’s response was that
they must use a model to convince each other. Students went back to their groups
realizing that they had a great deal more to do for the lesson. Developing the models
forced more conversations and deeper conversations amongst group members.
A teacher in another lesson study group described how his experience of design-
ing lessons for lesson study has changed the way he designs all mathematical tasks
for his class. He gave the example of teaching 5th grade students to compare the rel-
ative size of fractions. He used to teach students the rule of multiplying the numer-
ator of one by the denominator of the other. This method is a shortcut to finding an
equivalent fraction with a common denominator. The result gives new numerators
(with the same denominator), allowing the student to compare whole numerators
only. When he taught this method, he taught it as a rule, without providing justifi-
cation for why it works (or having students figure out why it works). This year he
approached the same topic in a very different way. He put some unit fractions on
the board and asked students to draw them. He then asked them what they noticed
about the size of them. Students quickly noticed that fractions with a larger denomi-
nator were smaller pieces of the same whole. He then put up some fractions with the
same denominator and different numerators and asked students to draw them. Stu-
dents noticed that the larger numerators resulted in a larger fractional portion. This
teacher provided these explorations as a foundation for comparing fractions. This
22 J. Lieberman

example illustrates how a teacher thinks differently about designing lessons due to
his experience of developing tasks for his involvement in lesson study.

3 Conclusions

While a central purpose of lesson study is for teachers to learn from engaging in the
process, an additional benefit is that teachers can acquire a collection of key lessons
that have been studied carefully. Teachers do not have time to conduct a lesson
study cycle for every lesson, but this collection can build students’ foundational
conceptual knowledge for many of their curricular units enabling teachers to spend
less time on other related lessons.
The lessons that teachers collect, though, are still not perfect. A crucial element
of designing tasks is to critically assess existing curricular materials or lessons, and
then adapt them to better meet the teacher’s students’ needs. As such, teachers con-
tinually adapt lessons based on their learning from the process of analyzing and
discussing students’ thinking about a topic, and based on their knowledge of the
particular students they are teaching. In our project, teachers have been better able
to critically design after they have seen a lesson taught, even if the revised lesson
is going to be taught to a different group of students. After teachers have seen any
group of students respond to the lesson, they are better able to predict what other
groups of students, even different types, will do because they have a basis from
which to predict and compare.
When they first teach the lesson, teachers often expect it to go as planned, and
for students to think about the task the way the teachers think about it. After they
have observed students interact with the lesson, they are better able to understand
the important mathematical concepts underlying the lesson, as well as how students
will think about the concept and task. Furthermore, the tasks teachers design are
more mathematically meaningful if the teacher focuses on making student thinking
visible. Because teachers typically do not see critical design as a part of their job –
their job is to implement the curriculum laid out in textbooks – strategies need to be
studied and shared about how to assist teachers in developing this skill. Similarly,
US teachers are used to focusing lesson planning and observations on the teacher,
rather than on the students (Fernandez, Cannon, & Chokshi, 2003). This chapter
provided descriptions of the tasks my colleagues and I have used to assist teachers
in learning how to design meaningful tasks that highlight student thinking.
Due to their participation in lesson study, teachers are now challenging their
students to think on their own; not just follow the teacher’s path to a particular
discovery. This, in itself, requires more risk-taking by the teachers. They do not
know where their students’ thinking will go. In the past, most of the teachers in
our project either showed students how to use skills or procedures to find an an-
swer, or they guided students to discover a particular concept or formula, without
having students do any of the thinking. Many of the teachers now see the value of
developing tasks that will allow students to do original thinking. By having us ask
Using Lesson Study to Develop an Appreciation of and Competence in Task Design 23

teachers to make thinking visible, teachers have embedded formative assessment

into their tasks. They (and other observers) are gaining knowledge about students’
understandings and misconceptions while the lesson is being taught.
The tasks and processes described in this chapter demonstrate how lesson study
can assist teachers in developing more meaningful mathematical tasks for their stu-
dents, and how, they in turn, reaffirm their professional purpose – to serve students.
US mathematics teachers maintain a specialized culture that is comprised of shared
practices and beliefs about students, and mathematics teaching and learning. This
technical culture is often strong and inhibits serving all students well due to the be-
lief that mathematics is a sequential series of skills that teachers must cover, even
if students are not learning them (Talbert & Perry, 1994). This technical culture for
many teachers is given and signals, implicitly or explicitly, a tension between caring
about students and maintaining the integrity of their subject or adhering to systemic
requirements to cover material (Talbert & Perry, 1994). Lesson study gives teachers
permission to return to their original service ethic, and assists them by providing
structures to help them focus on their students and students’ thinking.

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Reflecting on the Process of Task Adaptation
and Extension: The Case of Computational
Starters

Theresa J. Grant and Jane-Jane Lo

For several years we have been designing materials to engage prospective elemen-
tary teachers in relearning computation with the kind of understanding necessary
to support their work with future elementary students. Many of the tasks used for
this purpose are extensions of the (numerical) starter problems from the elementary
curriculum, Investigations in Number, Data and Space developed by TERC (1998),
a non-profit educational organization in Boston. For example, consider the prob-
lem of evaluating 102 − 46 by using one of the following numerical starters, or first
steps: 46 + 50, 102 − 50, and 106 − 50. In this chapter we discuss the issues that
arose as we used these tasks with prospective teachers, and the additional adapta-
tions that were developed over time in order to focus on these issues. Although our
work focuses on the use of starters in the context of whole number computation, we
conclude with a discussion of the more general advantages of such tasks by connect-
ing our goals with the more general notion of mathematical proficiency, as defined
by the National Research Council (2001).

1 Introduction

Teachers must understand the basic mathematical ideas that underlie computational fluency,
use tasks in which students develop these ideas, and recognize opportunities in students’
work to focus on these ideas. Many of us learned mathematics as a set of disconnected
rules, facts, and procedures. As mathematics teachers, we then find it difficult to recognize
the important mathematical principles and relationships underlying the mathematical work
of our students. (Russell, 2000, p. 158)

Whole number computation has long been the mainstay of elementary mathe-
matics curriculum; however recent recommendations in the United State suggest a
different purpose for this focus. In Developing computational fluency with whole
T.J. Grant
Professor, Department of Mathematics, Western Michigan University, USA
J.-J. Lo
Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, Western Michigan University, USA
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
26 T.J. Grant and J.-J. Lo

numbers, Russell (2000) explicates the goal of computational fluency put forth by
the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (National Council of Teachers
of Mathematics, 2000). Students who can compute fluently: have efficient strategies
for computation, are able to compute accurately, and have the flexibility to choose
among strategies for solving problems (Russell, 2000, p. 154). Russell joins others
(e.g., Bass, 2003; National Research Council, 2001) in contrasting the learning of
computation for its own sake, to one in which whole number computation is seen
as a key context through which students can learn to reason about numbers and the
number system, and to deepen their understanding of interpretations and properties
of the operations.
This view of the goal of mathematics learning in the area of whole number com-
putation is consistent with a larger call for the development of mathematical profi-
ciency, defined by the authors of Adding it up (National Research Council, 2001) as
consisting of the following five interdependent strands:
• conceptual understanding – comprehension of mathematical concepts, opera-
tions, and relations
• procedural fluency – skill in carryout procedures flexibly, accurately, efficiently,
and appropriately
• strategic competence – ability to formulate, represent, and solve mathematical
problems
• adaptive reasoning – capacity for logical thought, reflection, explanation, and
justification
• productive disposition – habitual inclination to see mathematics as sensible,
useful, and worthwhile, coupled with a belief in diligence and one’s own efficacy
(p. 5).
This call for refocusing mathematics education in the United States is made with
the recognition that it will require that teachers have the knowledge necessary to
develop that proficiency in their students. However in our experience, prospective
elementary teachers not only lack this kind of proficiency themselves, they have the
disconnected and rule-based view of mathematics Russell refers to in the opening
quote. In this chapter we reflect on our efforts to develop computational fluency in
prospective teachers by adapting a particular mathematical task originally designed
for use with elementary students. Careful analysis of the prospective teachers’ re-
sponses to these adaptations suggest opportunities for developing additional key ele-
ments in general mathematical proficiency that could be applied beyond the realm of
whole number computation. Issues and challenges for realizing these opportunities
are illustrated and discussed.

2 Context

The authors have been participating in a curriculum development project to pro-

duce problem- and reasoning-based lessons and support materials to be used in
college mathematics courses specially designed for prospective elementary teach-
Reflecting on the Process of Task Adaptation and Extension 27

ers. In particular, we have been heavily involved in developing and piloting a whole
number computation unit that seeks to enable prospective teachers to: (1) develop
multiple ways of solving computation problems and (2) justify the validity of those
strategies based on various interpretations of the operations. We consider these goals
important for developing prospective elementary teachers’ own computational flu-
ency (Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences, 2001) as well as their math-
ematics knowledge for teaching (Hill & Ball, 2004). Hill and Ball (2004) argue that
teachers of mathematics need two kinds of knowledge: the common knowledge of
mathematics (e.g., knowing how to solve a given mathematics problem) and the
specialized knowledge of mathematics (e.g., why the method works, whether the
method can be generalized to other problems).
In order to reflect on the kinds of specialized knowledge needed by teachers
to facilitate the development of computational fluency in elementary students, we
analyzed the whole number units of an innovative elementary curriculum: Investi-
gations in Number, Data and Space (TERC, 1998). In analyzing this curriculum, we
were struck by the potential of one particular type of task: the (numerical) starter
problem. For example, consider the problem of evaluating 102 − 46, and some pos-
sible numerical starters, or first steps: 46 + 50, 102 − 50, and 106 − 50. Starters
can encourage the development of alternative strategies, and bring out a particular
interpretation of an operation. Those students who evaluate 102 − 46 by starting
with 46 + 50 = 96 often recognize subtraction as the “inverse” of addition, and may
think of the original computation as figuring out how many things do I need to add
onto 46 to get to 102. Whereas a student who evaluates 102 − 46 by starting with
102 − 50 may think about the original problem as “I have 102 things, and need to
take 46 things away.” We saw great potential in using starter problems with prospec-
tive teachers, and hoped that by having them develop and justify various computa-
tional strategies, we would provide them with the opportunity to deepen and extend
their understanding of mathematics and to begin to develop the kind of specialized
knowledge of mathematics necessary for teaching.
In this chapter we share the ways in which we adapted the concept of the starter
problem for use with prospective elementary teachers, and how these adaptations
changed over several iterations of the cyclical process of task adaptation, imple-
mentation, analysis and revision. During this time, the first author had primary re-
sponsibility for writing the teacher notes for these lessons, and piloting this unit
(along with other units). In order to reflect on this process, we reexamined those
teacher notes, videotaped lessons, and student work. Finally, for the purposes of this
chapter we focus on the beginning of the whole number computation unit, which
focuses mainly on subtraction.

3 Initial Adaptations of the Computational Starter

In adapting the computational starters for prospective elementary teachers, our main
focus was on how they could be used to enable prospective teachers to unpack their
understanding of computation, for example, to consider what subtraction means.
28 T.J. Grant and J.-J. Lo

Prior experience with practicing teachers highlighted a tendency to apply various

mathematical “rules” in order to determine how to utilize a particular starter. Thus
the beginning of the first unit on computation is as much about helping prospec-
tive teachers to confront the rule-based nature of their mathematical thinking, as it
is about helping them to develop a better understanding of subtraction – the first
operation in this unit. Consider, for example, the first task in this unit: determine
the result of 1,004 − 97 by using mental reasoning rather than using the algorithm
that you learned as a child. This task allows us to: introduce the notion of the
numerical starter, by discussing different students’1 first steps; and highlight the
rule-based nature of their thinking, by discussing the reasoning for their strategies
– both correct and incorrect. Virtually every semester the following strategy arises:
1,004 − 100 = 904, and 904 − 3 = 901. The typical rationale offered for this erro-
neous strategy is that one must undo whatever has been done to the expression, that
is, since 3 was added to 97 to get 100, we must subtract 3 in order to “even things
out.” In order for students to make sense of this error in a way will help them as
future teachers, they need to consider what is meant by subtraction. The following
dialogue illustrates the instructor’s way of helping students move away from the
rules of algebra and of positive and negative numbers, to considering what an ele-
mentary student might think about subtraction, in order to determine a reasonable
next step of this strategy:
I: Tell me what this (1,004 − 97) means in language that an elementary school
kid could understand.
S1 : 1,004 take away 97.
I: 1,004 take away 97, is that reasonable? Can somebody use that way of thinking
about subtraction and get away from algebra and get away from these rules that
you’re creating. And if I don’t know positive and negative numbers, I just know that
1,004 take away 97 . . . how could I explain what’s going on here? I’m supposed to
do 1,004 take away 97. So what did I do instead?
S2 : Took away 100.
I: I took away 100. So . . .
S3 : You have to give 3 back.
I: So, so I took away 3 extra so I’ve got to put them back.
It is important to recognize that this shift from rules to meanings is not a simple
one for prospective teachers, and one which emerges multiple times during this
course. For further discussion of this, and other, challenges faced by prospective
teachers and their instructors as they established new norms for doing mathematics
in the context of relearning computation, see Grant, Lo, and Flowers, 2007).
In addition to engaging students in generating their own starters for problems
and solving problems with particular starters, both of which are tasks that mirror
those in the Investigations curriculum for elementary students, we developed sev-
eral types of tasks that extend these ideas. These extensions were designed to further
the focus on justification based on the meaning of the operations, and to support the
1 Unless specified as elementary students, the term students is used to denote the prospective
elementary teachers that were enrolled in our classes.
Reflecting on the Process of Task Adaptation and Extension 29

exploration of additional mathematical relationships. Our initial ideas for types of

extensions included having students: analyze the strategy and/or justification of a
peer, compare and contrast two different strategies within an operation, or compare
and contrast similar strategies across different operations. For example, after stu-
dents have had some experience working with subtraction, we ask them to consider
how these strategies might be extended to addition. We have found it effective to do
this in the context of considering a special case of a starter: one which is equivalent
to the original expression, but is simpler to solve. Thus 1,004 − 97 can be deter-
mined by considering the equivalent expression 1,007 − 100. The extension task is
then to consider whether one can use the “same strategy” for addition? Embedded
in this task is the question of what it means to generalize this strategy to addi-
tion. Would it mean doing the exact same thing to the numbers in the expression:
1,004 + 97 = 1,007 + 100? Or would it mean to accomplish the same underlying
goal, that is, to create a starter that is equivalent to the original expression and yet
is simpler to determine: 1,004 + 97 = 1,001 + 100? In either case, why does the
strategy work (or not work)?
Our hope was that these extensions to the elementary tasks would both enhance
prospective elementary school teachers’ understanding of number and operations, as
well as their ability to justify their thinking beyond specific examples. While these
extensions were somewhat successful in accomplishing these goals, we recognized
the need to create additional adaptations that focused on some specific issues that
arose in early piloting of these materials. In the following sections we discuss some
of those issues, and the additional types of tasks that were developed over time in
order to address them.

4 Broadening Our Thinking About Starters

One of the overarching goals of using starter problems was to focus students’ at-
tention on the multiple interpretations that could be made of the operations, and to
learn to utilize these interpretations to reason about computation. For us, being able
to think about one solution method through multiple interpretations is an important
aspect of computational fluency and is critical to each teacher’s future ability to en-
courage the same in their students. In the midst of implementing this unit for the
first time, it became clear that some students developed a tendency to associate cer-
tain interpretation of an operation with certain solution strategies. With subtraction,
the dominant interpretation among our students is the take-away interpretation. We
considered this tendency to be related to their rule-based approach to mathemat-
ics, and thus there were two reasons for finding ways to confront this issue. First,
we wanted students to be able to have a broader understanding of subtraction, and
second, we wanted to facilitate a more productive disposition (National Research
Council, 2001) towards mathematics as a subject involving reasoning, rather than
disconnected rules. Therefore it was important to have students consider how to
solve problems using starters that suggested a different interpretation. For example,
30 T.J. Grant and J.-J. Lo

determining 102 − 46 by starting with 46 + 50 = 96 is an example of a starter prob-

lem that often elicited a distance or missing addend interpretation of subtraction:
how many things do I need to add onto 46 to get to 102, or what is the distance
between 46 and 102. While some starters increased the likelihood of a particular
interpretation arising, they were not a guarantee. In fact some students persisted in
their efforts to always look at subtraction as take-away.

4.1 Focusing on Interpretations

To force students to think about subtraction in multiple ways, we created

interpretation-specific starters. Figure 1 provides an example of such a task in
which students were not only provided a numerical starter, but were also required to
provide two distinct justifications of their strategy – one utilizing take-away (Sara’s
interpretation) and the other utilizing distance (James’ interpretation).
In each justification, the student is expected to consistently utilize a particular
interpretation of subtraction. Figure 2 provides an example student work that suc-
cessfully accomplishes this. There are several things to notice about the different
justifications provided by this particular student. For example, consider the different
rationales for adding five in the third step of the strategy. In the take-away justifica-
tion, the rationale for adding 5 is that you took away 5 too many things in the first
step; in the distance justification, the rationale is that you had not yet accounted for
the distance from 195 to [Link] notice that the student is not only successful at
keeping track of the relevant interpretation of subtraction, but is also careful to be
explicit about the interpretation of addition being used in the second and third steps.
Not all students were successful at these kinds of tasks, and the work of several
students indicated an inability to coordinate pictorial representations with particular
solution strategies and/or particular interpretations of the operation. For many, this
difficulty seemed to coincide with a resistance to viewing subtraction as distance.
Consider one student’s attempt to use the distance interpretation, and a number line

Two students were attempting to determine the result of 613−195 by beginning with 600−200 =
400. Each student had his/her own way of thinking about this problem. Sara was interpreting this
problem as meaning I have 613 things, and I take away 195 things, how many do I have left?
James was interpreting this problem as I am trying to find out what the distance is between 195
and 613?
a) There are several ways to evaluate 613 − 195 by using the given starter (600 − 200 = 400).
You must choose one such solution strategy that can be understood from both students’
perspectives.
b) Provide two justifications for the solution strategy you provided for part a. One of these
justifications must be written from Sara’s perspective; the other justification must make
sense from James’ perspective.

Fig. 1 Interpretation-specific starter task

Reflecting on the Process of Task Adaptation and Extension 31

Solution Strategy:
1. 600 − 200 = 400
2. 400 + 13 = 413
3. 413+5=418
Justification from Sara’s perspective: She began solving the problem 613-195, by beginning
with the starter problem 600 − 200 = 400. From there she needs to combine 400 and 13, and this
is because the original problem started with 613 things not 600 things (613 − 600 = 13). The next
step for Sara was to take the 413 she has just gotten, and combine it with 5 more things because
the original problem started with 195 things and she took out 200 things in the starter problem
(200 − 195 = 5). Once 413 is combined with 5, she gets 418. Therefore, Sara knows when you
begin with 613 things and you take away 195 things, there will be 418 things remaining.
Justification from James’ perspective: He, like Sara, is solving the problem 613-195 with the
starter problem of 600 − 200 = 400. The starter problem showed James that there is a distance
of 400 between 600 and 200. However, James needs to find the distance between 613 and 195.
Therefore, James needs to find the distance between 600 and 613, which is 13. Then he needs to
combine that with the 400 he has already, which is 413. Lastly, James needs to find the distance
between 200 and 195, which is 5, and he needs to combine that with the 413, to give him 418.
James now knows that there is a distance of 418 between 613 and 195.

Fig. 2 Consistent use of each interpretation

The problem is 613 − 195 and we are using the starter of 600 − 200. We are going to start with a
number line to represent both the starter and the original problem.
400
200 – 5 = 195 600 + 13 = 613
200 600
408

James wants to know what the distance is between 195 and 613. We are using the starter of 200
and the distance between 200 and 600 is 400. We did not add enough with our starter of 600 so
we need to add an additional 13. We started with 5 too many at 195 so we need to deduct those
by subtracting 5. When you combine our first answer of 400 plus the 13 and then remove the 5,
you find the difference to be 408.

Fig. 3 Switching interpretations

drawing, to justify a strategy for determining 613 − 195 by starting with 600 − 200
(Fig. 3).Unlike the previous example of student work in which the student was
able to consistently use one interpretation of the operation, this student switched
interpretations mid-way through the work when explaining 200 − 5 = 195.
While the picture matched the initial interpretation of 400 being the distance
between 200 and 600, the student did not appear to extend this interpretation to
the original problem. That is, the picture does not indicate the distance between
600 and 613, nor that between 195 and 200, nor the entire distance from 195 to
613. Furthermore the student’s justification only refers to distance in the first two
sentences, and eventually reverts to the take-away interpretation by the end. In this
32 T.J. Grant and J.-J. Lo

case, the student’s inability to consistently utilize the distance interpretation likely
contributed to his/her inability to determine the correct answer.
Although our teacher notes for the course indicate the importance of pictorial
representations, like the number line, we did not anticipate the extent of the chal-
lenges the students would face in using them appropriately. We had naively assumed
that prospective elementary teachers would have developed some basic competency
with the use of number line representation through their pre-college schooling. Fur-
thermore, we did not anticipate the tendency for students to assume a one-to-one
correspondence between a pictorial representation and a particular interpretation of
an operation. For example, some presumed that the number line could only be used
with the distance interpretation of subtraction, when in fact the take-away interpre-
tation can also be represented with a number line. This led to another variation of
the starter task: combining numerical starters with pictorial starters.

4.2 Focusing on Pictorial Representations

The idea of the pictorial starter was initially prompted by students’ tendency to view
the number line as only being useful for the distance interpretation of subtraction.
We experimented with this kind of task in both subtraction and multiplication. For
subtraction, we sought to design a task that might enable our students to confront
their difficulties with interpreting the number line in different ways. Thus we cre-
ated the following task (Fig. 4) containing three pictorial representations – two of
which involved a number line representation (only these two are shown) based on
the most common number line representations generated by students from a previ-
ous semester. Our intention was that the pictorial representation on the left would
encourage interpreting the starter (and the original problem) as take-away taking 400
away from 1,000 (mimicking the counting backward strategy a young child might

For the problem 1018 − 395 = −− , three students began with the same starter: 1000 − 400 =
600. However they interpreted this starter differently, as is evidenced by their representations.
Finish each student’s work by solving the problem in a way that utilizes the given starter, and is
consistent with their way of thinking about subtraction as indicated by their representation of the
first step. Provide a written justification for each so-lution strategy along with representations for
the remaining aspects of the strategy. Be explicit about how each student was thinking about the
op-eration of subtraction.

400 600

600 1000 400 1000

Fig. 4 Pictorial representations for the starter 1,000 − 400 = 600

Reflecting on the Process of Task Adaptation and Extension 33

do when taking 4 away from 10: “9, 8, 7, and 6”). Whereas the picture on the right
would encourage a distance interpretation: what is the distance between 400 and
1,000. We recognize that one does not have to interpret the representations in these
specific ways, our goal was simply to raise the possibility of interpreting subtrac-
tion in two different ways, and allowing the notion that both interpretations could
be represented using a number line to surface.
This task was somewhat productive in accomplishing our goals; however, in-
spection of the student work prompted us to alter the starter in future semesters.
With the original starter (1,000 − 400 = 600), both numbers were changed from the
original problem (1,018 − 395), the complexities of “getting back” to the original
problem seemed to overshadow the issue of interpreting subtraction (as illustrated
on the number line) in multiple ways. In our next iteration of this task we altered
the starter for the problem so that only one number was different from the original
problem (evaluate 1,018 − 395 by utilizing the starter 1,018 − 400 = 618). Our anal-
ysis of student writing assignment showed that this iteration of the task was more
successful at pinpointing the issue we intended.
Students’ ability to utilize the number line productively was further targeted by
an exam item (Fig. 5) which combined two previously discussed ideas: creating an
equivalent expression that is easier to compute than the original expression, and re-
quiring students to use a particular picture (number line) to support their reasoning.
In class discussion around why it makes sense to add the same quantity to both num-
bers in order to create an equivalent subtraction expression (122 − 96 = 126 − 100),
students were typically more comfortable with interpreting subtraction as distance,
and reasoning that when you add 4 to each number, you are keeping the distance
(between 122 and 96) the same, but are simply shifting this distance 4 units to the
left. Thus this task also increased the likelihood that a particular interpretation of
the operation would emerge, for those students who chose the subtraction option.
For those who chose the addition option, this task revealed the degree to which
they were able to use the number line to represent addition (something which had
received little attention up to this point).
Although most students were able to successfully demonstrate their understand-
ing of how to use the number line, about 16% of the students (6 out of 38) could not
do so on this task. Below are examples of two incorrect use of number line: one for
the addition equivalent problem (Fig. 6a) and the other for the subtraction equivalent
problem (Fig. 6b). Each example shows different misconceptions. Figure 6a demon-
strates a basic understanding of the number line structure (the numbers are placed
appropriately), but fails to represent 122 + 96. Instead, the student is indicating

One solution strategy commonly used by elementary shcool students to solve an addition
or a subtraction problem is to turn it into an equivalent problem. For example, one can evaluate
122 − 96 by turning it into 126 − 100, or evaluate 122 + 96 by turning it into 118 + 100. Choose
ONE of these equivalent problem strategies (the addition or the subtraction) and use the number
line model to explain why it works.

Fig. 5 Exam question requiring utilization of number-line model

34 T.J. Grant and J.-J. Lo

Fig. 6 Incorrect uses of number-line model. a Addition equivalent problem and b Subtraction
equivalent problem

distances – that is, the distance between 122 and 96, and between 118 and 100. In
our experience, this is appears to be a result of students attempting to translate their
experience using distance to justify the equivalence of subtraction expressions di-
rectly the justification of equivalent addition expressions. In contrast, Fig. 6b shows
an understanding of 122 − 96 as finding the distance between 96 and 122, but a lack
of understanding of the mathematical structure of the number line model. Without
keeping 96 to the right of 100, the picture fails to demonstrate that the two distances,
between 122 − 96 and 126 − 100, are equivalent.
Although the examples of tasks and student work discussed above are all in the
context of subtraction, we created similar starter tasks for use with other operations
and for doing computation with fractions and decimals. Some of the same issues
arose in these other domains. For example, in working on whole number multiplica-
tion, our students were able to reason more flexibly when using the equal groups
interpretation of multiplication (i.e., thinking about 31 × 97 as either 31 groups
of 97 or 97 groups of 31), as opposed to the rectangular array/area interpretation.
This is consistent with research showing that prospective elementary teachers in
the United States do not have a well-developed concept of the relationship between
multiplication and area (e.g., Simon & Blume, 1994). The use of interpretation and
pictorial-specific starters was therefore just as critical in multiplication as it was in
subtraction.
Reflecting on the Process of Task Adaptation and Extension 35

5 Discussion

We propose that forcing prospective teachers to “start” a problem in a particular

way is productive in helping prospective teachers develop the kind of mathematical
proficiency described by the National Research Council, (2001), and thus prepare
future teachers to better understand their students’ thinking. Our main mathemat-
ical goal in this unit has been to facilitate the development of computational flu-
ency and the ability to justify strategies with tools accessible to elementary students
such as multiple interpretations of operations embedded in everyday contexts and
pictorial representations. This goal is most closely tied to three strands of math-
ematical proficiency: conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and adaptive
reasoning. Our experience using these tasks with prospective teachers also reveals
their efficacy in fostering a more productive disposition towards mathematics (the
fifth strand of mathematical proficiency). That is, moving away from rule-based
learning to one based on reasoning about mathematics. The use of interpretation-
and pictorial-specific starters was critical to this particular goal in that it enabled
prospective teachers to broaden their understanding of the operations and allowed
them to develop confidence in how to use this understanding to generate strategies
based on reasoning. Finally, looking back we can see how these tasks have the po-
tential to help them develop their proficiency in making sense and utilizing multiple
representations in general, which is both an aspect of strategic competence and an
essential foundation for algebraic reasoning (Brenner et al. 1997).
While we hope that we have made the case for the usefulness of the starter prob-
lems, we do not claim to have developed the perfect tasks to achieve our instructional
goals. Furthermore, our experiences with designing and implementing these tasks
suggest that the proposition is far from simple. In particular, the use of certain pic-
torial representations has created yet another tension between two different, though
admittedly overlapping goals: learning particular mathematics content, and having
a solid understanding of particular pictorial representations. In fact there is growing
recognition of the importance of pictorial representations in mathematics teaching
and learning. Diezmann and English 2001) define diagram literacy as “knowing
about diagram use and being able to use that knowledge appropriately” (p. 77), and
call for its development as one goal for mathematics instruction at all levels. It may
be the case that students need more time to focus on a particular representation and
its more general mathematical significance, in order to be able to effectively utilize
that representation. This issue is of particular concern in the case of prospective ele-
mentary teachers, since many of the representations that we want them to utilize are
ones that they have been exposed to for many years (e.g., number lines, area/array
models), but about which they may have limited conceptual understanding.
The process of task creation, reflection on students’ reaction to those tasks, and
task alteration have allowed us – as curriculum designers and instructors – better
understand the issues our students face as they work to learn mathematics with
meaning. The challenge is to structure the tasks carefully so that they are open-
ended enough to allow students to explore a particular mathematical idea through
their own understanding, and yet focused enough to make sure that students are
36 T.J. Grant and J.-J. Lo

given opportunities to grapple with important issues. Although our work with the
starter concept has been restricted to the area of computation, we see the potential
of extending this concept to developing mathematical proficiency in other areas of
mathematics.

References

Bass, H. (2003). Computational fluency, algorithms, and mathematical proficiency: One mathe-
matician’s perspective. Teaching Children Mathematics, 9, 322–327.
Brenner, M. E., Mayer, R. E., Moseley, B., Brar, T., Duran, R., Reed, B. S., et al. (1997). Learning
by understanding: The role of multiple representations in learning algebra. American Educa-
tional Research Journal, 34, 663–689.
Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences. (2001). The mathematical education of teachers
(Vol. 11). Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society & Mathematical Association of
America.
Diezmann, C. M., & English, L. D. (2001). Promoting the use of diagrams as tools for thinking. In
A. A. Cuoco (Ed.), The roles of representation in school mathematics (pp. 77–89). Reston, VA:
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Grant, T. J., Lo, J., & Flowers, J. (2007). Shaping prospective teachers’ justifications for computa-
tion: Challenges and opportunities. Teaching Children Mathematics, 14, 112–116.
Hill, H. C., & Ball, D. L. (2004). Learning mathematics for teaching: Results from California’s
mathematics professional development institutes. Journal for Research in Mathematics Educa-
tion, 35, 330–351.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2000). Principles and standards for school mathe-
matics. Reston, VA: Author.
National Research Council. (2001). Adding it up: Helping children learn mathematics. In
J. Kilpatrick, J. Swafford, & B. Findell (Eds.), Mathematics Learning Study Committee, Cen-
ter for Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC:
National Academy Press.
Russell, S. J. (2000). Developing computational fluency with whole numbers. Teaching Children
Mathematics, 7(3), 154–159.
Simon, M. A., & Blume, G. W. (1994). Building and understanding multiplicative relationships:
A study of prospective elementary school teachers. Journal for Research in Mathematics Edu-
cation, 25, 472–494.
TERC. (1998). Investigations in number, data and space. Menlo Park, CA: Dale Seymour.
Tasks for Primary Student Teachers:
A Task of Mathematics Teacher Educators

Victoria Sánchez and Mercedes Garcı́a

This chapter is concerned with the tasks that mathematics teachers’ educators pose
in their classrooms. From our point of view, we cannot present these tasks with-
out making explicit the theoretical perspective that underlies our decisions. This
perspective has led us to choose what to teach and to decide how to teach. The iden-
tification of systems of mathematics teachers’ activity and mathematical practices
articulate the search of what to teach in a mathematics methods course. Its joint
consideration provides us with a context in which the contents of the future pri-
mary teachers’ curriculum are made explicit. From here, we present the process of
designing two of the tasks that we implement in our classrooms.

1 Our Local Context

In order to contextualize this chapter, we start describing briefly our Primary Math-
ematics Teacher Education system at the moment. In Spain, Primary Education
is taught by primary-school teachers who are responsible for all the areas at this
level. They work with children aged 6–12. These teachers are trained at university.
Three years of study are required to qualify as a primary teacher. In these 3 years the
student teachers must obtain about 200 credits. The legal regulation on this degree
establishes that 120 compulsory credits are common for all the Spanish universi-
ties. There are different specialties: Primary Education, Physical Education, Musical
Education, Foreign Language, Nursery Education, Special Education, Audition and
Language. Within the different subjects that form part of the curricula of these spe-
cialties, there are 9 credits devoted to Mathematics and its didactic for the specialty
of Primary Education, and 4.5 credits in the specialties of Physical Education, Music

V. Sánchez
Professor, Department of Didactic of Mathematics, University of Seville, Spain
M. Garcı́a
Professor, Department of Didactic of Mathematics, University of Seville, Spain
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
38 V. Sánchez and M. Garcı́a

and Foreign Language. In some universities these numbers of credits have increased
a little. In the University of Seville, they have been increased from 3 to 5 credits,
depending on the specialty.
When we planned the organization of these credits in our Primary Teacher Edu-
cation program, we took into account that, in the future, Primary Teachers must use
the mathematical ideas in the classroom from the perspective of mathematics and
from their consideration as teaching/learning objects. Consequently, both perspec-
tives must be taken into account in the pre-service education of those teachers. In our
program, they are developed in two courses. The first one is a course of mathematics
for teachers, situated in the first academic year. The second one is a mathematical
methods course, developed in the second or third year, depending on the specialty.
These courses share our theoretical framework, but their contents are different. Here
we focus on the second course exclusively.
In the following sections, we will try to describe the tasks that we provide to our
students in the mathematics methods course.
Before that, we want to emphasize a key idea from our point of view. We cannot
make this description without making explicit the theoretical perspective that un-
derlies our decisions. As teacher educators, this perspective has led us to choose the
tasks and to decide how to implement them.

2 Mathematics Teachers’ Systems of Activity

In the last decades, researchers such as Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989),
Cobb (1994), and Lave and Wenger (1991) have developed theoretical ideas
that have been summarized by different authors (Garcı́a, 2003, 2005; Putnam &
Borko, 1997). These ideas enable us to understand the characteristics of cognition
in an educational context. Our approach is rooted in some of them, in particular,
the situative perspective that allows us to characterize the activity of teaching math-
ematics, the specific knowledge and skills that are needed for this activity, and
the learning processes that allow student teachers to develop this knowledge. This
involves defining the tasks implicit in the community of mathematics teachers from
a theoretical perspective, identifying the systems of activity that enable the teachers
to solve those tasks, and generating adequate learning environments. Following
Llinares (2004), we consider such systems of activity to be
• The organization of the mathematical content for teaching. That includes being
familiar with the mathematical contents as a teaching and learning object, using
the knowledge of mathematics for designing, selecting and analysing worthwhile
mathematical tasks, using the knowledge about the mathematical contents to de-
sign, analyze and select lessons and curricular resources.
• The management of the mathematical contents and discourse in the classroom.
That includes being familiar with and identifying: (1) the phases and types of
lessons of mathematics, (2) the characteristics of the mathematical interaction in
the classroom, identifying the constraints and mechanisms which maintain the
interactive course of mathematical communication in the classroom, and (3) the
Tasks for Primary Student Teachers: A Task of Mathematics Teacher Educators 39

characteristics of the management of debates as instruments for mathematical

learning.
• The analysis and interpretation of mathematics students thinking. That includes
becoming familiar with the theories for the learning and construction of mathe-
matical knowledge, and the characteristics of the learning of mathematical con-
cepts and procedures, using the prior knowledge for interpreting and analyzing
the pupils’ mathematical thinking.

Each system of activity can inform us about different aspects of a Mathematics

Teacher Education program.

3 What to Teach in a Mathematics Methods Course

In addition to systems of mathematics teachers’ activity that enable the teachers to

solve their professional task – analogous to other grades, but with the additional
characteristics specific to Primary school – in this course we need to consider the
mathematical content as a teaching/learning object. Following Rasmussen, Zandieh,
King, and Teppo (2005) defining, justifying and modelling, among others, are part
of ‘doing mathematics’ and underlie any mathematical content. They could be con-
sidered mathematical practices. Both systems of mathematics teachers’ activity and
mathematical practices articulate our ideas in the identification of what to teach in
a mathematics methods course. The following table shows some of the different
‘spaces’ that must be considered from the Didactics of Mathematics (Table 1). The
intersection of rows/columns (identified with an asterisk in the Table 1) provides
us with a context in which the contents of the future primary teachers’ curriculum
are made explicit. The domains of mathematics teachers’ professional knowledge
(knowledge of and about mathematics, curricular knowledge, knowledge of learners
and learning processes, instructional knowledge and knowledge about didactical-
mathematics processes) are the background we consider to define these contents
(Garcı́a & Sánchez, 2002).

Table 1 Systems of mathematics teachers’ activity and some mathematical practices

Systems of To organize the To manage of To analyze and
mathematics mathematical mathematical interpret what
teachers’ activity content for teaching contents and student teachers
discourse in the think/know
classroom
Mathematical practices
Defining * * *
Justifying * * *
Modelling * * *
Symbolizing * * *
Others * * *
40 V. Sánchez and M. Garcı́a

4 How to Teach in a Mathematics Methods Course

In our classrooms, we try to create learning environments. We think that these learn-
ing environments may be generated by means of relevant tasks, active participation
of the community members in the process of solving the tasks, working in small
groups, taking into account previous knowledge and beliefs, and making explicit
reasoning processes (Garcı́a, 2000).
The use of conceptual tools enables the pre-service teachers to solve the proposed
situation/task in such way that they become fit to participate fully in the mathematics
teachers’ community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Conceptual tools are un-
derstood as those concepts and theoretical constructs that have been generated from
research in mathematics education leading to understanding and handling situations
in which mathematics is taught and learned. They can be provided through videos,
articles in mathematics education literature, or information provided for teacher ed-
ucators. For us, as teacher educators, the generation of these environments has im-
plied organizing our classroom along trajectories in which the above mentioned
ideas are included (Fig. 1).
In these trajectories, the situation/task approaches the professional tasks of the
mathematics teacher. In the following, we present an example of process that we
have followed in the design of those tasks and the selection of conceptual tools that
are going to be used in the corresponding trajectories.

Situation
/Task
Work in small groups
Elaboration of reports
Collective Analysis/
Discussion of reports
Conceptual tools

Collective Discussion/
Analysis of the new questions

Reflection
(What have I learnt?)

New tasks

Assessment

Fig. 1 Scheme of a teaching–learning trajectory (Garcı́a, 2000, p. 63)

5 Designing Tasks

Identified spaces and trajectories, we were able to think in suitable tasks. We want
to point out that both the design of the tasks and the choices of conceptual tools
are ‘open and dynamic’ processes. Maintaining the trajectory as a consequence of
Tasks for Primary Student Teachers: A Task of Mathematics Teacher Educators 41

our theoretical ideas, task and tools can change depending on the context (specific
students, specialty . . . ) and our own personal development.
The tasks that we present here – Task A and Task B – are two of the tasks that
we use in our mathematics methods course. Depending on the specialty, we include
four or five tasks in an academic year.

5.1 Designing Task A

We start our work as teacher educators choosing the intersection rows/columns with
which we want to work, as we can see in the following table (Table 2).

Table 2 Planning Task A using systems of mathematics teachers’ activity and some mathematical
practices
Systems of To organize the To manage of To analyze and
mathematics mathematical mathematical interpret what
teachers’ activity content for teaching contents and student teachers
discourse in the think/know
classroom

Mathematical practices
Defining – – –
Justifying – – –
Modelling * – –
Symbolizing * – –
Others – – –

In this case, we have situated in the intersection of the Organization of the math-
ematical content for teaching as a teachers’ system of activity and Modelling and
Symbolizing as mathematical practices (identified with an asterisk in the Table 2).
This intersection is considered in the context of a mathematical content that appears
in the curriculum of this level (Primary school). Here we focus on the multiplicative
structure problems.
By considering together Organizing the mathematical content for teaching/
Modelling and Symbolizing/arithmetic problems of multiplicative structure we may
choose into the space defined by rows/column some ‘problematic spaces’, under-
stood as those fields/spaces of problems that the teacher educator wishes student
teachers to think about in a certain moment.
In this occasion, some of these problematic spaces are:
• Type and structure of multiplicative arithmetic problems in mathematics elemen-
tary school curricula (6–12-year-old students)
• Different meanings associated to multiplication that appears in that curriculum
(repeated addition, combinations . . . )
• Different ways of considering how learners can solve those problems. What un-
derlies the distinct solving strategies? What kind of difficulties can appear? How
are these difficulties related to the types of problems?
42 V. Sánchez and M. Garcı́a

• Role of the modes of representation as tools in the solving processes; relation-

ships between symbols and meanings
• Mathematical modelling of real word situations
• Mathematical problems as teaching/learning objects
• Elements that a teacher needs to consider to work in different ways to organize
the teaching of the multiplicative structure
• Elements that a teacher needs to work with in the classroom concerning differ-
ent multiplicative problems and solving strategies. How can a lesson of problem
solving be planned? How can it be managed? What are key elements in the pro-
cess of assessing pupils’ learning with respect to multiplicative structure prob-
lems?
These ‘problematic spaces’ lead us to go deep into aspects related to different
teachers’ domains of knowledge that, from our point of view, could be considered
in this case. In the following table (Table 3), we make explicit some of these aspects.

Table 3 Aspects related to different teachers’ domains of knowledge

School mathematics • Arithmetic word problems in primary school curricula
curriculum • MSAPs in primary school curricula
• Criteria of analysis of MSAP
• Classification of MSAP
• Modes of representation in primary school curricula
• Solving problem as a curricular content
• Modelling as a curricular content
• Mathematical language in primary school curricula

School mathematics • Solving strategies of MSAP

learning processes • Learning difficulties related to different types of MSAP
problems
• Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of different
modes of representation
• Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of MSAP for
introducing the mathematical language

Teaching • Design and selection processes of teaching tasks: elements

processes that intervene, and application of specific tasks
• Assessment of mathematical knowledge in primary school:
characteristics, and teaching tasks as assessment tasks
• Planning a problem solving lesson: study of the elements
that intervene, and design of tasks
• Assessment of problem solving The management of a prob-
lem solving lesson
• Elements that intervene in the use and organization of word
problems as a teaching object

Didactic-mathematical • Comparing, assessing and selecting different ways of orga-

reasoning processes nizing a mathematical content for teaching
• Comparing and assessing different strategies for solving a
word problem
• Different uses of word problems in primary school
MSAP multiplicative structure arithmetic problems
Tasks for Primary Student Teachers: A Task of Mathematics Teacher Educators 43

From here, we design a task that can involve as well as possible the above men-
tioned aspects. Here the task adopted the form of a case, which we show in the
following picture.

Task A
You have just started at a new school. For the school year that is about to start,
the staff has decided to change the textbooks and have asked your opinion on the
choice. Which textbook would you recommend?
For our first steps in this professional task, we will settle for a given content,
multiplicative structure arithmetic problems. In the booklet enclosed, we have se-
lected all the information related to this type of problem found in two widely used
primary-school textbooks.
• Start working with your group. Check the booklet carefully.
• Give and justify your assessment criteria.
• Let us suppose that some of those criteria are related to the elements involved
in the teaching/learning of primary school multiplicative structure problems:
◦ Indicate three of these elements that were useful in making your choice.
◦ Do you agree with the contents? With their organization? With how they are
presented?
◦ What would you change (add or remove/leave as is), in each section?

As we show in the trajectory of teaching-learning (Fig. 1) the student teachers

are provided with conceptual tools for the resolution of the task. These conceptual
tools include information about the aspects related to different teachers’ domains of
knowledge that we have made explicit in Table 1. In particular, the articles, chapters
of books, videos, which we selected in this case, are:
• Problem types, children’s solution strategies and difficulties related to mul-
tiplication and division, (Carpenter, Fennema, Loef, Levi, & Empson, 1999,
Chap. 4; Llinares & Sánchez, 1993; Nesher, 1992; Puig & Cerdán, 1989, Chap. 4;
Quintero, 1986; Thompson & Hendrickson, 1986; Vergnaud, 1991)
• Curricular issues (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000)
• Problem solving as modelling (Carpenter et al., 1999, Chap. 5; Greer, 1997)
• Task design and planning (Cemen, 1989; Leblanc, Proudfit, & Putt, 1980;
Quintero, 1986)
The teacher educator enlarges (or not) this information depending on the
intention of highlighting or completing some ideas.
In the classroom, we start the teaching-learning trajectory providing students
with a sheet with the case. After that, we follow the process indicated in Fig. 1.
44 V. Sánchez and M. Garcı́a

Table 4 Planning Task B using systems of mathematics teachers’ activity and some mathematical
practices
Systems of mathematics To organize the To manage of To analyze and
teachers’ activity mathematical mathematical interpret what
content for contents and student teachers
teaching discourse in the think/know
classroom

Mathematical practices
Defining – – *
Justifying – – *
Modelling – – –
Symbolizing – – –
Others – – –

5.2 Designing Task B

In this case, we have chosen the intersection of Analyze and interpret what stu-
dent teachers think/know as teachers’ system of activity and Defining/Justifying as
mathematical practices (identified with an asterisk in the Table 4). The context of
mathematical content here is plane figures (Table 4).
Some of the problematic spaces that we may highlight in this case are the
following:
• Geometrical elements in primary school curricula
• Plane figures in primary school curricula
• Modes of geometrical representation and their role in teaching/learning processes
in those levels
• Ways of considering the definition in primary school curricula
• Ways of introducing geometrical justifications in primary school curricula
• Definitions and justifications as teaching/learning elements
• Different ways of considering geometry in primary levels from teaching and
learning perspective. What models can help us in this analysis? What types of
difficulties can arise?
• Elements that a teacher needs to consider in different ways of introducing the
definitions of /justifications in figure planes for teaching
• Elements that a teacher needs to work with in the classroom concerning geomet-
rical definitions/justifications. What are key elements in the process of assessing
pupils’ learning with respect to definitions/justifications?
• Tools of collecting information about mathematical learners’ ideas/knowledge
These ‘problematic spaces’ lead to go deep into aspects related to different teach-
ers’ domains of knowledge, which we make explicit in the following table (Table 5):
From here, we elaborate the task. As the previous task (Task A), Task B adopts
the form of a case:
Tasks for Primary Student Teachers: A Task of Mathematics Teacher Educators 45

Table 5 Aspects related to different teachers’ domains of knowledge

School mathematics • Geometric elements in primary school
curriculum • Plane figures in primary school
• Geometric modes of representation in primary school
• Defining as a curricular content
• Justifying as a curricular content

School mathematics • Learning difficulties related to different geometric notions

learning processes • Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of different
modes of representation in geometry
• Analysis of the characteristics of spatial reasoning
• Levels of geometric thinking (van Hiele) – what pupils
learn/what pupils know
• Learning difficulties related to defining and proving pro-
cesses as a primary school content

Teaching processes • Interview and questionnaire as tools in the teaching/learning

process
• Analysis of interview and questionnaire as a way of collect-
ing information about pupils learning
• Design and selection processes of teaching tasks: elements
that intervene, and application of specific tasks
• The process of assessment of mathematical knowledge in
primary school: characteristics, and teaching tasks as assess-
ment tasks
• Elements that intervene in the organization of geometric
contents as a teaching object

Didactic-mathematical • Comparing and assessing different pupil’s answers

reasoning processes • Using pupil’s answers in the planning process
• Assessing and selecting different ways of organizing a geo-
metric content for teaching

Task B
Juan has just joined the staff at a new primary school and in the stage he
is assigned to he must teach mathematics. He has always thought that Geometry
is an important part of school mathematics and that it is not given enough impor-
tance. In informal chats, his fellow teachers corroborate these ideas and he decides
to suggest, if possible, collecting well-supported information based on more than
just personal opinions, which could serve as a basis for evaluating the prior knowl-
edge/ideas of the pupils about definitions and justifications in Geometry related to
plane figures, and as a starting point for designing the geometry lessons.
The teachers suggest various alternatives concerning how this information
should be collected. Some of them suggest interviewing certain students; others
think a questionnaire with multiple-choice answers would be better.
The same thing happens concerning their interpretation of the data obtained.
Some think their prior knowledge is sufficient to interpret the results, while others
46 V. Sánchez and M. Garcı́a

suggest a search on the Internet, or requesting information from experts that would
allow a ‘more scientific’ interpretation.
In any case, they have to make basic decisions on the academic curriculum
of the subjects they intend to collect the information for that will allow them to
identify specific aspects related to the plane figures they want to consider.
• Which option would be the better, the interview or the questionnaire? Why?
Base the answer on the characteristics of each option, pros and cons, examples
of use.
• Following your choice, design a questionnaire or interview to collect the in-
formation required in one of the courses that corresponds to second or third
stage.
• What do you think would be the key to seeing through the student responses?
• Once the student answers have been collected, how should they be classified?
What criteria would be suitable? Choose the criteria, and establish the corre-
sponding classification.
• What information does this classification contribute to your educational
decisions?

In this task, the tools included information about the aspects related to different
teachers’ domains of knowledge that we have made explicit in Table 2. In particular,
different information related to the characterization and analysis of geometrical
reasoning and learning (Burger & Shaughnessy, 1986; Clements & Battista,
1992; Dickson, Brown, & Gibson, 1991, pp. 15–87; Garcı́a & Llinares, 2001;
Hershkowitz, 1990; Jaime & Gutiérrez, 1990; Vinner, 1991). As in the previous
task, the teacher educator enlarge (or not) this information depending on the inten-
tion of highlighting or completing some ideas.

6 What Have Student Teachers Learnt?

From our theoretical references, we consider learning as the identification and use
of conceptual tools in the process of handling a professional task. This consideration
of learning has allowed us to identify in our research the following ‘learning levels’
(Garcı́a, Sánchez, Escudero, & Llinares, 2006), shown in Table 6.
In our mathematics methods courses, we use these levels in the assessment
of our students’ knowledge in the different ‘moments’ of the learning pro-
cesses. Our practice and research has shown that the learning environments
generated in primary school teacher programs enabled some of these student
teachers to identify individually and collectively the conceptual tools provided
(Sánchez, Garcı́a, & Escudero, 2006). Nevertheless, integration of these tools has
been shown to be more complex. We have seen how, in situations in which such in-
tegration was achieved, the task was carried out differently, the students were aware
of and evaluated distinct features that led to different decisions (e.g. to choose a
Tasks for Primary Student Teachers: A Task of Mathematics Teacher Educators 47

Table 6 Learning levels and their characteristics

Learning levels Characteristics
Level 1 Conceptual tools not identified
Level 2 Tools identified, but not related to decisions
Level 3 Conceptual tools provided are identified
and applied (used)
Level 4 Conceptual tools are identified, applied
and integrated in a more general
framework

different textbook or design different interviews/questionnaires). This shows the

professional relevance of such integration and points out the need of advancing in
this subject, extending this research agenda to both pre-service secondary mathe-
matics teacher education and in-service programs at all levels.
Finally, we would like to get back to our practice. Research projects are not lim-
ited in time and scope. But the mathematics teacher educator practice is time-limited
(an academic year), and has the main goal that student teachers become mathemat-
ics teachers. How many tasks are necessary to achieve this goal? What ‘problem-
atic spaces’ and features of teacher’s domains of knowledge should be considered?
What tasks should be used? How about the diversity of student teachers? These are
open questions that we would like to share with other teams, other colleagues, and
other people.

References

Brown, J., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989, January–February). Situated cognition and the culture
of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32–42.
Burger, W., & Shaughnessy, M. (1986). Characterizing the van Hiele levels of development in
geometry. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 17(1), 31–48.
Carpenter, T. P., Fennema, E., Loef, M., Levi, L., & Empson, S. B. (1999). Children’s mathematics.
Cognitively guided instruction. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Cemen, P. B. (1989). Developing a problem-solving lesson. Arithmetic Teacher, 36(2), 14–19.
Clements, M. A., & Battista, M. (1992). Geometry and spatial reasoning. In D. A. Grouws (Ed.),
Handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning. New York: Macmillan.
Cobb, P. (1994). Constructivism in mathematics and science education. Educational Researcher,
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Dickson, L., Brown, M., & Gibson, O. (1991). El aprendizaje de las matemáticas (Children
learning mathematics). Madrid: Labor.
Garcı́a, M. (2000). El aprendizaje del estudiante para profesor de matemáticas desde la naturaleza
situada de la cognición: Implicaciones para la formación inicial de maestros (Student teacher’s
learning from the situated nature of the cognition. Implications for prospective teachers). In
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cial de los profesores del área de didáctica de las matemáticas (Methodological and evaluative
proposals in the initial teachers’ training from the didactic of the mathematics) (pp. 55–79).
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48 V. Sánchez and M. Garcı́a

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The Mathematics Teaching Portfolio:
A Reflective Tool for Developing Professional
Growth and Improving Classroom Practices

Rose Spanneberg

This chapter examines mathematics teacher portfolios as a powerful tool to pro-

mote reflection among teachers. The portfolio encourages teachers, through written
reflective statements, to examine the teaching of mathematics in-depth and allow
others to examine the thinking behind the teaching documented in the portfolio.
The portfolio offers an excellent opportunity for teachers to think reflectively about
teaching and at the same time provide evidence that could be used to guide practice.
Teachers are encouraged to reflect on themselves as learners of mathematics and
to reassess their role and classroom practices. Being exposed to reflective practice
teachers learned the importance of documenting professional growth and express-
ing their beliefs about teaching and learning. Opportunities for collegial sharing and
collaboration built into the portfolio construction allow the creators of the portfolios
to share their concerns and anxieties about issues in mathematics. Teachers need to
continually seek ways to improve their knowledge of mathematics in order to teach
more effectively. If they opt to work collaboratively with colleagues the possibilities
are much greater for them to define the best course of action for different situations
than working in isolation.

1 Introduction

In South Africa as in many other parts of the world ongoing concern among math-
ematics educators is how can we improve and provide opportunity for effective
change in the classroom. Recommendations for reform in mathematics education
call for increased emphasis to assist teachers to make critically reflective judgements
in the midst of action.

R. Spanneberg
Director, Rhodes University Mathematics Education Project (RUMEP), South Africa
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
52 R. Spanneberg

Bringing about such changes in the mathematics classroom is not easy. Hart
(2002, p. 6) suggests that
[T]eacher reflection is critical in teacher change. The act of reflecting on beliefs and be-
haviours allows teachers to make connections between their thought and actions and to
recognize, expose, and confront contradictions and inconsistencies.

Teacher reflection has become a crucial concept in the professional growth of

teachers. Since the thrust of this chapter is concerned with teaching portfolios as
a reflective tool, the concept of reflective teaching should also be discussed: the
potential of reflective practice, what it means and how it might impact on teaching.
In recent years reflection has become a crucial concept in the professional growth
of teachers. A variety of definitions exist around reflection. Gilbert (1994) argues
that reflection is not a new concept in education. John Dewey is acknowledged as
a key originator of the concept of reflection, and his work is considered as a useful
starting point for discussions about reflection. For Dewey (1933), reflection is both
a meaning-making process and a disciplined way of thinking Freese (1999) drew
on the work of Loughran & Corrigan (1995) and Schon (1983) defined reflection as
the process of making sense of one’s experiences deliberately, and actively exam-
ining one’s thought and actions to arrive at new ways of understanding oneself as
a teacher. I interpret reflection in the mathematics classroom as a process whereby
teachers continuously examine, plan and revise their own practice.
The professional reflective practice in this chapter is linked to critical reflec-
tion. The purpose of this is to document, develop and change one’s practice while
continuously thinking about that practice. Critical reflection, according to Jay and
Johnson (2002), often involves making a judgement. Through this judgement teach-
ers question their own practice. They articulate their professional knowledge and
reflect on what?, how?, and why? Wolf (1994) proposed that without reflections by
the teacher on problems and successes, it is difficult to determine the depth of the
teacher’s understanding of the teaching and learning process.

2 Outcomes of the Portfolio Task

2.1 Teaching Portfolios as a Reflective Tool

Within the literature, teaching portfolios, have received growing recognition as a

result of the benefits teachers and their students have derived from constructing a
portfolio. Dana and Tippins (1998) describe science-teaching portfolios as a form
of self-reflective inquiry undertaken to improve both the practice of teaching sci-
ence and the teacher’s understanding of teaching science. Zeichner and Wray (2001)
stated that with the increased focus on preparing and developing teachers to be re-
flective and analytic about their work, teacher educators and staff developers have
increasingly used teaching portfolios as one of a number of ways to stimulate greater
reflection and analysis by teachers. My own experience in introducing practising
The Mathematics Teaching Portfolio: A Reflective Tool 53

teachers of mathematics to construct portfolios, support the belief that the writing
of reflective statements by teachers provide evidence of teaching and learning in the
classroom. In addition, written reflections allow teachers to examine their practice
more deeply (Wolf, 1994). Similarly, De Rijdt, Tiquet, Dochy, and Devolder (2006)
agree that a teacher is able to come to a deeper self understanding through reflection.
In this way, a teaching portfolio can be seen as a vehicle for the growth of and the
learning by teacher. Effective mathematics teaching requires what the learners know
and how to assist them to better understand what they need to learn and then to sup-
port them to learn it well. Encouraging teachers to be reflective and analytical about
their work will guide their professional judgment and activity in the classroom.

2.2 Language and Reflective Writing

During reflective writing teachers make use of language when they describe, re-
port, express, articulate and explore reasons for and about their classroom prac-
tice. Various terms and phrases begin to appear in their writing as they experiment
with the language special to their subject and practice. According to Goldsmith and
Shifter (1997), teachers who seek to change their mathematics practice often find
themselves in need of a different vocabulary and set of categories for thinking about
teaching and learning. Their use of language itself helps them to reflect on specific
classroom event. Both pre-service and in-service teachers would be guided by the
language they engage in during the teaching sessions on the course that they are at-
tending as well as the language borrowed from curriculum documents and academic
readings.
To identify the language of reflective writing I will refer to Hatton and Smith’s
(1995, p. 41) levels of reflective writing:
Descriptive reflection: not only a description of events but some attempt to pro-
vide reason or justification for events or actions in a reportive or descriptive way.
Dialogic reflection: a form of discourse with oneself and exploration of possible
events.
Critical reflection: involving reasons given for decisions or events that take
account of the broader historical, and social and/ or political contexts.
The language of reflection that I have observed in my students’ portfolios illus-
trated the above. When the purpose of reflection is to improve mathematics teaching
and learning teachers must then examine their teaching to see what went well and
what went wrong. In order for teachers to take action they first need to consider
a number of possibilities and strategies that are appropriate to succeed or improve
learning in the future. Teachers for example, report on lesson plans according to the
new curriculum. At present, South African teachers are challenged by the three lev-
els of planning (i.e. Learning programme; Work schedule and Lesson plan) in the
new curriculum that they must implement at all phase levels. The entries below are
examples of reflective writing on lesson plans:
54 R. Spanneberg

I find the repetitive writing of the three levels of planning frustrating.

It is time consuming. I use a mind map and develop my work programme of what I intend
to teach . . .
I have found it easier to work out the learning programme thereafter the work schedule
and then the lesson plans. It became easier to plan the learning programme for the whole
phase. . . I have found it difficult to adhere to the exact plan in presenting the lesson the rea-
son was the frequent interruptions that hampered the application of the planned sequence.

Often teachers make use of language functions such as expressing feelings of

success, articulating processes that were conducive to learning especially after they
identified a problem and they then tried to improve the situation. The written re-
flections by teachers often express their beliefs about mathematics, mathematics
teaching and learning. I consider teacher beliefs as the views, interpretations, own
perceptions and judgement about their practice. What follows is an example of a
mathematics teacher expressing a strong belief in the positive atmosphere that she
tried to create in her mathematics classroom:
I think the most important thing is for my learners to feel comfortable with me and with each
other. I do think I handle discipline quite well, also I am not too strict with them. I really
believe that this works well for me and helps me to work well with my learners. . . they don’t
feel threatened by me, they are comfortable doing the work.

Moreover, their written reflections revealed how individual teachers coped with
situations in different contexts as well as the complexities of teaching. The next
entry is on the difficulty with the use of English as a second language:
The biggest problem for me is the issue of language. Most of the learners are struggling
with English and they don’t want to communicate in English. Because learners like to work
in groups I allow them to use their mother tongue. In that way they are learning from each
other.

Most teachers in our schools are experiencing the same problem. The reason for
this is that the learners must learn mathematics through a second language, which
is English. This language issue in learning and teaching reflects a typical situation
occurring in most urban and rural schools in South Africa. Being an educator for
inservice mathematics teachers for a number of years I support the view that teacher
educators should foster the development of critical reflection so that teachers can
become aware of the impact of their own actions upon the students that they teach
(Hatton and Smith, 1995).

2.3 Teaching Portfolios Enhancing Teacher Professional

Development and Growth

New paradigms for teacher development are beginning to emerge – one that chal-
lenges traditional forms of professional development. Traditionally teachers expe-
rienced professional development as a separate and distinct event. Teachers want
The Mathematics Teaching Portfolio: A Reflective Tool 55

opportunities that relate to their daily work. Some of these are: professional de-
velopment that is directly related to teachers’ classroom practices (which should
also encourage teacher collaboration); teachers having a good understanding of the
mathematics that they teach; and teachers reflecting critically on their learning ex-
periences.
Teaching portfolios are often associated with the professional growth of teach-
ers. For example, Green and Smyser (1996), writing about the teaching portfolio
as a strategy for professional development and evaluation, in this sense a teaching
portfolio allow teachers to make critical decisions about their practice through self-
assessment. They can serve as a tool that teachers can use to inform and reshape
their teaching.
The portfolio construction is a process more than a product. When teachers con-
tinuously reflect and carefully examine their practices, those practices are likely to
improve. However, Green and Smyser (1996) explain that the professional develop-
ment of a teacher is essentially a process of personal change. It is something that the
teacher has to initiate and not something that is done to the teacher. Teachers them-
selves can only bring about change when they adopt new ideas and take respon-
sibility to review their practice. Self-reflection, therefore, is the starting point for
professional development. Naturally, it is the starting point for teaching portfolios
as well. Consistent with this view is that of Ellsworth (2002) where she claims that
portfolios can be used to help plan professional development for inservice teachers.
She points out that the portfolio evidence can help practicing teachers see where
they need to strengthen either own content knowledge in a particular area or their
instruction of that content. It is therefore, fair to say that portfolios provide teach-
ers with a professional tool to evaluate and improve their own development. My
own experience in incorporating teaching portfolios into a mathematics course for
inservice teachers supports this view. Being exposed to reflective practice in this
way, teachers learned the importance of documenting professional growth and ar-
ticulating their beliefs about teaching and learning. This was evident in a study I
have conducted where interviews and analysis of reflective statements were consid-
ered. The teachers who participated in the study described the mathematics teaching
portfolio construction as follows:

The portfolio had made me realise that the teacher and learner cannot work in isolation from
each other . . . most importantly the portfolio gave me the opportunity to make mistakes,
develop and progress, and to believe in myself as a teacher

Another teacher appreciated the value of the portfolios as a ‘measurement tool’.

He claimed that the reflective process helped him improve his teaching style and
strategies.

If learners had not understood a mathematical concept, it meant I could apply another strat-
egy. The reflections helped me to see how the learners are progressing and where they
experience problems or needed help. It also helped me to improve and refine my teaching
skills, helping me to become a better teacher.
56 R. Spanneberg

2.4 Teaching Portfolios Integrate all Aspects of Teaching

Reform in mathematics teaching is presently experiencing many challenges to

change. Some of the demands are for teachers to assess the learners continuously
and they must implement the use of alternative assessment strategies. Within new
developments in teacher education, teachers are required to make use of teaching
strategies very different to what they used in the past. Teachers need good knowl-
edge of mathematics they can draw on to make learning more effective. They also
need knowledge about how mathematical concepts and ideas can be represented in
order to teach with understanding. Teachers should choose problem-solving tasks
to introduce and teach mathematical concepts rather than the memorization of facts
or procedures. Teachers must create environments conducive to learning. Effective
mathematical tasks should be selected to encourage learners to be actively involved
in their own learning. Teachers are required to engage in reflective practice to con-
tinuously try to improve and learn about their practice. One teacher in his reflection
showed how he tried to improve the learners’ understanding of prisms:
I observed that learners were not able to calculate and identify parts of prisms. What I did
to overcome this problem was to use other samples of prisms and gave each group a chance
to identify the properties of at least one of the prisms we then shared the information with
the whole class.

Many of the teachers in the inservice course revealed through their reflections
how they tried to improve the learning and teaching in mathematics. They had to
continuously revise their lesson plans and the way they teach.

2.5 Teaching Portfolios Support Learning

Having the portfolio task included in any of the mathematics courses is a result of
the learning that teachers undergo in creating such a teaching portfolio. Loughran
& Corrigan (1995, p. 565) make special reference to the learning advantages for
prospective teachers.

In preservice teacher education programs the teaching portfolio offers opportunities to stu-
dent teachers’ experiences, thoughts, actions, and subsequent learning about teaching to be
documented.

Portfolios can greatly contribute to knowledge and reflection about own perfor-
mance. The portfolio is seen first and foremost as a tool to support learning.
It continuously offers the teacher an opportunity to gain new insights into the
accomplishments in teaching. This is done when teachers carefully examine their
own practices with the intention to improve that practice. Viewing teacher learning
from the perspective of reflection and analysis, it is precisely the written reflec-
tive statements by mathematics teachers that are a vital tool in the learning process.
Mathematics teachers have opportunity to learn to scrutinize their own performance,
The Mathematics Teaching Portfolio: A Reflective Tool 57

begin to understand what went well as well as what went wrong. The teachers can
then consider strategies to improve success in future work and in this way take re-
sponsibility for their learning.
Teaching portfolios demonstrate how teachers help students learn as well as of-
fering an opportunity for teachers to make a statement about their personal philoso-
phy of teaching (Loughran & Corrigan, 1995). This was especially evident with my
own students participating in a mathematics course. The examples that follow are
portfolio reflection statements by practicing mathematics teachers:
Helen’s reflection makes a statement about her perspective on assessment:

I have now adopted the attitude that assessment is very important in the classroom, so I
must make it work for myself and for the learners. Besides this, assessment most certainly
guides my teaching I therefore depend on my learners’ assessment and reflections as well
as my own.

Another student, Anne, expressed a belief in the importance of preparing good

questions in order to help learners to better understand the mathematics in the class-
room:

. . . choose your questions very carefully so that you can focus on what you want learners
to learn. If your questions are focussed and when you let the learners explain their ideas, if
they do that, they will quickly see if they don’t make sense.

Teaching portfolios can also highlight students’ active exploration and selection
of relevant information about their own strengths and weaknesses. This often leads
to a person taking responsibility for further development (Tillema, 1998). Mark,
reflecting on his lesson, reported how he could develop his lesson in future:

I should develop investigative lessons to stimulate logical thinking and reasoning in my

learners. I know what resources to use but need to plan detailed lessons properly . . .

According to Wolf (1996) teaching portfolios allow teachers to retain examples

of good teaching so they can examine them, talk about them, adapt them, and adopt
them. Another reflection by Mark reveals the action he took after he adapted the
teaching of mathematical patterns. He felt confident about his teaching and describes
how he could help the learners:
The learners really enjoyed the practical situations when building patterns with matchsticks
and determining the rule for the patterns. I realised the importance of an open-ended ap-
proach in mathematics. The learners’ mathematical writing ability developed whereby they
wrote meaningful ideas on how they calculated the outcomes. The practical sessions en-
abled learners to explore and discover for themselves.

There is general agreement that teaching portfolios as a tool for reflecting on

learning have much to offer teacher educators. Wolf (1994) points out that without
reflections by the teachers on problems and successes, it is difficult to determine the
depth of the teacher’s understanding of the learning and teaching process.
58 R. Spanneberg

2.6 Teaching Portfolios Promote Collegiality and Social

Interaction Amongst Teachers

Collegial sharing and collaboration can be built into the portfolio process and can
offer valuable opportunities for teachers to share and compare, support and advise
each other. Tann (1993) suggested that the value of engaging in reflective activ-
ity is almost always enhanced if it can be carried out in association with other
colleagues, as personal insecurities are reduced. For my purposes I engaged my
students in portfolio conference sessions so that they shared the portfolios with
each other. The students found this experience of sharing with others very help-
ful because they could share problems and concerns in mathematics with teach-
ers of similar backgrounds. Barton and Collins (1993) reported that the collegial
sharing and collaboration built into the portfolio help students to become more ar-
ticulate. Students share their portfolio with each other for suggestion and support.
Thus, teaching becomes a collaborative event, with discussion based on evidence
collected in the portfolio. In recent years, research on the improvement in teach-
ers’ professional development programmes, promote collegiality among teachers as
an important component. Silver (1996) cited in Smith (2001) suggested that profes-
sional development in mathematics should offer opportunities for teachers to work
in collaboration with colleagues toward shared goals rather than working in isola-
tion. Richert (1997) agrees that teachers require the presence of others in order to
perform effectively. Similarly, Zeichner and Wray (2001) consider that the value of
portfolios is greatly enhanced when teachers are given opportunities to interact with
others on a regular basis in the construction of these goals. Shulman (1988) empha-
sised that a teaching portfolio should stimulate and facilitate professional interaction
among teachers. Teacher educators today without doubt, accept that learning is a so-
cial process (Vygotsky, 1978). Wolf and Dietz (1998) propose that constructing a
portfolio should be as well. Interaction with others should be part of the portfolio
process as teachers set goals, carry out and document their work. It is important
therefore, as mathematics educators, we consider the vital role teaching portfolios
offer to improve not only teacher learning but also collaboration and interaction
among teachers.
For the last two decades constructivism has emerged as the epistemological foun-
dation for mathematics education, and a new vision developed of what it means to
know and do mathematics (Hart, 2002, cited in Hoffman, 1989). How does the con-
struction of a teaching portfolio fit into this theory of learning?

2.7 Teaching Portfolios is Reflective of a Constructivist Paradigm

Anderson and DeMeulle (1998) described the portfolio as an assessment tool reflec-
tive of a constructivist paradigm. It involves self-construction of knowledge within
a social context, views assessment as ongoing and part of the learning process and
The Mathematics Teaching Portfolio: A Reflective Tool 59

includes active learning. From this point of view, teacher education programmes that
supports this type of learning for their students, could find that the construction of
teaching portfolios is an opportunity to develop constructivist thinking and learning.
An important aspect for mathematics educators is for teachers to see the potential for
their students to learn mathematics with understanding. There is a shift toward math-
ematical reasoning rather than memorizing procedures. Foote and Vermette (2001)
explain that from a constructivist perspective to allow students to examine, reflect
upon, and alter beliefs as they learn is compatible with portfolio evaluation. Many
proponents of mathematics reform have advocated a constructivist perspective of
teaching and learning (Cobb et al., 1989; Noddings, 1990; Simon, 1995). Con-
structivists recognise that reflection on practice, active learning, importance of prior
knowledge and skills, collaboration and cooperation, participation in authentic ac-
tivities are all important opportunities to enhance teaching and learning. From this
perspective, portfolio construction matches a constructivist conception of learning.

3 Teaching Portfolios in Mathematics Teacher Education

Current world-wide reform in mathematics demands a shift from the traditional

style of teaching and rote learning to more learner-centred instruction. The pro-
posed changes of how mathematics should be taught and assessed require teachers
to rethink their teaching practices. Such changes are not easy to accomplish, and
therefore require appropriate professional development. Teachers’ continuing pro-
fessional development is being promoted to support instructional change in mathe-
matics, new forms of professional development are needed for teachers (Clarke &
Hollingsworth, 2002; Knight, 2002; Smith 2001). A number of alternative perspec-
tives to support teacher change are identified in the literature. The concept of ‘the
reflective practitioner’ and the idea that reflection in, on and for practice are seen as
promising ways of improving practice. The need for monitoring teaching quality and
professional development by means of portfolios has emerged (Kelchtermans, 1993;
Smith and Tillema, 2001, cited in De Rijdt et al., 2006).

3.1 Teaching Portfolios Defined and Described

In order to provide a framework within which to present the portfolio process, I

include some of the definitions and descriptions that have been identified by the
authors of this topic.
De Rijdt et al. (2006) define the teaching portfolio as a purposeful collection
of evidence, consisting of descriptions, documents and examples of what is good
teaching for the teacher. Moreover, it contains reflections upon one’s educational
practices (p. 1,086). Wolf and Dietz (1998) suggest that the teaching portfolio is
more than a collection of evidence. They offer the following definition:
60 R. Spanneberg

A teaching portfolio is a structured collection of teacher and student work created across
diverse context over time, framed by reflection and enriched through collaboration that has
as its ultimate aim the advancement of teacher and student learning (p. 13).

Constructing a teaching portfolio can be seen as a vehicle for the growth of a

teacher through self-assessment. The reflective analysis and artefacts (evidence) are
seen as two major components of a teaching portfolio. It is therefore important for
teacher educators in mathematics to create and foster a rich environment for effec-
tive reflection in order to enhance better understanding in teaching and learning in
mathematics.

3.2 Suggestions in how to Design the Portfolio

Firstly, there is no ‘one’ right way of producing a portfolio. It helps to have a table
of contents so that the portfolio developer can organise the content more clearly
and it helps the reader better understand the content of the portfolio. Important, is
to have a clear purpose of the task. Both the student and the educator should know
the purpose right from the start of the process. The purposes will vary depending
on the context in which the portfolio is constructed. De Rijdt et al. (2006) point out
that creating a teaching portfolio is not an activity at one particular moment in time,
but a process that should be extended over a period of time. It is often suggested
that teachers articulate their educational philosophy as a first step in preparing a
portfolio. A statement of philosophy is a written summary of professional beliefs
concerning teaching.
The teaching portfolio should include documentation that supports teaching.
These documents are often referred to in the literature as artefacts that programmes
have asked their students to include. They can include: lesson plans, teaching jour-
nals, photographs, sample pupil assessment, and pupil work samples. Teachers can
include a variety of their pupils’ work to show the types of mathematical activities
they use as teachers. All the evidence included into the portfolio should be accom-
panied by reflective statements. The reflective statements should tell the reader or
reviewer what the teacher has learned about himself or herself and the practice of
learning. According to Fernsten and Fernsten (2005) the reflection statements, a crit-
ical component of the portfolio, is a vital tool in the learning process. Through these
writings the student gains clearer understanding of what they have accomplished,
what was successful, and what improvement can be made in future.
The teaching portfolio that I have implemented in my mathematics education
course included both Foundation and Intermediate Phase (elementary and middle
school) teachers. In designing the teaching portfolio task, I attempted to achieve
a balance between guidance for content and structure on the one hand, and flexi-
bility and choice on the other. The focus of this task was on using portfolios with
practicing teachers to encourage them to reflect on themselves as learners of math-
ematics and to reassess their beliefs and role as classroom teachers. The process
of constructing the portfolio challenged teachers to display what they did in their
The Mathematics Teaching Portfolio: A Reflective Tool 61

classroom and to explore new instructional strategies they were exposed to dur-
ing the course. Teachers collected various kinds of evidence reflective of what they
taught in their classrooms.
The mathematics teaching portfolio consisted of the following items and includes
examples of reflective statements by the students on the course:
• Lesson Plans: consisting of detailed descriptions of lesson plans, types of tasks
recommended to implement the plan, assessment strategies, and accompanied by
evidence of learners’ work and reflective statements.
I need to build in a routine for at least one problem solving activity before each lesson
I need to streamline my lesson plan and minimise content in a learning outcome. I need
to make time after normal teaching time to help weaker learners. . .

• Analyses of own teaching: these insertions included observations the teacher

made of his or her own teaching and the learning that took place over a period
of time, and problems the teacher identified within the classroom and how these
problems were addressed. This was an opportunity for the teacher to not only
gain knowledge about their actions but also, to base actions on teacher’s own
classroom reflections.
During the course of my teaching I discovered that the learners have a serious problem
as far as multiplication is concerned. I had to go back and teach multiplication again. I
applied a new teaching strategy – a mathematical game. The one game I used was a dice
game for find the product . . .

• Teachers’ reflections on professional contact sessions at the university: the teach-

ers had an opportunity to document their own professional growth. Their reflec-
tions also informed me how the course impacted on their teaching. Some of the
difficulties some teachers experienced during their own learning at the university
came to light.
In a short time he (lecturer) made a huge difference in my understanding of financial
issues. The budget session was very useful because I am the treasurer at school with no
formal accountancy education. I will use this knowledge that I have gained to teach and
educate the finance committee at school . . .

• Reflection on learners’ work: an opportunity was created here for teachers to

learn about the understanding or misunderstanding of individuals in the class-
room. It was an opportunity for the teacher to identify the needs of the learners
and to plan his or her teaching accordingly. Strengths and weaknesses of certain
learners could be identified and built on. The teacher could also determine what
strategies worked or did not work. An account of what did not work well:
When the learners were working in groups, all the learners were not always actively
involved. Also my instructions were not clear and learners did not understand what was
expected of them. Too many objects were measured and learners lost concentration. . .

• Peer reflective report: A portfolio conference served as a checkpoint of the

progress of the construction process. Furthermore, I sought to instil in the teach-
ers an understanding that teaching portfolios are part of a process to become
62 R. Spanneberg

better teachers. Teachers who have often worked in isolation experienced an op-
portunity to discuss ideas with, and learn from, others engaged in the same pro-
cess of documenting their instruction.
I discovered a lot of things on which I can improve in my portfolio. During the confer-
encing session I gained a greater understanding of my partner’s portfolio. . . ‘Dabs’ as
we call her really inspired and lifted my spirits with her comments during the portfolio
conference session.

• Reflections on learners’ reflections: here teachers could learn a great deal about
both their students and their teaching by reading what students said about their
learning. A teacher wrote:
Reading their reflections had me thinking about what I am doing, how I am teaching
and whether I am allowing them to have meaningful experiences in their learning. I
don’t feel like a bad educator but I do realise I can’t take for granted that because I
feel good about what I am doing, the learners will also feel good about what they are
learning. The learners’ reflections helped me to keep my teaching and teaching strategies
in perspective.

4 Disadvantages or Concerns in Constructing

Teaching Portfolios

The time required for completion of the portfolio is often cited as a concern. Teach-
ers do stress over the increased responsibility within an already heavy workload.
This is especially the case for practicing teachers who have so many responsibil-
ities. The fact that the key focus is on reflection they do not always find time to
frequently write their classroom observations.
My own experience in working with teachers has shown that it takes a while for
teachers to fully comprehend the requirements for such a task. Teachers are often
confused regarding the purpose of the development of the portfolio as well as lack
of clarity regarding required content. Working with teachers for whom English is a
second language often finds it difficult to express themselves in English.
It also takes time for teachers to develop critical reflective skills. Teachers often
confuse reflection with reporting. Rather than critically reflect on a lesson, teachers
are more inclined to give a step-by-step report on what they did when they taught
a specific mathematical concept. Ellsworth (2002) warns teacher educators not to
assume that teachers know how to engage in productive reflection rather teach spe-
cific strategies for reflection to both preservice and inservice teachers. In my own
mathematics education course I normally start with a structured reflective journal
for the individual teacher. The journal includes reflective questions that guide teach-
ers’ thinking about their own professional growth during teaching contact sessions
at the institution.
Reflecting on the learning that takes place in the classroom, the inservice teach-
ers are able to identify what the problem, misconception or weakness is in the learn-
ing of mathematics, however, they often fail to clearly show what action to take to
The Mathematics Teaching Portfolio: A Reflective Tool 63

address the needs of the learners. Having checkpoints throughout the time of the
portfolio construction process gives opportunity to highlight any issues that will be
of value to the teachers.
It was also commented that without clear criteria for the construction and evalu-
ation process it could negatively impact on teachers to meet the expectations set out
in the portfolio task. Portfolios should not be seen as the ideal assessment tool for
all teachers because some would perform better than others. It is important though
that various assessment tools are used in conjunction with the portfolio.

5 Conclusion

In this chapter I have considered the teaching portfolio as a tool for teachers to reflect
on their practice in terms of what they can do to improve teaching and learning of
mathematics. In particular, I offer ways to address the portfolio task with a view to
how it can be an effective task for mathematics educators to use with both initial
training students and practicing teachers of mathematics in primary schools.
Within the broader field of education, the trend towards ‘reflective practitioner’
demands that teacher educators provide structures that support their students to ex-
plore their own as well as their learners’ thinking about mathematics. By building
shared understanding about ways to think about one’s practice, both teacher educa-
tors and their students can collaboratively explore and investigate ways to co-reflect
on opportunities to critically analyse and document teaching in everyday situations.

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Section B
Tasks as a Tool for Developing
Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching
Richard Millman

This section describes tasks whose goal is to enrich the mathematical knowledge
for teaching (MKT) of future and practising teachers and to help them realize that
they must have a deeper conceptual understanding of the mathematics of the pri-
mary grades. MKT runs through all of the chapters of this section. The underlying
threads of Sect. B are that tasks can be chosen to add to a conceptual understanding
of mathematics through the use of a number of approaches which are usually not
a part of a teacher education program. Thus the chapters involve enriching the
classroom through video clips (Gadanidis/Namukasa and Millman/Svec/Williams),
using games that show that intuition is an important part of learning mathemati-
cal content, for example, the notion of variability in statistics (Canada), viewing
children’s literature (such as Alice in Wonderland) as a way to provide content
focus for future primary teachers and the study of mathematical logic (Movshovitz-
Hadar/Shriki), modelling real-world tasks for fourth graders (Peter-Koop) through
the use of Fermi problems, and “math therapy” in which poetry is used
(Gadanidis/Namukasa). Furthermore, four of the chapters have suitably adopted
some tasks for children and practising teachers (Canada, Gadanidis/Namukasa,
Millman/Svec/Williams and Peter-Koop) which add a special depth to these tasks.
The chapter by Canada approaches the role of variability through the use of three
tasks. These tasks provide a foundation for an intuitive basis of concepts in prob-
ability and statistics. Here the emphasis is on variability as a way of seeing that
phenomena differ rather than looking more formally towards variability in terms of
the definition of standard deviation. Through the use of the River Crossing Game,
the author gives a task by which future teachers and primary school students (grades
6 and 7) will add to their intuition about what kind of variation one might expect.
Through the “Known Mixture” task, the students are led to see the difference be-
R. Millman
Director, Center for Education Integrating Science, Professor of the Practice of Mathematics,
Mathematics and Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
68 R. Millman

tween an event having probability (of being yellow) of .7 and every sample of 10
objects having exactly 7 yellow chips. The combination of the “Known mixture”
and “Unknown mixture” tasks demonstrate the differences between the concepts of
probability, prediction, variability, and measures of central tendency.
The chapter by Movshovitz-Hadar and Shriki deals with the use of the famous
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll as a vehicle for a logic course
which follows another one semester content course. The authors of this chapter pro-
vide a theoretical foundation for their approach to the difficulties of understand-
ing logical inferences which are encountered by students and future teachers. Their
intervention strategy is a series of lessons plans for potential discussions of logic
which start with quotes from Alice’s Adventures. They categorize these quotes as
logic, mathematics, general issues, or science and prepare tasks for the future teach-
ers. Their analysis of their students’ response to the intervention is contained in
their conclusion. The appendices contain a number of such tasks which would be
valuable to those who wish to follow their strategy.
The chapter by Millman, Svec and Williams gives a set of tasks for future pri-
mary school teachers by using a collection of video clips to show them why they
must have a conceptual understanding of the mathematics of primary school in or-
der to strengthen their knowledge and provide a deep learning experience for their
students. In addition, there is a video clip task that has, as a goal, the increase in
the confidence of the future teachers to learn some new mathematics by working
in small groups and presenting to their peers. The authors describe two video clips
from the collection, one of a second grader doing two-digit subtraction in three ways
(two of them correct and conceptual and the other procedural and incorrect) and one
of a fourth grader who divides fractions without the use of paper or pencil. In the
third task, the relationship between perimeter and area of a rectangle was explored in
a student presentation which used a video clip of a child. The use of presentations by
future teachers resulted in an increase in the level of their mathematical confidence.
The authors conclude that the use of video clips of children doing mathematics can
show the need for MKT, the recognition that children will invent their own ways of
solving mathematical problems, the necessity for a conceptual understanding, and
the benefit of an overlap of “content” and “methods” courses in the preparation of
future teachers.
The chapter by Gadanidis and Namukasa presents two geometric and two alge-
braic tasks which involve significant mathematical problems. These tasks, which
are given to both present and future primary school teachers, focus on offering them
opportunities to experience the joy of mathematical insight in order to change their
view of what mathematicians do and how students learn mathematics (called “math
therapy.”) The approach of the authors includes employing a number of applets in-
cluding a music video of poetry. The data collection of their project consists of par-
ticipant reflections, online discussions, and mathematics essays, all of which are an-
alyzed using qualitative methods. They present results of the math therapy approach
which deal with issues of frustration, attention, collaboration, and the complexity of
mathematics, attitudes, beliefs and practice.
Tasks as a Tool for Developing Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching 69

The chapter by Peter-Koop deals with Fermi problems. These tasks deal with
real-world problem solving which demand the construction of a mathematical
model, a procedure to find the unknown quantity, and a transfer of the mathematical
result to the real-world situation. The greatest difficulty in solving the Fermi tasks
is the modelling. The results of this chapter come from a 4-year study involving
future teachers and within the context of teaching experiments in grades 3 and 4
in Germany. The author gives a theoretical framework around modelling processes.
She then describes her results that there is a multicyclic process represented in the
work of the children, that even problems with a high level of complexity can be
solved appropriately by the children, and that the modelling activity serves as a
conceptual tool.
Based on the literature surrounding the concept of volume, the chapter by Sáiz
and Figueras deals with tasks in a workshop for present teachers. One of the tasks,
using cylinders or silos, explores whether two figures which have the same surface
area needed to have the same volume. A second one shows that changing the linear
dimensions of an object does not have a linear effect on its volume. This concept is
sometimes called the “similarity principle” or “homothecy.” The last task deals with
the equivalencies between units of capacity and units of volume. These rich tasks
give depth to the knowledge of the inservice teachers in their workshop. The authors
believe that their approach also is applicable to future teachers.
The chapter by Teppo uses task-based lessons as the organizing principle for
a mathematics content course for future primary teachers. Teppo points out that a
course constructed in this manner must pay careful attention to the selection and
sequencing of the tasks and the research base that supports these decisions. The
purpose of each of the tasks is to add to the scaffolding of the MKT of the future
teacher, be grounded in a real-world basis, include an interpretation of the question,
and be both open-entry and open-process. This approach is motivated in part by
Japanese-style lesson study. A set of six word problems about proportion illustrate
the author’s approach.
Pushing Probability and Statistics Tasks
in a New Direction

Dan Canada

Along with the increased emphasis on probability and statistics in the school curric-
ula of countries across the world has come increased research on how primary and
secondary students reason about these topics. Slower to emerge has been research
aimed at what preservice teachers know about probability and statistics, and how
best to develop their conceptions of key aspects of these content strands. Specifi-
cally, while attention is often paid to notions of randomness, graph sense, and the
meaning of an average, less attention is paid to developing the critical notion of vari-
ation, or variability in data and chance. Therefore, the activities and tasks profiled in
this chapter, while embracing several contexts in the realm of probability and statis-
tics, are based on recommendations from emerging research suggesting that a focus
be put on variability.

1 Introduction

This chapter highlights three tasks that recent research along with in-class experi-
ence suggests are useful for promoting an increased awareness and understanding
of the role of variability in probability and statistics among primary schoolchildren
and their prospective teachers.
Certainly there has been increased curricular emphasis on probability and statis-
tics around the world, as examples from Spain, Great Britain, Australia, New
Zealand, America, and other countries attest (Batanero, Godino, Valecillos, Green
& Holmes, 1994; Shaughnessy, Garfield, & Greer, 1996; Watson & Moritz, 2000).
Within those curricular strands, research and practice has begun to focus on student
thinking in several areas, such as notions of randomness, graph sense, or the mean-
ing of an average value. However, variability – beginning with intuitive notions of

D. Canada
Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, Eastern Washington University Eastern
Washington University, USA
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
72 D. Canada

how results or observations differ from one another – has emerged as a foundational
concept to reasoning about both probability and statistics (Cobb & Moore, 1997;
Wild & Pfannkuch, 1999; Shaughnessy, Ciancetta, & Canada, 2004).
Variability, as suggested above, is not being used here as a reference for standard
deviation or other more formal definitions, but rather as a reference for the funda-
mental way that phenomenon differs. For example, the amount of change in your
pocket may differ from day-to-day, as might the time you take brushing your teeth
each night. The number of heads you might get in ten flips of a fair coin will likely
vary from one set of ten flips to another. If twenty different students with meter sticks
take turns measuring the same distance (of the length of a hallway, for instance),
those twenty measurements will unlikely be identical – they’ll vary to some extent.
The number of red lights you encounter on your drive to school varies. We live in
a world filled with variation, yet much of the standard curriculum at the primary
grades focuses more on simply finding probabilities, graphing data, or finding de-
scriptive measures such as a mean, median, or mode (Shaughnessy, 1997). What has
been needed yet typically is lacking in the curricula, many educators have noted, is
more attention to the role of variability in reasoning about probability and statistics.
The tasks and extensions that follow are composed of in-class activities, dis-
cussion prompts, and written questions, and are all based on traditional types of
manipulatives (such as tossing dice, drawing samples of chips from a bag, or using
spinners). These tasks push in a new direction by focusing on the variability inherent
in the situation and the implications for making probabilistic statements about pre-
dicted outcomes. Students’ response exemplars are drawn from experience in doing
these tasks and extensions in classrooms for grades 6 and 7, as well in university
teacher-preparation classes. Since many of the preservice teacher responses were
quite similar in spirit to those of school children, both groups of participants are
referred to as “students” in this chapter unless additional distinctions are warranted.

2 The River Crossing Game

Using tosses of two dice is a common way of discussing independent events, and
many curricular materials focus on the distribution of the sum of two dice with
questions such as “What are the chances that the sum is a 7?” However, the River
Crossing Game (discussed below) offers a deeper and richer context for looking at
the sum of two dice, again with a focus on variability.
Credit for this activity goes to the Math and the Mind’s Eye curriculum
(Shaughnessy & Arcidiacono, 1993). Using two players, each player gets 12 chips
to place on their side of a “river,” along spaces marked 1 through 12 (Fig. 1). After
configuring their chips into their initial arrangements such as those shown in Fig. 1,
players took turns tossing a pair of dice. If either player had any chips on the space
showing the total for the dice, one chip could “cross the river” and be removed from
the board. The winning player was the first one to remove all the chips on his or her
side.
Pushing Probability and Statistics Tasks in a New Direction 73

Fig. 1 Initial strategies for River Crossing Game

Fig. 2 Cumulative frequency chart (Dotplot) for sums of dice

For instance, in Fig. 1, if the dice resulted in a sum of 10, Player A on top could
remove one chip. If the dice showed 8, Players A and B could each remove one
chip. The question motivating the game is: What’s the best initial arrangement for
the 12 chips? Experience suggests that it is unlikely two players come up with the
same arrangement (which would imply a tie game), but if that does occur then one
opponent or the other may choose to make a change in their arrangement, in light
of what arrangement their opponent is choosing to play. Teams of students can then
play several games, keeping track of the results of each toss of the dice for all games
on a dotplot: Sums are given along the horizontal axis, and students can just make a
mark showing the sum obtained from every toss (Fig. 2). The purpose of the Dotplot
for Sums is to obtain cumulative results for the sums of two dice resulting from
experimental data. They can also keep track of which two initial arrangements are
played in each game, and which arrangements beat other arrangements.
In our experience, students’ initial arrangements changed from game to game.
For example, if students saw from their dotplots that sums of 6, 7 and 8 tended to
occur more than other sums, some students chose to put most of their chips on those
74 D. Canada

spaces. Other students continued to spread out their chips, feeling that in the course
of tossing the dice, they would get sums such as 2 or 12 (they quickly realize that
the sum of 1 is impossible). After letting students play a few games, we collected all
the papers that recorded what two initial arrangements were used in each game (and
which arrangements won), and also all the cumulative dotplots for showing sums
for all the rolls of the dice for all games.
We first put up in front of the class the sheets showing examples of the different
initial arrangements used and which were winners, and launched a discussion about
what they as a class thought was the best strategy as far as initial arrangements.
Comments ranged from those who favored putting all their chips “closer together
around the 7,” suggesting tighter variation, to those who wanted “kind of an even
amount” on each sum, suggesting wider variation. Our experience shows that some
people in class eventually steer the conversation to the topic of what is most likely
to occur for the sum of two dice, at which point we also put up in front of class all
of the cumulative dotplots.
It’s typical for each dotplot to show well over one hundred tosses of the dice,
since the dotplots were meant to record tosses of the dice for all games (and some
games can take quite a large number of tosses to finish). As students look across all
the dotplots, it’s useful to focus attention on the variability in areas such as the shape
of the graph, how many rolls were at the lowest sum of 2 or the highest sum of 12,
or seeing which sum had the highest frequency of rolls. Even if students know what
the theoretical distribution looks like (which is symmetrical around 7, as shown in
Fig. 3), the dotplots are unlikely to mirror such a perfect distribution.
As an example of one class discussion, as students were discussing the dotplots
they noted quickly that some graphs had the mode at 7 but most did not. Even
for the students who knew that 7 was the most likely sum, there was a distinction
between that knowledge of the theoretical probability and the varied results of the
experimental data gathered by the class. It did seem to the class that sums of 6 or
7 or 8 were more likely than any of the other sums, but they agreed that in one
hundred tosses of the dice even the mode could vary. Other students noticed how
the shapes of the graphs were different in the sense that they “went up and down”
in different places (more fives followed by less sixes, for examples), but there were
some similarities in the sense that most graphs showed less results on the extremes
of 2 and 12 than elsewhere. As one student put it, “there are trends, but there’s still
a lot of variation from group to group.”

Fig. 3 Theoretical distribution for sum of two dice

78 D. Canada

selected sample sizes that went as low as 6 and as high as 200, and after discussing
the different estimates we decided to try for a class consensus. This is a good time to
informally introduce the idea of confidence by relating the idea to what was shown
in the posters. For example, the group for the poster in Fig. 7 was not confident of
the point estimate of exactly 570 yellow, but was fairly confident that the true value
was somewhere in the interval from 540 to 600 yellow.
Comparisons across all the posters showed that the sample sizes for ranged from
6 to 20, and the numbers of trials ranged from 20 to 70. Predictions ranged from
500 to 600 yellows, with a couple of groups offering an interval. In discussion, we
asked the class as a whole what would or would not be surprising to them, and the
class expressed no surprise if the true value was 520 yellow, or 580 yellow. The class
eventually came to a consensus on an interval as small as 540 yellow to 570 yellow.
The big idea here was that an unknown mixture (or any other realistic sampling
situation) does not mean that nothing can be said with any confidence about the
mixture. For example, the class was overwhelmingly confident that there were more
yellows than greens, but not as high a ratio as 650 to 350. Despite attempts to have
the students accept that in real life sampling investigations, having some degree of
confidence in an interval is the best that can be hoped for or expected, students still
wanted to know the exact percentage, which was revealed at the end.

4 Cereal Box Stickers

This final activity involves the use of a Five-spinner (one that has five numbered
regions of equal area) to simulate the following situation: Suppose there are five
types of stickers you want to collect, but each box of cereal only contains one sticker.
Assuming there is an equal chance of getting any given type of sticker in a box of
cereal, how many boxes would you expect to have to open to collect all five types of
sticker? What would be a typical number of boxes a person might expect to open?
Making a few other appropriate assumptions, this situation can be investigated by
finding out how many times a student would have to spin the Five-spinner in order
to have the pointer land on all the numbers (Shaughnessy & Arcidiacono, 1993).
When we do this with our classes, again the first thing we do is have students
make intuitive predictions. Some students realize that the shortest number of spins
would be five, and they’ll comment that such a result would be “very lucky.” But
there are also usually some extremely high estimates also (up into the thousands),
because some students stress that “you just never know” or that you could be very
unlucky, waiting for that last number to occur. The important thing is to focus on
the variation in the initial predictions, along with the notion that in the absence of
any data, most people really have no idea about how many spins would be typical
to expect in to order to achieve all five numbers on a Five-spinner.
To then begin the activity of gathering some data, define a trial as follows: Using
the Five-spinner, make a spin and keep track of what number the pointer lands on.
Keep making spins until all five numbers have been landed upon, then stop and
Pushing Probability and Statistics Tasks in a New Direction 79

x
x
x x x
x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x
05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Fig. 8 Dotplot showing how many spins for each of 20 trials

count how many spins you did. The idea is to record on a dotplot how many spins
each trial takes. We usually start by having each pair of students complete 20 trials,
and then have them post their dotplot up in front of the class. Results such as those
illustrated in Fig. 8 are typical.
As Fig. 8 shows, results for twenty trials typically are quite spread out, and
gaining a sense of “What’s Typical” from such a graph is not at all obvious. Once
there are plenty of dotplots for twenty trials up in front of class, a discussion similar
to those for the previous activities can take place, which again would focus on the
variation shown in each graph. We found that students are really quick to pick up on
how diverse the results for twenty trials are, and they notice how all of the standard
measures of centre – mean, median, and mode – typically jump around quite a bit
from graph to graph. Whereas the mode might be 8 in one poster (as in Fig. 8), it
might be 12 or 14 in another.
Despite the variation in results, however, once again we found that students were
quick to speak about how “more of the marks” were “clustered” or “grouped” more
toward the lower numbers (such as from 8 to 12) than in the higher number of spins.
When we asked for any modification on their prediction for the number of cereal
boxes they would expect to have to open (that is, how many spins would they expect
to have to make to get all five numbers), none of the students thought that it should
typically take above 15 spins.
As class discussion moves towards gaining a better picture of “What’s Typical?”
for the Cereal Box investigation, often the notion of gaining more data is mentioned
by students. Groups of students can either conduct more trials, or (as we have done
with our classes) the class can aggregate the data from the different dotplots. One
such graph of aggregate class data, using six groups’ data (for a total of 120 trials),
is shown in Fig. 9.
The data shown in Fig. 9 are interesting because even though they still present a
varied picture to many students (many of whom will claim the mode of 7 as “what
they’d expect”), the median for the data is 10 spins and the mean is 11.2 spins. The
true expected value for the Cereal Box investigation, while not a calculation that is
generally taught in precollege mathematics, is close to 11.5. Thus, aggregating data
in this situation still provides a mean value very close to a reasonable answer for
how many boxes a person might have to open, yet also illustrates the variation that
is inherent in probabilistic situations.
80 D. Canada

Fig. 9 Example of class aggregate data for 120 trials

In our classes, once we had obtained a graph of class aggregate data such as
Fig. 9, we focused on questions that necessitated a consideration of variation. For
example, we asked if students would be surprised if they obtained 15 spins or more
for the outcome of a trial. Using the graph to find that about 20% of all the class data
was at 15 spins or more, some students thought they’d be “not too surprised.” Many
in class felt that the outcome for any trial would much likelier be under 15 spins than
over, but “it could happen.” Even knowing that the mean for a huge number of trials
is between 11 and 12 spins, our students were seen to be developing an awareness
of and appreciation for the variability in results.

5 Discussion

Variability is at the heart of statistical inquiry, and it is quite appropriate to begin

turning attention to intuitive notions of variation when discussing any type of prob-
abilistic or data gathering activities. Yet, this kind of attention is often missing from
the way probability and statistics is typically approached. As an example, consider
the sampling ten chips from Known Mixture (70 yellows and 30 greens). Once stu-
dents are taught the standard notion (using proportional thinking) that “The proba-
bility of drawing a yellow chip is 0.7,” research shows this ratio is powerful anchor
for their thinking (Canada, 2004). Thus, when students consider “How many of their
ten chips will be yellow?” they will gladly say seven yellow chips. So powerful is
the anchor of ratio thinking, however, that when some students consider drawing
several handfuls of ten chips with replacement, they’ll also give the number of yel-
lows in each handful as “7, 7, 7, 7. . .” The reasoning goes that if 7 is the most likely
occurrence for one handful (a true statement), then 7 is the most likely for every
handful. Thus, predicting a string of ten 7s for ten handfuls seems perfectly reason-
able for those students who aren’t aware of the reality that variation makes a string
of ten 7s extremely unlikely (Canada, 2006; Shaughnessy et al.,, 2004).
Pushing Probability and Statistics Tasks in a New Direction 81

As research has begun to show, a great model for attenuating students to variabil-
ity in probabilistic situations can be distilled down the following three components:
First, have students make predictions concerning the situation. Have them talk about
what they expect and why. Discuss predictions made by the class in terms of what
was similar or different. Second, have them actually gather data about the situation,
creating a variety of visual displays. Although simple dotplots were profiled in this
chapter, other types of graphs are also relevant and useful in terms of the way they
emphasize or disguise variability. Third, discuss the results gathered by the class not
only in terms of how the results compared from one group to another, but also how
the results compared to the predictions.
Some useful extensions to the activities described in this chapter revolve around
a “Real-or-Fake?” format. That is, after the activities have been done in class and
discussed, show some results that supposedly arose from the activity and ask if the
class thinks the results are real or fake. An example of such a “Real-or-Fake?” task
for the Known Mixture situation is presented in Fig. 10. Having done the activity
and seen many graphs for true results for thirty handfuls, it is no surprise that most
students in our experience express a high degree of mistrust for the supposed results
shown in Fig. 10. Having done the activity and seen many graphs for true results

Mr. Smythe took his class to the candy container (100Candies = 70 Yellow
and 30 Green). Then he left the room to get coffee. When he came back, the
class claimed to have pulled 30 samples each of size 10, with replacement.
They showed [Link] their data and a graph:

30 Pulls of 10

Number of Yellows
in 30 Samples of 10
8 7 6
6 8 7
7 6 8
8 7 8
7 7 7
8 6 6
6 7 6
7 8 7
8 7 7
6 8 8 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

How Many Yellows (Out of 10)

Which of the following do you think is most likely? put a check mark next to it.

___Mr Smythe’s class just made up these results

___Those are the actual results of the class samples
___ No one can have much confidence if the results are made up or not.

Explain why you think this is the most likely.

Fig. 10 An extension of the known mixture activity

82 D. Canada

for thirty handfuls, it is no surprise that most students in our experience express a
high degree of mistrust for the supposed results shown in Fig. 10. It is in fact highly
unlikely that thirty handfuls would have the tight spread shown in the graph. So,
despite the contention of some students that such results “could happen,” the main
consensus pointed to an awareness that the variability in such a situation would
likely not produce the results shown. Interestingly, not many of our students chose
the third option in Fig. 10 (suggesting that one could not have much confidence
in determining if the results were real or fake), and instead held strong opinions,
mostly in favor of rejecting the results as unrealistic.
Similarly, a “Real-or-Fake?” task extension for the Cereal Box activity offers
two graphs, one of which results from genuine data and one of which is contrived
(see Fig. 11). Students who have actually done the activity and graphed the results
of twenty or thirty trials are quick to note that the top graph (for Class A) looks
“too perfect” and therefore unrealistic. In fact, the lower graph (for Class B) more
accurately reflects the kind of variation students get in the graphs for their own data.
What’s important to attend to in “Real-or-Fake?” type questions such as the one
presented in Fig. 11 is the language that students use in their explanations, and what

On a day of sick leave, Ms. Kim leaves the following instruction for his classes:

* She tells Class A to do thirty trials of the Cereal Box experiment, and graph the results.
* She tells Class B to the same thing: Do thirty trials, and graph the results
When she returns the next day, she sees these two graphs:

Class A
x
x x
x x x
x x x x x
x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x x x
05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Class B
x
x
x x
x x x x
x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Ms. Kim suspects that one of the two classes just made up the results and did not really do
the experiment. What do you think? That is, do think one of the two graphs above is likelier
to be showing made-up data?

Fig. 11 An extension of the cereal box stickers activity

Pushing Probability and Statistics Tasks in a New Direction 83

kinds of conceptions they are trying to convey. For example, students might refer to
the graph for Class A as “too clustered” or “evenly grouped” to connote the idea of
less variation; the graph for Class B might be described as being “more spread” or
having “clumps” of data in different places to connote the idea of more variation.

6 Conclusion

Informal descriptions of variability are important building blocks to a more ro-

bust understanding of probabilistic and statistical thinking (Makar & Canada, 2005;
Canada and Makar, 2006). The activities and extensions described in this chapter
help move traditional contexts for probability and statistics investigations in a direc-
tion that develops elementary students’ intuitive awareness of and appreciation for
variability in these contexts.
The standard probability and statistics curricula in some schools places attention
on doing activities, gathering and graphing data, and describing data using measures
of centre such as mean, median and mode. Such attention is warranted, yet the dan-
ger is that students can develop an understanding of chance and data that is unduly
tied to expected values and measures of centre without a sense of what variation to
expect. Yet, any meaningful lines of statistical inquiry that students might engage
in during their subsequent schooling will always be about managing, explaining, or
otherwise describing and accounting for variation.
An understanding of variation for elementary students “does not mean un-
derstanding of ‘standard deviation’ but of something more fundamental – the
underlying change from expectation that occurs when measurements are made or
events occur” (Watson, Kelly, Callingham & Shaughnessy, 2003, p. 2). Torok and
Watson conducted a study of conceptions of variation with sixteen students from
grades 4 through 10 and found “this study successfully explored students’ under-
standing of variation without ever employing the phrase ‘standard deviation”’ (2000,
p. 166).
Thus, offering students opportunities to informally notice and describe the vari-
ability arising from the tasks described in this chapter will plants seeds of variation
that can grow into more robust conceptions of probability and statistics in the future.

References

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understanding elementary statistical concepts. International Journal of Mathematical Educa-
tion in Science and Technology, 25(4), 527–547.
Canada, D. (2004). Elementary preservice teachers’ understanding of variation. Un-
published doctoral dissertation, Portland State University, Portland, OR. (Online:
[Link]/∼iase/publications/dissertations/[Link])
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Canada, D. (2006). Variability in a probability context: Developing preservice teachers’ under-

standing. In Proceedings of the 30th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology
of Mathematics Education, Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Canada, D., & Makar, K. (2006). Preservice teachers’ informal descriptions of variation. Paper
delivered at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, San
Francisco, CA.
Cobb, G., & Moore, D. (1997). Mathematics, statistics, and teaching. American Mathematics
Monthly, 104(9), 801–824.
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the 29th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education,
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the Mind’s Eye). Salem, OR: The Math Learning Centre.
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tasks. In Proceedings of the 28th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of
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Shaughnessy, J., Garfield, J., & Greer, B. (1996). Data handling. In A. Bishop, K. Clements,
C. Keitel, J. Kilpatrick, & C. Laborde (Eds.), International handbook of mathematics education
(Part 1) (pp. 205–237). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.
Torok, R., & Watson, J. (2000). Development of the concept of statistical variation: An exploratory
study. Mathematical Education Research Journal, 12(2), 147–169.
Watson, J., Kelly, B., Callingham, R., & Shaughnessy, J. (2003). The measurement of school stu-
dents’ understanding of statistical variation. The International Journal of Mathematical Edu-
cation in Science and Technology, 34(1), 1–29.
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matics Education, 31(1), 44–70.
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Statistical Review, 67, 233–265.
Logic in Wonderland: Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland as the Context of a Course
in Logic for Future Elementary Teachers

Nitsa Movshovitz-Hadar and Atara Shriki

The teaching experiment described in this chapter assumes at the outset that chil-
dren’s literature can be a useful context for teaching elementary ideas of logic while
bridging the gap between the abstractness of formal logic and its expression in a real
world context. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll (a unique com-
bination of a logician and a story teller) was chosen for this purpose, based upon a
careful examination of its potential. Inspired by The Annotated Alice (Carroll 2000),
over 75 additional annotations to Carroll’s book were developed, having in mind
their employment in an introductory course in logic for prospective elementary
school teachers specializing in mathematics. These annotations are in four cate-
gories: Logic, Mathematics, General education, and Science. Sample annotations
are included. This chapter describes the tasks and activities developed for the course.
Data collection instruments were interwoven in the teaching materials development.
A sample is included as well. Several results are reported and discussed.

1 The Problem

The importance of connectivity and of making mathematics relevant to the learner

as vehicles for improving learner’s understanding and motivation to delve into more
depth in mathematics, are emphasized in many major documents (e.g. NCTM 2000).
If this is true of any area in mathematics, it must be true for formal logic, which,
from our experience with prospective teachers, is among the least favorite topics in
teachers colleges. This topic is perceived as not useful, dry, uninteresting, and def-
initely not directly applicable to the school curricula. Nevertheless, an introductory
one-semester course in logic follows an elementary course in set theory, and both
N. Movshovitz-Hadar
Emeritus Professor of Mathematics Education, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
A. Shriki
Oranim – Academic College of Education, Israel

B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
86 N. Movshovitz-Hadar and A. Shriki

are mandatory for accreditation, in Israel. It should be noted that in various other
countries an elementary course in formal logic is not compulsory at college level,
yet many of them engage students with topics that are related to logic, such as quan-
tifiers, producing proofs and inferring from statements (Dubinsky & Yiparaki, 2000;
Selden & Selden, 1995; Moore, 1994).
How can the teaching of logic for prospective teachers be made more “juicy”? Is
there an intriguing way to expose students to “the game” of drawing conclusions? –
These were the questions we struggled with as we started preparing for the new
academic year. It occurred to us that it might be useful to employ Lewis Carroll’s
masterpiece for this purpose. Would students benefit from it? Enjoy it? That re-
mained to be seen. To find out, we set up an empirical intervention study that is
described in this chapter.

2 A Brief Theoretical Background

2.1 Difficulties of Students in Reasoning and Inferring Logically

Promoting children’s reasoning abilities has been widely recognized as one of the
pillars of mathematics education, for many years (e.g. Gregory & Osborne, 1975).
Clearly, teachers cannot be expected to promote their students’ reasoning properly,
unless they themselves understand logical implications and are able to employ them
reliably. Teachers colleges requiring an introductory course in logic and set-theory
assume these courses to serve the purpose of constituting the foundation for develop-
ing future-teachers’ logical thinking, or at least their ability to distinguish between
valid and fallacious inferences.
Nonetheless, research points to various difficulties students encounter while re-
quested to infer logically. Dubinsky and Yiparaki (2000) studied difficulties stu-
dents have with mathematical statements that involve quantifiers. They believe that
it is not reasonable to expect undergraduate students to learn much mathematics
if they do not know how to read and interpret the language of mathematics. They
argue that in order to understand a complex statement there is a need to analyze
the statement based on the syntax of the language in which the statement is given.
These researchers showed that university students meet various difficulties when
they are requested to relate to logical statements involving quantifiers and that they
are much more capable of handling the natural language statements than mathemat-
ics statements. Moore (1994) found that undergraduate mathematics majors have
difficulties in producing even apparently trivial proofs. The students in Selden and
Selden’s (1995) study could not reliably determine the logical structure of common
mathematical statements, and had difficulties in determining the correctness of their
proofs. In addition, the students had trouble with transforming informally written
mathematical statements into equivalent formal versions using symbols. Many stu-
dents have difficulties in producing formal arguments and manipulating symbols in
a formal way without having a deeper understanding of what the symbols really
mean (e.g. Schoenfeld, 1991).
Logic in Wonderland 87

Part of these difficulties can be attributed to the traditional approaches to teach-

ing logic, in particular to the language that is used within these courses (Epp, 2003),
and to the manner in which the various aspects of logic are presented in text-
books (Alibert & Thomas, 1991). In the vast majority of students’ textbooks, state-
ments are not written in formal language but in “natural” language (Dubinsky &
Yiparaki, 2000). Moreover, Dreyfus (1999) believes that students are unable to give
satisfactory explanations and answers because most of them had never learned what
counts as a mathematical argument.
Logic, by its nature, is abstract, and the manner in which words and statements
are used in the spoken everyday language is not always consistent with their mean-
ing in the context of logic. Furthermore, students have difficulties in managing log-
ical statements in both contexts (Dubinsky & Yiparaki, 2000).
Cheng, Holyoak, Nisbett, and Oliver (1986) found that integrating concrete ex-
amples into logic courses and explaining logical principles by referring to analogies
in everyday life improve students’ ability to reason.
This suggests that a possible way to overcome the difficulties is teaching logic
through children’s literature. Indeed, Cotti and Schiro (2004) view the use of chil-
dren’s literature as “one of the powerful tools available to help in teaching mathe-
matics”, as it provides “a rich, meaningful, real world or fantasy context that can
stimulate and motivate children’s learning” (p. 339).

2.2 Using Children’s Literature as a Means

for Teaching Mathematics

The use of children’s literature presents “a natural way to connect language and
mathematics” (Midkiff & Cramer, 1993, p. 303). Integrating children’s literature
in mathematics lessons enables students to be actively engaged with the learning
materials (Conaway & Midkiff, 1994), and provides a base for establishing under-
standing of concepts (Midkiff & Cramer, 1993). It can also serve as an important
vehicle for exploring mathematical ideas, as the natural context and the fact that
mathematics is naturally embedded in familiar situations offer opportunities for dis-
cussing and highlighting mathematical ideas (Whitin, 1994). Moreover, “Stories can
help students understand the meaningful contexts that support mathematical think-
ing. They will see mathematics not as a prescribed set of algorithms to master, but as
a way of thinking about their world. Children’s literature presents a nonthreatening
avenue to test out current notions about important mathematical concepts” (Whitin
& Gary, 1994, p. 394). “And, most important” Whitin (1994) claims “children’s lit-
erature powerfully demonstrates that mathematics is a way of thinking. For these
reasons children’s literature deserves a prominent role in the mathematics curricu-
lum for all learners” (p. 441). Furthermore, Whitin and Gary (1994) perceive the
use of children’s literature as an open invitation for students to connect their own
interests and experiences to various mathematical concepts. In this way mathemat-
ics is no longer regarded as limited to workbooks, but becomes a purposeful tool for
solving problems and making decisions.
88 N. Movshovitz-Hadar and A. Shriki

Considering the above, we believe that for teaching elementary ideas of logic, the
use of children’s literature in general, and Alice in particular, can bridge between the
abstractness of logic and its expression in everyday life. In addition, it might also
help to reject the belief of many mathematics educators as to the fact that logic is too
dry to capture students’ interest (Epp, 2003). Teaching and learning logic through
Alice convey an educational message too. Assuming that future teachers have no
previous experience with learning or teaching in that style, it provides them with an
opportunity to become familiar with this method and recognize its benefits for their
future students. This is in accord with Cotti and Schiro’s (2004) findings that most
mathematics teachers are in favor of using children’s books during mathematics
instruction, believing that it might help in creating situations in which children can
construct their own mathematical meanings.
Encouraged by these findings, and inspired by The Annotated Alice
(Carroll, 2000) we developed additional annotations to this book, having in mind
its implementation in training prospective elementary school teachers in general,
and in particular those specializing in mathematics. These annotations are in four
categories: Logic, Mathematics, General education, and Science.
The rest of this chapter details the strategy for integrating Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland, with our annotations as mentioned above, in the learning environment
for an introductory logic course for prospective elementary school teachers.
It also discusses the sequencing of a series of appropriate tasks, and the underly-
ing rationale for their design, as the backbone of the empirical course, illustrated by
a sample of task-worksheets.
In addition this chapter presents the research method and instruments employed
to collect data pertaining to the impact of this empirical course, as interwoven in the
teaching-learning process to minimize interference between the two.
Several results related to students’ achievements and motivation are also dis-
cussed within space limitation.

3 The Process

We developed a series of 90 minutes lesson-plans based upon reading quotes from

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and discussing them with our students. The
lesson plans include handouts for independent study and group work. Designing
the learning environment took five steps:
a. The first step was a careful examination of Lewis Carroll’s text, highlight-
ing quotes that have a potential for becoming starters for our students’ activities
or discussions. We found 75 quotes and annotated them. These annotated quotes
were classified into four categories: (i) Logic (ii) Mathematics, (iii) General issues
of education, and (iv) Science. Here are a few examples in each category.
i. Logic. E.g. It was all very well to say ‘Drink me,’ but the wise little Alice was
not going to do that in a hurry. ‘No, I’ll look first,’ she said, ‘and see whether it’s
marked “poison” or not’; for she had read several nice little histories. . . such as,
Logic in Wonderland 89

that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your
finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that,
if you drink much from a bottle marked ‘poison,’ it is almost certain to disagree
with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was not marked ‘poison,’ so Alice ventured to taste it, and
finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard,
pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it
off (Carroll 2000, Page 17, top half).
Discuss with students the sentence – it’s marked “poison” or not – in particular
the meaning of the word “or”. Is there a third alternative?
Discuss with students the “if. . . then. . . ” statements in this paragraph, as well as
their corresponding inverse, converse and contra-positive. Could Alice be sure
that the bottle was safe to drink? (See also Appendix 1, example ii.)
ii. Mathematics. E.g. ‘What a curious feeling!’ said Alice; ‘I must be shutting
up like a telescope.’ And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and
her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going
through the little door into that lovely garden’ (Carroll 2000, Page 17, lines 9–10
from bottom).
Discuss with students – measurement of length: ideas such as various units, mea-
surement tools, comparison, estimation – show by hands how long is 10 inches;
iii. General issues of education. E.g. What an ignorant little girl she’ll think me
for asking. . . (Carroll 2000, Page 14, lines 7–9).
Discuss with students – the issue of refraining from asking “stupid” questions.
Should we hurry to ask every question? Should we try and figure out things for
ourselves first? Or look for a written reference (as in a scientific enquiry), or
some posted information (as in finding your way in a new place).
iv. Science. E.g. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was
going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; ‘for it might
end, you know,’ said Alice to herself, ‘in my going out altogether, like a candle.
I wonder what I should be like then?’ And she tried to fancy what the flame of
a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever
having seen such a thing (Carroll 2000, Page 17, line 12 from bottom).
Discuss with students – the three states of aggregation and the law of conserva-
tion of material
The annotations revealed that an opportunity to discuss a specific subject in logic,
such as exclusive and inclusive “or”, occurred more than once in the text, obvi-
ously. It also revealed that the first chapter is the richest in resources (22 annota-
tions of total of 75) for raising logic issues. This had an impact on the next steps
in our work.
b. The second step was to compare the essence of these annotations with the syl-
labus of a traditional introductory course in logic for future-teachers, and to examine
the prospect of covering the syllabus. The results showed that the first chapter is not
only the richest, but includes pointers to everything we intended to employ in the syl-
labus. Namely, Logic and everyday language: A simple sentence and the truth value.
90 N. Movshovitz-Hadar and A. Shriki

Negation. A compound sentence. Binary sentential connectives and their truth ta-
bles: Conjunction and “and”; Disjunction and inclusive/exclusive “or”; De Morgan’s
Laws; Implication and conditional sentences; Necessary and sufficient conditions;
Equivalence and biconditional sentences. Inference rules: Affirming the Antecedent
(Modus Ponendo Ponens) and Denying the Consequent (Modus Tollendo Tollens);
Tautologies and equivalence; Quantifiers: Existential and Universal ones. Proof:
Direct and indirect (by negation), by exhaustion, by counterexample.
c. At this point we faced a dilemma: which of the two lesson-plan sequencing
options is more effective? The two options with conflicting rationale being (i) Se-
quencing along the logic syllabus and integrating suitable quotes from Alice, vs.
(ii) Re-sequencing the logic syllabus along page by page reading of Alice, namely
stopping at suitable quotes for raising issues from the syllabus in the order they
occur. The former seemed right from the mathematics teaching aspect we were ac-
customed to, giving it a new spark, on the account of breaking the flow of the story
into somewhat disconnected pieces. The latter seemed more revolutionary, as it im-
plied breaking the commonly accepted order of teaching the subject matter, due to
constraints imposed by the literal context. Having considered the pro and cons, we
decided to face the challenge and struggle with re-sequencing our logic syllabus as
dictated by the flow of the story. Because the first chapter was found to be the rich-
est (as mentioned in the first step above) we naturally focused the exposition on the
first chapter from Alice, and hence decided to use the rest of the story as resource
for practice activities. At the end of this chapter we return to this dilemma and look
into our decision in retrospect to examine its justification in view of the result.
d. We then proceeded by outlining a series of fourteen 90-min lesson-
plans based upon reading through the text of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
(Carroll 2000), designating the stops at certain quotes to be used as a leverage for
discussing certain themes in logic, mathematics (mostly set-theory), or sometimes
science or general issues of education. These lesson-plans served as the backbone
for the course.
e. Finally, we prepared a detailed design of tasks for each of the 14 lessons. Our
approach took into consideration our desire to collect data for this empirical study.
However, we strictly adhered to our top priority of the course, namely providing stu-
dents with a series of learning experiences leading to an understanding of the main
themes of the course. This was the guideline we adopted as we designed the learning
activities and tasks as instruments for data collection, integrated into the teaching-
learning process. The next section gives the details of the task development.

4 Activities and Tasks Development

The general rule we followed in the lesson-plan detailed design was a variation
on the old maxim: First tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them,
then tell them what you have told them. Rather than “tell them”, we took the con-
structivists’ approach and attempted to provide the students with learning activities.
Logic in Wonderland 91

To this end, the framework for material development for each lesson included the
following eight stages:
(1) Individual activity (handout): A short opening question–answer activity,
through which students initially wonder about their elementary concepts and
pre-conceptions related to the major themes of that lesson. This activity sets up
the stage for teaching and clarifying the concepts and the ideas (see stages 3
and 6 below). Follow up on this activity is deferred (see stage 8 below).
(2) Whole class activity: Reading aloud a section from Alice (Chapter 1), followed
by, when relevant, a short whole class discussion of educational/mathematical/
scientific issues triggered by the section just read.
(3) Individual activity (handout): A guided study of selected quotes from the sec-
tion of Alice just read, aimed at introducing a theme in logic. This activity
makes students work on the connection between the use of the concepts in the
text and their intuitive pre-concepts as revealed in the initial activity (see stage 1
above). This handout is revisited later (see stage 6 below.) Two sample handouts
appear in Appendix 1.
(4) Small-group/whole class activity: Discussion of the individual ideas surfaced
through the previous individual activity, giving time for students, exchange of
their ideas, attempting to convince one another in case of disagreements.
(5) Expository teacher action: Course instructor presents the concepts and the ideas
coherently, resolving any misunderstandings that may have occurred previ-
ously.
(6) Whole class discussion: Students take a second look at their writings in the
handout of stage 3 resolving any points that remained unclear.
(7) Practice and take-home assignment (handout): This handout is based upon
quotes from chapters other than the first one in Alice, quotes which bring up the
topics in logic, discussed in class. Two sample handouts appear in Appendix 2.
(8) Individual activity (handout): A second attempt to address the questions in the
opening handout (stage 1). This activity intends to make students aware of their
knowledge development and bring up yet unclear issues. A sample handout
appears in Appendix 3.
Materials developed were revised twice. Once after the first experimental imple-
mentation of the course, and again at the end of the second semester. The full range
of materials is included in Shriki and Movshovitz (2008).

5 The Study

Our study took the nature of action-research using the following as data collecting
instruments:
a. Students’ response to the lesson-opening handouts. (see section 4 “Activities and
Task Development”, stage 1 above, and a sample handout in Appendix 3);
b. Students’ response to the lesson-end handouts. (see section 4 “Activities and Task
Development”, stage 8 above, and a sample handout in Appendix 3);
92 N. Movshovitz-Hadar and A. Shriki

c. Students’ work on selected homework assignment handouts. (see section 4

“Activities and Task Development”, stage 7 above, and sample handouts in
Appendix 2)
d. Informal 5–7 minute individual conversational interviews with 2–3 students con-
ducted on the way out of each lesson; the affective domain was at the focus
of these conversations, hence students’ feelings about the knowledge gained
through the lesson that had just ended were probed.
e. Written lesson reports documenting the implementation of each lesson-plan and
detailing critical events and the informal interviews; Reports were written in an
accumulative diary immediately after the end of each lesson; (Due to the lack of
sufficient funding for this project it was impossible to videotape the sessions, so
instead we used these records as evidence for analysis of the outcome.)
f . Students’ response to end-of-term evaluation in two parts: (i) Final 120 minute
ordinary end-of course written exam based upon the syllabus (A sample test-item
appears in Appendix 4.) (ii) Essay writing: Students were asked to reflect upon
the development of their personal knowledge within the particular set up of the
course and to discuss pro and cons for integrating children’s literature in school
mathematics and in teachers college mathematics.

6 Results and Discussion

The results obtained by administering the instruments mentioned in section 5 above,

served as a data base for analyzing student’s progress and attitudes as well as for
revising the materials.
At the beginning of the first lesson we distributed copies of Alice, telling the
prospective teachers that it was going to be our textbook for the logic course. Many
students turned the pages of the book and expressed a slight embarrassment, won-
dering how it would be possible for “a book with no numbers and no formulas” to
serve as a textbook.
Eighteen students participated in the second experimental implementation of the
course. Comparing their final grades using instrument f (i) with previous years
groups of students who took this course without Alice, yielded no significant dif-
ference.
Due to space limitations we focus in the rest of this section on the results yielded
by the Essay Writing instrument f(ii).
As will be detailed below, students’ written reflections referred mainly to their
benefits from the entire learning environment that encompassed reading from Alice
and working on the activities and the tasks. They also related to possible impli-
cations of their course experience to their future school teaching. A few students
pointed to some disadvantages of learning logic through Alice or any other subject
through children’s books. Here are a few excerpts from their essays.1
1 The excerpts are translated from Hebrew, as it is the tongue in which teaching took place.
Logic in Wonderland 93

6.1 Benefits from Learning Through Reading Alice

Referring to the benefits of learning logic through Alice, most of the students de-
scribed their experience using affective as well as cognitive expressions:
. . . reading Alice made me realize that logic is not merely a ‘mathematical matter’, but also
relates to one of the most amazing children’s book on which I was raised, and probably to
many others too. . . ;
. . . Alice is a book full of imagination and humor. It deals with ‘children’s matter’ in chil-
dren’s language. It is most enjoyable to learn logic, which appears to be boring, in that
manner. It made me feel very special. . . ;
Like Wonderland, logic also seems to me as fantasy. Thus it was fascinating to learn logic
through Alice.
The topics in logic are very complex. I believe that reading Alice changed the entire atmo-
sphere that might have been created in the lessons otherwise. I suppose it made me and the
other students more relaxed;

A few students mentioned that reading from Alice helped them understand some
specific topic:
. . . for example, the empty set. The story discusses the subject in a very concrete manner;
It was interesting to learn topics like ‘if. . . ,then. . . ’, ‘for all’ through reading the story.
I suddenly found myself looking for conditional sentences or quantifiers in other texts like
the news paper as well.

6.2 The Learning Environment

Integrating Alice in the logic course established a new and untried learning environ-
ment for the students. They expressed it as follows:
Using the book of Alice for teaching logic enabled us to experience different learning envi-
ronment, an enjoyable one.
No more books full of formulas, no more conventional exercises and other standard teaching
aids that are used in other math courses. It was really a new and satisfying experience for me;
Learning through Alice urged me to attend the lessons. I don’t remember feeling like that
before, actually I tend to miss many lessons and learn from books. I enjoyed the lessons
very much. There was one lesson I could not attend, but I was very curious to know what
parts of the book you read that day and what issue came out of it;
Reflecting on my experience with this original learning environment, I realize that reading
Alice motivated me to learn logic not just because I was forced to, but mainly because I
enjoyed it.

6.3 Implication for School Teaching

Part of the students related not only to their own new experience with the new envi-
ronment, but also to its potential for implementation in school teaching:
94 N. Movshovitz-Hadar and A. Shriki

We all know that children don’t read much these days. They prefer watching television and
chatting through the computer. I believe that as educators we should strive to find ways to
show them how fun reading is. Teaching mathematics through children’s books can serve
both purposes – enjoying reading books and enjoying the learning of mathematics.
I love the idea of teaching mathematics using children books. It is very interesting. It made
me more attentive. I even implemented the method (using Five Balloons) in one of the
classes in which I am practicing my math teaching, and I felt that it was easier for the
children to learn the subject as I connected it to their own world;
It is most advisable for teachers to integrate children’s books in mathematics lessons or any
other lessons. In this way we, the adults, can enter the children’s life, speak their language,
and actually experience being a child again;
I think it is a great way to teach children. Stories help attract their attention, and the children
would wait for the next lesson to hear the rest of the story, like I did.
Teaching logic based on Alice showed me that there are other ways to teach mathemat-
ics, moving away from the routine. I believe teachers should be able to implement various
teaching methods. They should learn how to surprise their students; otherwise the students
might get bored;
Integrating Alice or other children’s books in mathematics lessons provides an unusual
stimulus to learn the subject matter. It motivates the students and inspires their learning.
From my experience with Alice, I believe that enjoyment encourages learning;
Children, especially the young ones, cannot concentrate during the entire lesson period.
They need frequent breaks. Reading stories that are relevant to the topic of the lesson, can
be used for ‘letting the mind rest’, and enable the children to be more attentive.

6.4 Disadvantages of Learning Through Alice

or Other Children’s Book

Four of the eighteen students referred to the difficulties they experienced with learn-
ing logic through Alice and commented also about the possible limitations of inte-
grating children’s books in mathematics lessons:
There were times that reading the book disturbed be. Although the sentences and the de-
scribed situations seemed strange to me, I insisted on considering them as ‘normal’, namely-
things that might happened in my everyday life. It distracted my mind from the lesson;
Many times I found myself confused. I could not decide whether I should refer to the sen-
tence in its logical sense or to its meaning in the context of the story;
Alice’s story is a fairy tale, and is not relevant to our topic. You could provide us other
examples, not from the book, using much more simple words, and consequently we could
have used more time for learning logic;
Using children literature might also be ‘dangerous’. The story may possibly distract the
students’ attention, and they would be busy with the plot instead of the subject matter.

In summary, it appears that most of the prospective teachers’ utterances refer to

affective aspects and to their satisfaction from the learning environment. Additional
research is needed in order to be able to determine whether prospective teachers
who experience learning logic through Alice perceive and understand the various
topics differently or better than those who learn it in a more traditional manner.
Logic in Wonderland 97

Appendix 2

This appendix includes two samples of the practice and take-home assignment based
upon reading from Alice Chap. 2 on. (see above section 4 “Activities and Task
Development” stage 7). These handouts intentionally have a title so as to connect
their focus to earlier class work.
(i) Practice and take-home assignment related to the connective “and”.

Alice meets the White Rabbit again

It was the White Rabbit, trotting slowly back again, and looking
anxiously about as it went, as if it had lost something; and she
heard it muttering to itself, "The Duchess! The Duchess!
Oh my dear paws! Oh my fur and whiskers!
She'll get me executed, as sure as ferrets are fer-
rets! Where can I have dropped them, I wonder?"
Alice guessed in a moment that it was looking for the
fan and the pair of white kid-gloves, and she very good-naturedly
began hunting about for them, but they were nowhere to be seen—
everything seemed to have changed since her swim in the pool; and the
great hall, with the glass table and the little door, had vanished completely.
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, p. 37

In each of the following paragraphs two statements are given with their truth
value. They are followed by a question. Mark the correct answer and give your
reasons, based on the data.
1. a. In Wonderland the following statement is false:
“The White Rabbit was looking for the pair of white kid-gloves and the White
Rabbit was looking for his shoes”.
b. In Wonderland the following statement is true:
“The White Rabbit was looking for the pair of white kid-gloves”.
Which of the following is correct?
– “The White Rabbit was looking for his shoes” is a True statement;
– “The White Rabbit was looking for his shoes” is a False statement;
– Parts a and b contradict each other;
– There is not enough information to determine whether the White Rabbit was
looking for his shoes or not.
Your reasons:
2. In Wonderland the following two statements are true:
a. “The White Rabbit was trotting slowly back again, and the White Rabbit was
looking anxiously about as it went”;
b. “The White Rabbit was looking anxiously about as it went”
98 N. Movshovitz-Hadar and A. Shriki

Which of the following is correct?

– “The White Rabbit was trotting slowly back again” is a True statement;
– “The White Rabbit was trotting slowly back again” is a False statement;
– Parts a and b contradict each other;
– There is not enough information to determine whether the White Rabbit was
trotting slowly back again or not.
Your reasons:
3. In Wonderland the following two statements are false:
a. “Alice was looking for the Duchess, and the White Rabbit was looking for the
fan”;
b. “Alice was looking for the Duchess”
Which of the following is correct?
– “The White Rabbit was looking for the fan” is a True statement;
– “The White Rabbit was looking for the fan” is a False statement;
– Parts a and b contradict each other;
– There is not enough information for determine whether the White Rabbit was
looking for the fan or not.
Your reasons:
4. a. In Wonderland the following statement is true:
“The White Rabbit was looking for the pair of white kid gloves and the White
Rabbit likes the Duchess”.
[b.] In Wonderland the following statement is false:
“The White Rabbit likes the Duchess”.
Which of the following is correct?
– “The White Rabbit was looking for the pair of white kid gloves” is a True
statement;
– “The White Rabbit was looking for the pair of white kid gloves” is a False
statement;
– Parts a and b contradict each other;
– There is not enough information for determine whether the White Rabbit was
looking for the pair of white kid gloves or not.
Your reasons:
(ii) Practice and take-home assignment related to the inferences from statements
including the words “All” and “Only”, relating them to necessary and sufficient
conditions.
During her walk in Wonderland Alice met a cat. Alice asked for the cat’s assis-
tance. The following is a part of their conversation:
Based upon the following quote from Alice, answer the questions below:
Logic in Wonderland 99

Alice's conversation with the Cat

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought
to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you
want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where —" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go,'"
said the Cat.
"—so long as I get somewhere," Alice added
as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if
you only walk long enough."
Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question.
"What sort of people live about here?"
"In that direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a
Hatter: and in that direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March
Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad." "But I don't want to go
among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad.
You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, p. 65-6

1. In each row in the table below two statements appear followed by a conclusion.
You are to determine whether the conclusion is true, false, or may be the statements
do not provide enough information in order to reach the conclusion. Justify your
choice.

Statements Conclusion The conclusion is . . .

Choose: True/False/Not enough
data to decide, and justify your
choice

a. All those who come to Wonderland Alice is not mad True/False/Not

are mad; enough data to decide
Alice doesn’t come to Wonderland
b. Only those who come to Alice is mad True/False/Not
Wonderland are mad; enough data to decide
Alice comes to Wonderland
c. All those who come to Wonderland Alice is not mad True/False/Not
are mad; enough data to decide
Alice comes to Wonderland
d. Only those who come to Alice is mad True/False/Not
Wonderland are mad; enough data to decide
Alice doesn’t come to Wonderland
e. All those who come to Wonderland Alice is mad True/False/Not
are mad; enough data to decide
Alice doesn’t come to Wonderland
f. Only those who come to Alice is not mad True/False/Not
Wonderland are mad; enough data to decide
Alice comes to Wonderland
g. All those who come to Wonderland Alice is mad True/False/Not
are mad; enough data to decide
Alice comes to Wonderland
h. Only those who come to Alice is not mad True/False/Not
Wonderland are mad; enough data to decide
Alice doesn’t come to Wonderland
100 N. Movshovitz-Hadar and A. Shriki

2. Which of the eight rows in the table above describes the conversation between
Alice and the Cat?
3. Consider again the conversation between Alice and the Cat. Which of the follow-
ing statements summarizes the Cat’s claim:
– In order to be mad, it is necessary to come to Wonderland;
– In order to be mad, it is sufficient to come to Wonderland;
– In order to come to Wonderland, it is necessary to be mad;
– In order to come to Wonderland, it is sufficient to be mad.

Appendix 3

This appendix includes a sample of the opening handout revisited at the end of each
topic. (see above section 4 “Activities and Task Development” stages 1 and 8).
An opening and lesson-end handout related to quantifiers.
On top of each table below there is a true statement followed by several possible
conclusions in the body of the table. Consider the suggested conclusion in each
entry then mark by “x” the decision you believe to be right and justify your choice:
T – The suggested conclusion is true, as it follows from the statement.
NN – The suggested conclusion does not necessarily follow from the statement.
F – The suggested conclusion is false as its contrary follows from the statement.

1. The true statement: Every girl named Alice likes books with picture.

Suggested conclusion T NN F Your justification

a. The girl named Alice Smith does not like

books with pictures
b. Every girl named Alice does not like
journals with pictures
c. Grandmother Alice does not like books
with pictures
d. Every girl named Alice likes books
with no picture
e. There exist a girl named Alice who
does not like books with pictures
f. There does not exist a girl named Alice
who does not like books with pictures
g. Dinah is a girl who likes books
with pictures
h. Every girl whose name is not Alice
does not like books with pictures
i. Not every girl named Alice likes books
with pictures
j. The girl named Alice Johns likes books
with pictures
Logic in Wonderland 101

2. The true statement: In Wonderland there exist white rabbits that can speak

Suggested conclusion T NN F Your justification

a. In Wonderland there exist no white

rabbits that can sing
b. In Wonderland there exist white
rabbits that cannot speak
c. In Wonderland every white rabbit
can speak
d. In Wonderland there does not exist
a white rabbit that cannot speak
e. In Wonderland every animal that is
not a white rabbit cannot speak
f. In Wonderland there is at least one
white rabbit that can speak
g. In Wonderland there does not exist
a white rabbit that can speak
h. In Wonderland there exist white
rabbits that can speak
i. In Wonderland there exist cats that
can speak

3. The true statement: There are no cats that do not eat carrot

Suggested conclusion T NN F Your justification

a. There exist cats that eat carrot

b. There exist cats that do not eat carrot
c. There exist dogs that eat carrot
d. All cats eat carrot
e. There are no cats that eat mice
f. There exist cats that eat bread
g. There exist cats tat do not eat cabbage
h. All cats drink milk
i. Street cats do not eat carrot

Appendix 4

This appendix includes a sample item from the final exam (see above section 5 “The
Study” part f ).
After Alice ate a piece of mushroom that grew in Wonderland, her neck grew so
much that she was able to reach the treetops. She could easily bend her long neck
in any direction and curve it like a snake. In one of the treetop Alice met a large
pigeon that was hatching her eggs and watching them from snakes. The pigeon was
102 N. Movshovitz-Hadar and A. Shriki

convinced that Alice was a snake, while Alice was trying to persuade the pigeon
that she was only a little girl. The following is a part of the conversation that took
place between Alice and the pigeon.

Alice's conversation with the Pigeon

"But I'm not a serpent, I tell you!" said Alice. "I'm a—I'm a—"
"Well! what are you?" said the Pigeon. "I can see you're trying to
invent something!"
"I—I'm a little girl," said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she remembered
the number of changes she had gone through, that day.
"A likely story indeed!" said the Pigeon, in a tone of the deepest
contempt. "I've seen a good many little girls in my time, but never one
with such a neck as that! No, no! You're a serpent; and there's no use
denying it. I suppose you'll be telling me next that you never tasted an
egg!"
"I have tasted eggs, certainly," said Alice, who was a very truthful
child; "but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know."
"I don't believe it," said the Pigeon; "but if they do, why, then they're a kind of serpent:
that's all I can say."

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, p. 55-6

1. What arguments is the pigeon using to prove that Alice is not a little girl? Are
these arguments valid (correct in a logical sense)?
2. What arguments is the pigeon using to prove that Alice is a snake? Are these
arguments valid (correct in a logical sense)?

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Tasks using Video Clips of Children
in a Content Mathematics Course
for Future Elementary School Teachers

Richard Millman, Kelly Svec, and Dana Williams

One of the major problems in the mathematical education of future primary teachers
is the need to convince them that they will need a deep, conceptual understanding
of the mathematics of primary school in order to give all of their students a quality
education. This chapter argues that the brief use of video clips of children in a con-
tent mathematics course can address issues of attitude, the need for understanding
the mathematical knowledge for teaching, and the recognition that children will in-
vent their own ways of doing mathematics. The tasks discussed here are structured
around the use of video clips in student presentations.
Tasks involving video clips of children in mathematics content courses for future
teachers are a useful and effective way to introduce and address questions such as
why future teachers need such mathematics courses and why a conceptual under-
standing of mathematics is so important for their success and that of their students.
Video clips that involve children working through mathematical problems affect the
attitudes of future teachers. In this chapter, we will first present the effects that video
clips have on future teachers and how, after watching and discussing the clips, their
attitudes change. We will then describe a classroom presentation that involved a
video clip of a child. The clip emphasized content knowledge and the “mathemat-
ical habit of the mind” that enriches mathematical teaching. In both cases, we will
describe the future teachers’ reactions to the clips in terms of attitude and approach
to content knowledge.
In the United States, mathematicians, rather than mathematics educators, are usu-
ally the instructors in the first courses dealing with the content needed to teach the
mathematics of elementary and middle school. They are confronted with four initial

R. Millman
Director, Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing, and Professor of
the Practice of Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
K. Svec
Student, University of Kentucky, USA
D. Williams
Graduate, University of Kentucky, USA
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
106 R. Millman, K. Svec, and D. Williams

and substantive student attitudinal issues as listed below. We will describe a task,
which approaches the first three through the use of video clips of children doing
mathematics. We will then report on the response of the future teachers in terms of
their assessment of the need for mathematical content knowledge at the K-5 level.
The issues addressed are:
• How to convince the future teachers that they will need a deep understanding of
mathematics in order to teach it at the K-5 level.
• How to convince the future teachers that a true “understanding” of the material
does not mean merely how to do procedures but rather depends on thorough
understanding of the concepts, that is, conceptual understanding of the material.
• How to persuade the future teachers that all children are capable of learning
mathematics and that the use of different learning strategies is important (a fun-
damental idea which is embodied in the Standards of the National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM, 1995) as the Equity Principle.
• How to persuade the future teachers themselves that they are capable of teaching
mathematics with conceptual understanding.
The content mathematics courses at the University of Kentucky are a two-
semester sequence, which precedes the methods course. The courses are taught
by graduate students, part-time instructors, and a faculty member, all in the
Mathematics Department. The courses are coordinated by the outreach profes-
sor of mathematics (the first author). There are 16 sections taught between the
two semester-long courses during the year. The syllabus for the courses is uniform
and covers Chaps. 1 through 13 from a standard content book (Long & DeTem-
ple, 2006). The responses of the future teachers that are presented in this article are
those observed across the sections during the two academic years 2004–2005 and
2005–2006.
Video tapes and video clips are used for many educational purposes but gener-
ally appear later in a prospective teacher’s educational coursework. In this chapter,
we will show the advantages of introducing video tapes of children to the future
teachers during their first semester of the mathematics content course. Video clips
were used twice in each section of the first course. Additionally, in designing their
required presentation to the class, two of the students in one section (the second
and third authors of this article) prepared and made use of a video tape of a fifth
grader dealing with the geometric problem from Ma (1999). It is this presentation
that illustrates some insights into the fourth bullet above. The role of presentations in
addressing the fourth bullet and, more generally, integrating assessment in a mathe-
matics content course, is described in Millman and Ma (2006).
There has been a general recognition these days that elementary school teachers
need to have a deep conceptual knowledge of the mathematics of elementary school
and that just a procedural one will not suffice. Ball and Bass (2003) discuss the
Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) as differentiated from the notion of
“Pedagogical Knowledge for Teaching” of Shulman (1986). Ma (1999) talks about
the concept of a “Profound Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics”, for exam-
ple. Bass, an eminent research mathematician and former president of the American
Tasks using Video Clips of Children in a Content Mathematics 107

Mathematical Society, takes the view that the mathematics of teaching should be
thought of as one thinks of branches of applied mathematics – “[the mathemati-
cian should] . . . understand sensitively the domain of application, the nature of its
mathematical problems, and the forms of mathematical knowledge that are useful
and usable in the this domain” (Bass, 2005, p. 418). The Bass article is extremely
useful for all mathematicians who teach the content mathematics course for future
teachers.
A goal of our approach is to help the students recognize the need for a con-
tent mathematics course and allow them to discover for themselves (through assess-
ing video clips) that a thorough understanding of the Bass/Ball concept of MKT is
needed in order for them to be successful. Future teachers will see, as a result, that
it is necessary to have multiple views of the content of elementary school math-
ematics, to connect those to the standards of the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics (NCTM), and the state in which they teach, and to integrate their con-
tent knowledge with what they will learn in their methods courses later.
In the first semester, we showed some video clips (using the IMAP – Integrating
Mathematics and Pedagogy – videos from San Diego State University), (Philipp and
Cabral, 2005) which demonstrate clearly that children will invent their own ways of
doing problems, sometimes correctly and sometimes not. The video clips seen by
the classes dealt with subtraction (and the role of place value) viewed in three ways
(Gretchen in video clip 3), and a child’s division of fractions in his head (Elliot in
video clip 16). The total amount of time spent watching and discussing the video
clips was under 90 min so this approach does not reduce the class time spent on
mathematics in any significant way.
We will now discuss the effect these two clips had on the future teachers in detail.
The task for the instructor is to select, set the stage, and show the video clips. The
task for the future teachers is to think about the reaction of the children to math-
ematics and the implications of those reactions from the viewpoint of the content
preparation of future teachers.
Video clip 3 shows a second grader, Gretchen, doing a two-digit subtraction prob-
lem (70 - 43) in three different ways. The first is procedural and, because she remem-
bers the procedure incorrectly, her answer is wrong. The second is with strips and
singles and the third with a hundreds chart. These two approaches are conceptual
and both are done correctly; however, she insists that the procedural way is the cor-
rect way and that its answer (in spite of the fact that the other two methods agree) is
the right one. This video clip task gives the future teachers a chance to view, in the
context of school children, the difference between procedural and conceptual ap-
proaches, to see how easy it is for procedures to be “mis-remembered”, and to view
different approaches which appeal to different learning styles to the same (subtrac-
tion) problem. In all of the sections of the course, the Gretchen video clip brought
home the points in the first three bullets from the beginning of this chapter.
The video clip of the fourth grader, Elliot, who divides fractions in his head, has
a striking effect on future teachers. In most sections, one of the future teachers will
say, “Would you play that again?” while another will inevitably ask, “Will we have
students like that?” The answers, of course, are “Yes”. The first question allows
108 R. Millman, K. Svec, and D. Williams

the instructor to discuss the need for thoroughly understanding the mathematics (in
this case, division of fractions). Because Elliot solves the second fraction division
problem (also in his head, although incorrectly) using the result of the first one, the
future teachers need to have a conceptual understanding of this topic. The second
question gives the opportunity for the instructor to discuss the Equity Principle of
the NCTM to emphasize that mathematics is for all students, from those who are
struggling to those, like Elliot, who are quite proficient.
There is, of course, much pressure on practising teachers to have their students
perform well in the standardized exams such as the Kentucky Core Content Test
(KCCT) of the CATS (Commonwealth Accountability Testing System). Because
of these end of year tests in the schools and the high stakes that they involve, it
is important that curricular changes in university content or methods courses be
correlated with the KCCT or standard exams in other states. We were, therefore,
led to include in our examination of video clip tasks how the video clips reflect the
Commonwealth of Kentucky standards. The completed assessment forms for the
video clips that were reviewed are contained in Millman, Svec, and Williams (2005).
We found that the IMAP tasks are well aligned with the KCCT and CATS. The form
itself consisted of five questions and is given below.
Evaluation Form for Clips:
Clip # Grade Level
Question 1: What is the mathematics content?
Question 2: What is the level of conceptual understanding of the student? Where
do the topics appear in the “Kentucky Core Content for Mathematics
Assessment”?
Question 3: What PUFM (Profound Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics)
should the watcher have to be able to decide whether the student is
correct?
Question 4: What PUFM should the watcher have to be able to help the student?
Question 5: What is a one or two sentence question for the MA 201 instructors to
be able to guide the discussion of the MA 201 students?
Because we believe in the philosophy that it is important to ground the con-
tent course in the practice, these evaluation forms were reviewed by a fourth grade
teacher (Angela Gonzales, Northern Elementary School, Lexington, KY) and we
thank her for her valuable comments.
We will now describe one of the classroom presentations in which two of the
future teachers (Svec and Williams) used, at their own initiative, a video clip to
introduce their problem. Presentations in the content mathematics course by future
teachers are described more fully in Millman and Ma (2006). Student presentations
are required in both semesters of the course in all of the sections. Svec and Williams
decided to include a videotape of a child to set the scene for the “perimeter versus
area of a rectangle” conjecture of Liping Ma’s Chap. 4 (1999). We will discuss
how this clip added extra life to that presentation and to the content course by the
reactions of the students.
Tasks using Video Clips of Children in a Content Mathematics 109

The classroom presentation focused on the mathematical concepts of area and

perimeter of closed shapes, specifically rectangles. To begin, a conjecture on area
and perimeter following a scenario by Ma (1999) was presented to the class by
the two students. Their purpose was to provide the future teachers with a better
conceptual understanding of the two concepts (area and perimeter). The scenario
from Chap. 4 was presented in the terms that follow:
Imagine that one of your students comes to class very excited. She tells you that she has
figured out a theory that you never told the class. She explains that she has discovered that
as the perimeter of a closed figure increases, the area also increases.

To help the class visualize the conjecture, a video clip of a 5th grade student
(age 11) demonstrating the theory was presented. The video clip was staged where
the student was asked to present a scenario similar to the one described by Ma.
The student told of a recent experience she had at home while helping to install an
electric fence for her dog. She explained that the dimensions of the fence in the front
yard were 9 yd by 5 yd. Therefore, the perimeter of the front yard fence was 28 yd
and the area was 45 sq yd. The dimensions of the fence in the back yard were 9 yd
by 6 yd. The perimeter of the back yard fence was 30 yd and its area was 54 sq yd.
Therefore, the student concluded that, as the perimeter of the yard increased the area
also increased. The example the student presented was as follows:
Showing this clip immediately got the attention of the class, for it allowed them
to see a real student demonstrate the mathematical concept we were focusing on.
After showing the clip, the future teachers were asked to raise their hands if they
agreed with the student’s theory. About one half of the future teachers in the class
raised their hands, agreeing that as the perimeter of a rectangle increases, the area
also increases. The results of this poll were similar to the findings of Ma in her
research on how U.S. teachers reacted to this same scenario. Most US teachers either
agreed or were not sure about the claim. Though it is common for teachers to agree
with what seems to be a logical theory, the presentation stressed the importance of
not assuming a theory which sounds logical (or poetic) to be correct without first
examining it.
The presentation began by trying to prove or disprove the conjecture made by the
student. As a teacher might begin with his or her own 5th graders, the presentation
opened up with a review of the definitions of perimeter and area and reminded them
that perimeter (P) is the measurement of the distance around the rectangle and area
(A) is the measurement of the space within the rectangle. The equations for each are:

P = 2L + 2W
A = LW

L is length and W is width.

It was felt within the team that it would be engaging to work with the students
in the class to get to a conclusion. This was started by making a chart on the board,
representing length, width, perimeter, and area. Getting the class further involved,
the team let the class give dimensions of certain rectangles, determine the area and
perimeter, and, then, have them increase the rectangle’s perimeter and give the new
110 R. Millman, K. Svec, and D. Williams

dimensions, and calculate area. This was done with a couple of numbers and all
seemed to support the child’s theory. A geoboard was also used to show this idea
more visually. Svec and Williams had already determined that the theory was false,
but, just in case the student’s numbers did not go in the direction the team had
intended, the team had other numbers prepared.

L W P A

4 4 16 16
8 1 18 8

At this point, the presentation had disproved the child’s theory because it only
takes one counterexample to disprove it, which is an important lesson for future
teachers.
However, delving deeper, another conjecture was examined. The class was asked
“Could two different rectangles have the same area?” and “What happened to the
perimeter in this case?”

L W P A
9 4 26 36
3 12 30 36

As the perimeter increased, the area stayed the same; it did not increase, so this
disproved the theory as well.
This task provided the presenters a chance to demonstrate to a class of college
students the notion of a “Mathematical Habit of the Mind” which is interpreted as
looking to see where there might be a kernel of truth in a child’s theory. What part,
then, of the child’s theory is true? If one variable of the rectangle stays the same and
only the other is changed (say length is constant and width varies), then as perimeter
increases, so will the area.
An important point was made to the class that there was a difference between
the student in the staged clip and the student from Ma’s scenario. The student in the
clip was told to illustrate a theory, but the 5th grade student in Ma’s scenario actually
discovered this theory on her own. Therefore, she was very excited to tell her teacher
about her theory. The point was made to the class on how important it is for teachers
to take advantage of these types of situations as they arise in the classroom. The
lesson of this part of the task is that when students are excited and enthusiastic, they
are more receptive to learning and will more than likely do a better job of retaining
and internalizing the information that they have discovered. A mathematical habit
of the mind will reinforce the student’s enthusiasm and insights. The child in the
video clip produced a totally teachable moment. The conjecture became a time to
either drop the plan for the day and move on to something else or rearrange the next
day to tackle the question.
Tasks using Video Clips of Children in a Content Mathematics 111

During the work with video clips, it became clear that the video clips played a
key role in a future classroom for the following reasons:
• They give a future teacher a hint at the amazing ways children’s minds can work
and the theories and methods they can come up with. During these teachable
moments, it really becomes clear that a detailed understanding of content is the
key to helping a child or class decide if they are doing a problem incorrectly or
correctly.
• It is important to be able to think on one’s feet and a shallow knowledge of
content and the reasons behind the method will not only inhibit the learning of
the children in the classroom, but might also turn them away from mathematics
as their own logic is ignored.
• Children capture the attention of an audience of future teachers. In a class of
future teachers, all the students have an interest in children. Using video clips
containing children takes advantage of this to motivate these future teachers to
increase the depth of their understanding of mathematics.
There is also another issue dealing with the attitude of students at the beginning
of the content course but it is easily remedied. We include this topic because the
mathematicians who teach the course may not realize that it is present as “back-
ground noise” in the classroom. Students generally do not know that this mathe-
matics course is not about; for example, classroom management, how to work with
special needs students, or the use of manipulatives. They believe that the mathe-
matics sequence is about how to teach because they do not realize that there are a
number of methods and other education courses beyond the mathematics courses.
It is very useful to let the students know at the beginning of the content course that
there are many more classes to come and that this two-semester sequence one is
focused on the mathematical content, not mathematics methods.
In conclusion, the use of video clips addresses some important issues of attitude,
the need for MKT, the recognition by the future teachers that children will invent
their own ways (sometimes right and sometimes wrong) of doing mathematics, the
blurring of the notion of a “content” and a “methods” course, and the need for depth
of mathematical understanding for the teaching of elementary school children.

Acknowledgments This work is funded by Title II grant P336A020006-04 CFDA #84.336A from
the Educational Professional Standards Board of Kentucky. The opinions of this chapter are those
of the authors.

References

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ing. In B. Davis & E. Simmt (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Canadian
Mathematical Education Study Group (pp. 3–14). Edmonton, AB: CMESG/GCEDM.
Bass, H. (2005). Mathematics, mathematicians, and mathematics education. Bulletin of the Amer-
ican Mathematical Society, 42(4), 417–430.
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Long, C. T., & DeTemple, D. W. (2006).Mathematical reasoning for elementary teachers (4th ed.).
Boston: Pearson, Addison-Wesley.
Ma, L. (1999). Knowing and teaching elementary mathematics. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Millman, R., & Ma, X. (2006). The design of a mathematics content course to integrate the
assessment principle: Recent results. Proceedings of the 4th Annual Hawaii International Con-
ference on Education (pp. 4552–4558). Honolulu: HICE.
Millman, R., Svec, K., & Williams, D. (2005). Assessment of IMAP video clips of children for a
content mathematics course for future elementary school teachers. Paper presented at the First
Conference of the Appalachian Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators. Proceedings of
the Appalachian Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators. Lexington, KY:
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (1995). Assessment standards for school mathemat-
ics. Reston, VA: NCTM.
Philipp, R., & Cabral, C. (2005). IMAP: Integrating mathematics and pedagogy to illustrate chil-
dren’s reasoning. Pearson, NY: Merrill Prentice-Hall.
Shulman, L. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Re-
searcher, 15(2), 4–14.
Teacher Tasks for Mathematical Insight
and Reorganization of What it Means
to Learn Mathematics

George Gadanidis and Immaculate Namukasa

The mathematics-for-teachers tasks we discuss in this chapter have two qualities:

(1) they offer teachers opportunities to experience the pleasure of mathematical in-
sight; and (2) they aim to disrupt and reorganize teachers’ views of what it means to
do and learn mathematics. Given that many future and inservice elementary teach-
ers fear and dislike mathematics, it is perhaps not too far-fetched to suggest that
there is a need for “math therapy.” We believe that a form of mathematics therapy
may involve new and different experiences with mathematics. Such experiences,
considered broadly to include questions or prompts for mathematical exploration,
draw attention to deep mathematical ideas and offer the potential of experiencing
the pleasure of significant mathematical insight. In our work with teachers we have
developed and used a variety of mathematics tasks as opportunities for experien-
tial therapy. The tasks aim to challenge some of the mathematical myths that future
teachers believe to be true and are typically assumed by them in mathematics class-
rooms. The tasks have potential to disrupt teachers’ view of mathematics, and to
start the process for reorganizing their thinking about what mathematics is and what
it means to do and learn mathematics.
In this chapter we describe and discuss four of the mathematics tasks which
involve non-routine mathematics problems that we use in our mathematics-for-
teachers program. This program is offered annually to our 440 future elementary
school (K-8) teachers, who generally lack confidence in mathematics and often fear
and/or dislike the subject. It is also offered to inservice teachers through a series of
mathematics-for-teachers courses. A student response summarizes the effects of our
approach.
I felt lost at first as I struggled to remember math concepts from childhood and adolescence.
I felt confused. What did a poem have to do with math? I was perplexed. Was there not
only one answer to a mathematical question? I felt apprehensive. How would I discuss a

G. Gadanidis
Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, The University of Western Ontario, Canada
I. Namukasa
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario, Canada
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
114 G. Gadanidis and I. Namukasa

mathematical concept that I did not fully understand? Then as I got into the swing of things,
I felt more confident with my opinions, my answers and most importantly myself. I felt
cheerful that I was experiencing math as a student and that I would hopefully be able to
empathize with my future students. I felt happy that math instruction could be made to be
engaging. Finally, I was giddy that I was thinking about math, actually thinking about math
and not doing everything else to avoid it.

1 Mathematics for Teachers

It’s not surprising to meet people who wear their view that “I’m not a math person”
as a badge of honor. It concerns many mathematics teacher educators that this is
also the case among future mathematics teachers. Recently, at an orientation assem-
bly, we asked our in-coming group of 440 elementary teachers how they felt about
mathematics. When asked to raise their hands if they loved mathematics, 15–20
hands went up. When asked to raise their hands if they hated mathematics, a sea
of hands filled the auditorium. Most elementary teachers have narrow views of
what mathematics is and what it means to do mathematics (Fosnot & Dolk, 2001;
McGowen & Davis, 2001). Given this mathematics education predicament, this not-
uncommon perception of mathematics as an abhorrent subject, we suggest that there
is a need for “math therapy,” which involves new and different experiences with
mathematics.
Our mathematics-for-teachers tasks have two qualities: (1) they offer teachers
opportunities to experience the pleasure of mathematical insight; and (2) they aim to
disrupt and reorganize teachers’ views of what it means to do and learn mathematics.

1.1 The Pleasure of Mathematical Insight

The tasks are content oriented and are designed to motivate teachers to attend deeply
to mathematics and to relationships among concepts. Davey (1999) argues that at-
tention is aesthetic in nature. Whenever we bring consciousness to bear upon a topic,
either individually or communally, we engage it in emotional and imaginative ways.
We use attention to gain insight, to learn and extend ourselves, to incorporate a new
thing, whether that is a new way of solving an old problem or finding new ways
to express an idea. We extend our understanding, we become more complex, and
this feels good (Gadanidis & Hoogland, 2004). Dissanakye (1992) talks about an
“aesthetic sensibility” that “acts as one of our primary meaning-making capacities
in all domains” (p. 25). Attention is our way of gaining beauty and meaning from
experience.
Our tasks, considered broadly to include questions or prompts for mathemati-
cal exploration, draw attention to deep mathematical ideas and offer the potential
of experiencing the pleasure of significant mathematical insight (Gadanidis, 2004).
Moments of significant insight fix the experience in one’s consciousness, enriched
by a strong sense of accomplishment and confidence (Burton, 1999). Insight leads
Teacher Tasks for Mathematical Insight and Reorganization 115

to a feeling of satisfaction, a sense of great clarity, and is accompanied by a positive

emotional response. There is a sense of “authorship” of the ideas, which provides an
important element of self-affirmation and confidence (Barnes, 2000). Such moments
are inspiring. They are moments of deeper understanding, they have the power to
transform attitudes and beliefs about what is mathematics and they inspire teachers
to seek more of these moments (Liljedahl, 2002).
To Hadamard (1996/1945), for an individual, during such moments “ideas pop up
with brevity, suddenness and immediate certainty, after an incubation period, from
the unconscious to the conscious” (p. 14). To Davis and Hersh (1981) such mo-
ments indicate “that something has been brought forth which is genuinely new. . .
a new understanding for the individual; a new concept placed before the commu-
nity” (p. 283). Such moments involve a shift in an entire mathematical world. In
topological terms, learning, gaining insight, forming abstract concepts and observ-
ing general categories and other such radical shifts are equivalent to a cataclysmic
adjustments of a space and landscape – an earthquake or an eruption. Such shifts are
not simply a question of deepening or smoothening existing valleys or hills: they are
about reconfiguration of the overall territory. The dynamics that might have been
resetting, widening or deepening part-by-part, basin by basin at aha moments of in-
sight, intellectual evolutions, cultural revolutions or paradigm shifts do reset all-at-
once. Disrupting and re-organizing experiences does require shifts in understanding
(Sumara, 2002) akin to a geographical landscape formation. Future teachers who
fear mathematics may need shifts akin to therapy. Our mathematics-for-teachers
program seeks to evoke changes that afford preservice teachers to move beyond
their mathematics horizon, beyond their familiar mathematical world through the
use of content based tasks.

1.2 Disrupting and Reorganizing Teachers’ Views

The tasks we use in our mathematics-for-teachers program help improve and deepen
teachers’ mathematical knowledge. However, our primary goal is not to increase
teachers’ mathematical content knowledge, but to offer “experiential therapy.” In
light of our experiential therapy goal, tasks are chosen based on their potential to
disrupt teachers’ view of mathematics, and to start the process for reorganizing their
thinking about what mathematics is and what it means to do and learn mathemat-
ics. The tasks that we develop and use aim to challenge some of the mathematical
myths that future teachers believe to be true and are typically assumed by them in
mathematics classrooms, which we discuss below.
Myth 1: Mathematics is a cold science – rather than an aesthetic, human ex-
perience (Gadanidis & Hoogland, 2004). We select tasks that promote a degree of
comfort or enjoyment with doing mathematics and at the same time broaden views
about mathematics. We provide opportunities for teachers to reflect on their work
on the tasks by writing about what they learned and what they felt while engaged in
the task. These reflections are then summarized and organized based on the themes
116 G. Gadanidis and I. Namukasa

that emerge and then they are given back to the teachers to read and discuss. This
provides an opportunity for teachers to see what others are thinking and feeling, to
find affirmation in similar experiences of others and to rethink their own experiences
in light of contrasting experiences. This also provides opportunities for discussing
aesthetic qualities of the mathematics experience.
Myth 2: Mathematics is about learning procedures for getting correct answers –
rather than attending to and gaining insights about the complexity of mathemati-
cal ideas (Gadanidis, 2004). An integral component of the experiential therapy is
the culminating assessment, where teachers are asked to write a “math essay” on a
randomly chosen task that we have worked on. Associating mathematics assessment
with writing an essay shifts the focus from learning methods for answering questions
to exploring more complex mathematical relationships. In writing the mathematics
essay (on a maximum of two pages, in 30 min), teachers choose to discuss such
issues as: different strategies of solving the problem, varied mathematical connec-
tions the problem evokes, moments of insight or even frustration with the problems,
extensions to the problem or related mathematical problems, and pedagogical im-
plications. In the online discussion component of our program, teachers are encour-
aged to collaborate in preparing possible essay responses. The mathematics essay
takes away the pressure of standard assessments where the focus is on being able
to answer test questions, and offers teachers an opportunity to reflect on (to retell
and rethink) their experience doing and learning mathematics based on one of the
mathematics-for-teachers tasks.
Myth 3: A good teacher makes learning easy – rather than creating situations
where students have to think hard (Jonassen, 2000). The tasks we design and use
create situations where teachers have to explore complex mathematical relationships
and attend to doing mathematics deeply and for extended periods of time. Teachers
need to have such experiences first hand, to build up their mathematical confidence
and increase their expectation of what they (and their students) are capable of ac-
complishing mathematically. Ginsburg (2002), who has studied young children do-
ing mathematics, suggests that, although mathematics is “big,” children’s minds are
bigger. He argues that “children possess greater competence and interest in math-
ematics than we ordinarily recognize” and we should aim to develop a curriculum
for them in which they are challenged to understand big mathematical ideas and
have opportunities to “achieve the fulfillment and enjoyment of their intellectual
interest” (p. 7).
Myth 4: Teaching should start with what a child already knows and understands –
rather than also with what a child can imagine (Egan, 1997). The online applets
that accompany the tasks often use poetry to introduce the task. Peacock (1999)
suggests, poetry is screen-sized. A poem is compact enough and cohesive enough
to be held in one’s mind as a whole. Poetry also makes use of image and metaphor,
both of which help the reader sense deeper relationships to be explored and engage
the imagination (Zwicky, 2003). We also use mathematical literature as a starting
point for doing mathematics, such as Lewis Carroll’s (1885) A Serpent with Corners,
which is discussed in Task 2. Some of the poems have also been set to music and
are offered as music videos in the applets.
Teacher Tasks for Mathematical Insight and Reorganization 117

2 Mathematics-for-Teachers Tasks

In this section we share four of the mathematics-for-teachers tasks that we have

designed and used. The first two tasks deal with geometry concepts and the last two
tasks deal with algebra concepts.

2.1 Task 1: I See it, it’s Invisible!

It’s amazing how exciting geometry has become for me. I never thought that as a person in
my 20s that I would be excited to look for geometric shapes in everyday life and to also try
and imagine shapes in unorthodox places. This is “shaping” up to be one of the most fun
university classes that I’ve taken.

One of the first prompts in this task asks teachers to “Use your finger to draw an
invisible circle in mid-air. Now hold it at the ends of its diameter, and flick it, mak-
ing it spin. What three-dimensional figure did you cut out of space?” Prompts such
as these are also in the poem that is part of the applet shown in Fig. 1. The applet
also contains a music video of the poem, along with a number of annotations that
offer extensions to the mathematics offered in the poem. Such applets are part of
the online component of our mathematics-for-teachers program. One teacher com-
mented, “I started to enjoy math and poems, in fact, I am trying to write one poem
right now! This module made me see everything around me with a new lens!”

I see it! it’s invisible! 12

9
George Gadanisis 2005
music video 8

I grab the dangling rope, hold tight

Run round and round in circles, beneath the tree
Stop-- out of breath -- I see that
I’m wearing an invisible, cone-shaped party hat
1
I step into the hula-hoop, hiding in the grass
Crouch down low, slide my fingers underneath
Raise it high, way higher than my hair
I stand immersed, in a cylindrical can of air MUSIC VIDEO
2 View the music video.
I then hold it lightly, at the ends of a diameter Performed by Susan and Daryn Bee
Flick it, make it spin, spin, spin
Amazed I wait -- what new figure might appear
Aha! I hold a big ball, a giant sphere
3
Playing in my backyard, I wonder 6
Dream, what else might I see 7
Are there more figures, more shapes 5
11
I can imagine, cut out of space?
4
10

Fig. 1 “I see it, it’s invisible” applet

118 G. Gadanidis and I. Namukasa

When we used this task in a fully online mathematics-for-teachers course, teach-

ers used the drawing feature of our discussion board to create and post drawings
that illustrated the figures they imagined being cut out of space. Figure 2 shows a
curve and triangle that could be formed using one’s body. “While doing my physio
today I realized that by stretching into a bridge, my body makes a half-moon shape.
It also helps to stretch my glutes! My physio also helped me see triangles while
doing leg stretches.” Figure 3 shows figures that can be created using the move-
ment of a swing. “I used to play on a swing hanging on a big tree! But instead of
swinging back and forward, I used to play twisting it so it would spin until the ropes
become parallel again! I guess for few seconds I was inside a cone! It did make me
feel dizzy but I liked it!” Figure 4 shows a figure skating movement to help others
imagine what might be cut out of space when the triangle formed as the skater’s
legs twirl. Figure 5 shows an imaginary sphere formed by two cupped hands. “I was
also thinking what kind of shape I could make with my hands, and after a while,
I could see an invisible sphere in my hands! Yes, just imagine yourself making a
snow ball!”
This task helps teachers see mathematics all around them and engage with mathe-
matical ideas in ways that can be discussed outside of the classroom setting. As one

Fig. 2 Body shapes

Fig. 3 A swing

Fig. 4 Figure skating

Teacher Tasks for Mathematical Insight and Reorganization 119

Fig. 5 A sphere

teacher commented, “I learned that math can be discussed with your family and
friends just like you would a favorite book or new movie.” Another teacher com-
mented, “The world around us is full with geometric shapes we’ve never ‘seen’
before, just taken them as granted. I understand your feeling perfectly about the
sensation of ‘having new glasses’ when looking around!” The task also helped
teachers see a creative side of mathematics. “It is the first time that I have real-
ized/felt that math isn’t just BLACK & WHITE and can cause quite creative out-
comes/discussions” (Capitals in original).
Teachers also made pedagogical connections. “I learned in this module that ask-
ing for examples from everyday life to students makes them think, discuss with each
other, form opinions, learn more deeply, and remember more about that lesson. In
this way math lessons can be serious and fun in the same time, and every student in
the class is engaged in discussion.” “I realize that it is another way of teaching math,
not boring and strict how I had in school when I was younger, but funny, inspira-
tional, imaginative; a pleasure to listen to everyone’s opinions and make your own
opinion about the subject. I feel that this course will remain deeply in my memory,
and it will make me think twice when wanting to teach a stereotypical lesson.”

2.2 Task 2: A Serpent with Corners

This task uses an excerpt from A Serpent with Corners (see below), from Lewis
Carroll’s (1885) A Tangled Tale. We selected it based on “its length (short enough
given our time constraints) and due to its high mathematical potential” (Gadanidis,
Simmt, Sterenberg & Tumanov, 2004). Gadanidis et al. (2004, p. 64) note that: “As
we read and discussed the story, we noticed that the flow of the story was interrupted
at places. For example, the description of the rectangle as being ‘oblong’ caused us
to question whether this referred to a rectangular shape with length greater than
width, or whether is also referred to elliptical shapes. It seemed to us that such an
interruption, such an ambiguity, was desirable, as it caused us to imagine alternatives
and to wonder about a variety of contexts for the problem stated by Balbus in the
story.”
“A friend of mine has a flower-garden – a very pretty one, though no great size – How big
is it?” said Hugh.
120 G. Gadanidis and I. Namukasa

“That’s what you have to find out!” Balbus gaily replied. “All I tell you is that it is
oblong in shape – just half a yard longer than its width – and that a gravelwalk, one yard
wide, begins at one corner and runs all around it.”
“Joining onto itself?” said Hugh.
“Not joining onto itself, young man. Just before doing that, it turns a corner, and runs
around the garden again, alongside of the first portion, and then inside that again, winding
in and in, and each lap touching the last one, till it has used up the whole of the area.”
“Like a serpent with corners?” said Lambert.
“Exactly so. And if you walk the whole length of it, to the last inch, keeping in the centre
of the path, it’s exactly two miles and half a furlong. Now, while you find out the length and
breadth of the garden, I’ll see if I can think out that sea-water puzzle.”
“You said it was a flower-garden?” Hugh inquired as Balbus was leaving the room.
“I did,” said Balbus.
“Where do the flowers grow?” said Hugh. But Balbus thought it best not to hear the
question. He left the boys to their problem, and, in the silence of his own room, set himself
to unravel Hugh’s mechanical paradox.

This task is also presented as an applet (shown in Fig. 6) where variations of the
problem may be explored. This usually a difficult task for many teachers, requiring
sustained attention to mathematical processes and an exploration of multiple solu-
tion strategies. The task lends itself to algebraic and geometric solution processes,
as well as a trial-and-error approach. The geometric solution typically has a sig-
nificant aesthetic effect on teachers, due its simplicity and beauty. The geometric
solution relates the length of the path to the area of the garden. For example, for a
5 m × 6 m garden (see Fig. 7), the area is 30 m2 and the length of the path is 30 m,
which makes sense in retrospect as the path has to travel through all of the “squares”
of the garden.

Fig. 6 “A serpent with corners” applet

122 G. Gadanidis and I. Namukasa

Fig. 8 A growing pattern

Fig. 9 Noticing that the sum of the first N odd numbers is N × N or N2

what remains the same) in the diagram, others on what changes in the total number
of tiles at each iteration and yet others at what changes from the previous iteration
to the next. Those who focus on the patterns in the diagram, say that the corner tile
is constant while the vertical and horizontal arms are of equal length, a length that
begins at the second step and increases by one tile. These teachers come up with the
observation that for the 20th iteration, 1 + 2(20 − 1) tiles will be needed. This focus
stresses what a constant and what n − 1 in a function might mean geometrically.
When teachers focus on the changes in the iterations they soon see that the num-
ber of tiles needed for the 20 iterations is the sum of the first 20 odd numbers. In
finding the sum, teachers look for patterns and try to generalize. They attend to the
number patterns. They notice that odd numbers can be paired up so that 1 + 39 = 40,
3+37 = 40, 5+35 = 40, and so forth. This leads to solution and to a pattern that can
be generalized and expressed algebraically. When they discover that the number of
tiles needed for 20 iterations is 400, they notice that 202 = 400. This leads to further
explorations where they notice that 4 tiles are needed for 2 iterations, 9 tiles for 3
iterations, 16 tiles for 4 iterations, and so forth. They discover that the sum of the
first n odd numbers is n2 . Using tiles of different colors they represent this visually,
as shown in Fig. 9.
When we look at the pattern in Fig. 9 we experience a sense of aesthetic fit,
a sense of mathematical pleasure. The image of the Ls fitting together draws our
attention; it says, “look at me”; to use Heidegger’ (1927–1964) phrasing, it calls
us to think. We sense the pleasure of seeing the connection between the odd num-
bers, their geometric representations as Ls, the visual proof that the sum of the first
ten odd numbers is 102 , and the general solution of finding the sum of the first
n odd numbers. Experiences such as these help us appreciate the beauty of math-
Teacher Tasks for Mathematical Insight and Reorganization 123

ematics and the pleasure of mathematical thinking and insight. It is such experi-
ences that teachers need in order to develop an understanding and an appreciation of
mathematics.
Teachers also begin to use the geometry of data and numbers to think about al-
gebraic and general expressions. Their thinking is re-organized to include visual
proofs. If this type of visual proof works for finding the sum of odd numbers, teach-
ers wonder whether there is a visual proof for finding the sum of the natural numbers
(i.e., 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + . . .). Figure 10 shows a visual representation of the sum
of the first ten natural numbers. If they draw the diagonal line shown in Fig. 10, they
can see that the sum (or the number of tiles needed to represent the first ten natural
numbers) is a little more than the half the area of the 10 × 10 square. Then they
consider how they might express this algebraically.
Engaging elementary school teachers with algebra is necessary, as algebra re-
mains an Achilles heel of mathematics education. Some research indicates that
the teaching and learning of algebra typically focuses on symbolic algebra over
other representations (Borba & Confrey, 1996; Kieran, 1992; Kieran & Sfard, 1999;
Nathan & Koedinger, 2000). Consequently, though they learn to manipulate al-
gebraic expressions, students do not seem to be able to use them as tools for
meaningful mathematical communication (Kieran & Sfard, 1999). The majority of
students do not acquire any real sense of algebra and, early on in their learning of
algebra, give up trying to understand algebra and resort to memorizing rules and

Fig. 10 A visual representation of the sum of the first ten natural numbers
124 G. Gadanidis and I. Namukasa

procedures (Kieran, 1992:, Kieran & Sfard, 1999). Kieran & Sfard (1999) suggest
that the rules of algebra may appear arbitrary to many students because “all too often
they are unable to see the mathematical objects to which these rules are supposed
to refer” (p. 2). Suggestions for providing students with meaningful experiences in
algebra learning include student exploration of multiple representations of algebra
concepts (Borba & Confrey, 1996, pp. 319–320; Kieran & Sfard, 1999, p. 3). It is
also suggested that the traditional approach to teaching algebra, which typically
starts with symbolic representation and decontextualized manipulation and later
moves to visual and graphical representation and problem-based contexts, should
be reversed (Borba & Confrey, 1996, pp. 319–320). Graphs, and other visual rep-
resentations, which are often treated as a mere add-on to algebra could become the
foundation of algebra teaching and learning (Kieran & Sfard, 1999, p. 3).

2.4 Task 4: Making 10

One of the skills that students develop in the elementary grades is that of finding
missing numbers (adapted from Gadanidis (2004)). For example, they learn and
practice finding missing numbers in equations such as the following:
• −− + 4 = 15
• 12 −Y = 5
• 3×−− = 45
• −− ÷ 5 = 3
Although it’s important for students to practice and learn the skill of finding
missing numbers in equations, the concept on its own is not a big idea in junior
grade mathematics, as variables are portrayed as only representing an unknown.
One way to make the learning of this skill more meaningful mathematically is to
relate it to bigger ideas about equations and variables, where variables represent
changing quantities.
In this task, teachers explore the equation −− +−− = 10. They roll a die to get
the first number and then they calculate the second number. They write the pairs
of numbers in table and in ordered pair form (see Fig. 11), and plot the ordered
pairs on a grid (see Fig. 12). Then they repeat this for −− +−− = 6 and −− +−− = 4.
Teachers express surprise that the ordered pairs line up (see Fig. 12). “I had the ‘aha’

Fig. 11 Ordered pairs

Teacher Tasks for Mathematical Insight and Reorganization 125

Fig. 12 Graphs

Fig. 13 The pleasure of making ten

feeling when I saw the diagonal line pattern on the graph. That was my favorite
part.” Teachers also notice that the graph of −− +−− = 4 could be used as a visual
proof of 6 + −2 = 4 and 5 + −1 = 4. That is, (6, −2) and (5, −1) line up with (4,0),
(3,1), (2,2) and (1,3). They also explore equations whose graphs are not parallel to
the ones in Fig. 12 and whose graphs were not straight lines. Such mathematical
connections appear to be pleasing to teachers. “I loved the adding/graphing we did
and how you could take problems and branch out . . . it really makes something in
my mind click.”
126 G. Gadanidis and I. Namukasa

The applet version of the task (see Fig. 13) starts with a poem that tells the story
of the task from a student’s point of view. It also offers opportunities to change the
coefficients in linear, parabolic and hyperbolic functions and notice the dynamic
effect on the graph.
This task draws teacher attention to the difference between a variable as a place
holder and a variable as a changing quantity. In a typical missing number exercise,
like B + 3 = 12, the variable is a place holder for the missing number. In an equation
like X + Y = 10, there is a situation of co-variation, where the variable is not only
expected to change, but the change in the value of one of the variables also affects
the value of the second variable.

3 Math Therapy

As we offer our mathematics-for-teachers program for inservice and preservice

teachers, we also collect data from the learned/felt reflections done at the end of
each session, the online discussions that follow sessions, and from the math essays
they write at the end of the course. We conduct multi-layered, structured content
analysis of the data, with the content analysis adhering to the “stage model of qual-
itative content analysis” defined by Berg (2004, p. 286). We do not have the space
to report in detail on the method and on the findings. However, we can report some
of the themes that are emerging.

3.1 Frustration

Many of the mathematics activities were novel experiences for the teachers. Un-
like typical mathematics teaching where the teacher seeks to make learning easier
by organizing classroom experiences in small, bite-sized pieces, the tasks we used
sought to create opportunities for teachers to problem solve and pose new questions
as well as to think in mathematical ways. However, solving non-routine mathemat-
ical problems and drawing resources from one’s conceptual understanding (rather
than solely from one’s practiced procedures) in a mathematics setting, especially for
people with little experience doing so, can be a frustrating experience. Teachers ex-
pressed a level of frustration, especially with early course experiences, as reflected
in the comments below.
I’m still frustrated by my inability to see the conclusion or the point. I can’t seem to push
my thinking beyond the exercise to the solution, on my own.
As they work through more tasks, teachers’ frustration seems to dissipate.
My feelings of frustration are gradually turning into curiosity as I begin to think about new
ways of approaching math.
Teacher Tasks for Mathematical Insight and Reorganization 127

3.2 Attention and Insight

As teachers engage with the mathematics tasks, they began to experience moments
of insight. These were pleasurable moments that served as “remuneration” for the
effort and attention that they gave to the problems.
. . . it really makes something in my mind click.
I had a lot of moments where things just popped!
When a student in our class made a discovery, our discussion reached its most enthusiastic
and exciting points.

3.3 Collaboration

Although at times teachers were asked to think about a problem individually before
attempting it as a group, the pervasive atmosphere was one of collaboration. Being
able to work with others helped reduce stress with doing mathematics and exposed
teachers to the mathematical thinking and problems solving strategies of others.
I felt really comfortable working in my group. It is easy to experiment with different things
with other people versus working alone, and more ideas seem to come out.
The most important thing I learned so far is how important it is to share ideas/experience
with others! In this course, I thought I would learn from ONE professor, but instead of one,
I learned from many.

3.4 Time

Teachers were given ample class time to work on problems in a low stress atmo-
sphere. In fact, most of the problem solving was done in class, and take-home as-
signments mostly consisted of course readings rather than mathematics problems.
I liked that we were asked what other methods can we come up with to test right-
handedness/left etc. Then we were given time in class to go through and actually try ideas
– it’s been so long since I’ve had an experience like that in school. It was relaxing.

3.5 The Complexity of Mathematics

Most elementary mathematics teachers view mathematics as a subject of procedures

for getting correct answers. As they worked through the mathematics-for-teachers
tasks, many teachers started expressing more elaborate views of mathematics.
Mathematics is a very complex subject that can be looked at from various angles.
Infinity can be negative? What? I have never heard of a discussion of infinity or anything
else “mysterious” in a math class (except this one).
128 G. Gadanidis and I. Namukasa

Things have recently all come together for me regarding math. I see connections in and to
math everywhere. Math has started to consume my thoughts.
Math is looked upon as a very dry subject, because there is the idea that there is no creativity
in it, unlike English, or drama. On the contrary thanks to this course we have been shown
that this is not the case.

3.6 Teaching Mathematics

At the beginning of the mathematics-for-teachers program, teachers expressed ap-

prehensions about mathematics and a lack of desire to teach it. As the course pro-
gressed, preservice teachers started expressing an excitement for teaching mathe-
matics.
It was so interesting to see how attitudes towards teaching mathematics and mathematics in
general changed from the first class to the end of the term. Initially, there were numerous
concerns about one’s ability to teach math and fears about adequacy. However, many of
these concerns often changed to feelings of excitement.
I faced my “math demons” and actually grew to enjoy a subject I thought would be my
nemesis forever.

3.7 Beliefs and Practice

Although teachers expressed perceptions of mathematics and of teaching and learn-

ing mathematics changed significantly as the course progressed, these new percep-
tions were also accompanied with apprehensions that they would be able to put them
into practice.
This class has completely shattered my understanding of math and how to teach math. It
makes me feel that teaching math is going to be difficult – or at least more challenging than
I previously thought. There are so many ideas – I feel overwhelmed.

Teachers in the mathematics-for-teachers program overwhelmingly expressed

that experiencing the course helped change their view of mathematics and of teach-
ing and learning mathematics. In fact, the concept of doing mathematics as a ther-
apeutic experience came from the first offering of the program. By the middle of
the first course offering, students started referring to our problem solving sessions
as “math therapy.” However, we do not expect that a single course experience can
create comprehensive or permanent changes in teachers’ perceptions of mathemat-
ics and mathematics teaching. Neither can we assume that such an experience will
significantly affect teachers’ classroom practice; teaching is also greatly affected
by accepted teaching practices in the wider school community (Buzeika, 1999;
Ensor, 1998) and by conflicting priorities (Skott, 1999). However, our research in-
dicates that such mathematics-for-teachers experiences are important starting points
for change in teachers’ perceptions and classroom practice.
Teacher Tasks for Mathematical Insight and Reorganization 129

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Teaching and Understanding Mathematical
Modelling through Fermi-Problems

Andrea Peter-Koop

While there is a large body of research on mathematical problem solving and mod-
elling at primary school level, the mathematical modelling process itself has not
been given much attention in research. In order to support and identify mathemati-
cal modelling processes, Fermi problems have been used in a classroom based study
with third and fourth graders. In contrast to standard word problems that frequently
just require the application of one or two simple algorithms and therefore do not
provide information on how to find a mathematical model, Fermi problems provide
the necessary complexity for studying authentic mathematical modelling. Video-
tapes of small group work in a grade four classroom provided the data basis. The
analysis of the classroom data suggests that word problems with a high level of com-
plexity can be solved in sensible and appropriate ways by third and fourth graders.
The Fermi problems in this context served as “model-eliciting tasks”, because the
required modelling process necessitates multiple modelling cycles with multiple
ways of thinking about givens, goals, and solution paths.

1 Introduction

Numerous studies in the last two decades have highlighted the difficulties students
(and teachers) experience when dealing with real-world related word problems (e.g.
see de Lange, 1998; Reed, 1999; Verschaffel, Greer, & De Corte, 2000). In this
context, it is important to acknowledge that mathematical applications in real-world
situations are by no means trivial – the contrary is the case. Frequently it is the com-
plexity of the real world situation that provides various challenges for the solution
process. A team of future teachers were utterly surprised when encountering the dif-
ficulties that fourth graders experienced when asked to solve a “rather easy” problem
from the text book that asked them to calculate the amount and cost of wallpaper
needed to decorate a child’s bedroom while a drawing of the room including the

A. Peter-Koop
Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Oldenburg, Germany
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
132 A. Peter-Koop

dimensions of the walls, windows, door and the price of the wallpaper per roll was
provided. Several children failed because they did not realise that wallpaper comes
in rolls and has a standard width and length per roll. Others forgot to subtract the
areas of the windows and door or failed to work out the corresponding relationship
between the area in the room and the rolls of wallpaper required.
However, children’s difficulties in solving real-world related word problems are
not only related to complex, non-routine problems but already occur with respect
to so called “routine problems” that involve the application of a simple algorithm.
Due to difficulties with the comprehension of the text and the identification of the
“mathematical core” of the problem, primary school children frequently engage in
a rather arbitrary and random operational combination of the numbers given in the
text (e.g. see Bauersfeld, 1991; Verschaffel, De Corte, & Lasure, 1994). In doing
so, they fail to acknowledge the relationship between the given data and the real-
world context. Failure in solving these word problems is obviously not related to a
lack of practice. In a quantitative study, Renkl and Stern (1994) who analysed the
data of 568 students from a total of 33 German primary classrooms found that the
success rate in solving traditional word problems is not significantly improved by
repeated practice. But what makes even rather simple real-world related problems
so difficult?
Real-world problem solving involves the “mathematisation” of a non-
mathematical situation, that is:
• the construction of a mathematical model with respect to the real-world situation,
• the finding (calculation) of the unknown, and
• the transfer of the mathematical result derived from the mathematical model to
the real-world situation.
Many teachers find and also research suggests (e.g. see Winter, 1994) that the
greatest difficulty in this process relates to the identification of an appropriate math-
ematical model, which requires context knowledge of the real-world situation as
well as creativity
However, the last stage of this modelling process, the transfer of the (arithmeti-
cal) result to the real-world situation, also presents children with unexpected prob-
lems. Verschaffel and De Corte (1997) for example found that fifth graders fre-
quently believe that “37.5 jeeps” is the correct answer to the following problem:
“300 soldiers have to be transported by jeep to their training site. Each jeep can hold
8 soldiers. How many jeeps are needed?” This answer (the arithmetically correct
result of the division 300/8) is furthermore resistant to correction, because children
tend to persist with this answer, even when they are questioned about its sense.
Checking the result of the division 300/8 = 37.5 confirms their understanding that
the answer “37.5 jeeps are needed for transportation” is the arithmetically correct
result, and hence the right answer. In this context, Freudenthal (1984) points out the
construction of a “magical compatibility” with respect to word problems. Because
students frequently fail to relate the fictive content of the word problem to their real-
life experiences, from their point of view the solution of a word problem does not
need to match reality (Verschaffel, De Corte, & Lasure, 1999).
Teaching and Understanding Mathematical Modelling through Fermi-Problems 133

The majority of previous publications on word problem solving in primary math-

ematics either focus on the quantitative analysis of teaching and learning difficulties
or the description of problem types, their level of difficulty and/or their potential
for the teaching and learning of mathematical modelling (e.g. Silver, 1995). The
mathematical modelling process itself however has not been given much atten-
tion. Pehkonen (1991) pointed out the need for the investigation of problem solving
strategies and modelling processes in primary mathematics classrooms in order to
complement our scientific knowledge which is currently mainly based on clinical
investigations.
This chapter draws on the results of a 4-year-study involving future teachers that
was initiated with the concern that little is known about primary students’ real world
problem solving strategies and modelling processes as related to the dynamics of
group problem solving in an authentic classroom setting considering mixed abilities
of the students as well as the variety of their socio-cultural experiences. Fermi-
problems provided the context for the teaching experiment in grade 3 and grade 4
classrooms. However, before details of this teaching experiment, its specific tasks
and its results are introduced, it is important to reflect our understanding of the
modelling process.

2 Models of the Modelling Process

Heymann (2003) portrays the concept of mathematical modelling in his book on the
role of mathematics for general education as follows:
“The concept of modelling can describe the applicability of mathematics and its
relation to the “real” world in a very general and, at the same time, quite elementary
way. Whenever mathematics is applied to describe and clarify objective situations
and to solve real problems, a mathematical model is constructed (or, recourse is
taken to an already existing model). Assertions about the relevant situation or solu-
tions to the problem under examination resulting from the use of the model are not
valid in isolation from the model. They are in need of interpretation and must be
checked for their appropriateness” (p. 130).
With respect to the need for interpretation of the solution, the dominance of its
arithmetical correctness for primary students has been outlined above.
In order to help students with respect to solving word problems, mathematics
teachers often promote a systematic three-step-approach: find the question – do
the calculation – give the answer (Fig. 1). This scheme is closely related to the
four stages of the mathematical problem solving process described by Pólya (1957,
pp. 5–16): (1) Understanding the problem, (2) Devising a plan, (3) Carrying out
the plan, and (4) Looking back. Based on Pólya’s distinction, in German curricu-
lum documents the modelling process is frequently modelled itself in the following
rather simplified way. The processes represented by the three arrows (modelling,
data processing in the model, interpretation) correspond to the stages 2 to 4.
In order to understand why many students experience difficulties with traditional
word problems that often “only” require the application of a taught procedure or
134 A. Peter-Koop

modelling
real-world situation mathematical model

data processing
in the model

implications for the interpretation

real - world situation mathematical solution

FACTUAL DOMAIN CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN

Fig. 1 Structure of the modelling process

modelling
mathematical real-world representation
problem
manipulation
interpretation
mathematical so- new/modified real-world
lution situation
CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN FACTUAL DOMAIN

Fig. 2 Structure of the visualisation/illustration process

algorithm, it may be helpful to investigate on which basis and experiential back-

ground primary school children develop mathematical models.
In early childhood mathematics, students frequently do not experience mathe-
matics as a tool to solve real-world problems; mathematics itself is visualised by
representing sets of various objects (marbles, teddies etc.) by numbers. Hence, the
structure of the modelling process (Fig. 1) can also be modelled in the reverse di-
rection as a visualisation/ illustration process (Fig. 2).
Simple addition problems such as 3 + 4 for example, are frequently illustrated
with a little story: Anna has 3 marbles and Peter has 4. How many marbles do they
have together? In the classroom situation, Anna’s 3 marbles and Peter’s 4 marbles
are combined and counted. The combining of the two sets with 3 and 4 objects to one
set with a total of 7 objects, i.e. the manipulation of a real-world situation in order to
create a new or modified real-world situation, illustrates the addition process. Thus,
objects, not numbers, are represented first. In this context, mathematical modelling
can be understood as a reverse procedure to trusted and subconscious processes of
visualisation/illustration developed in junior primary mathematics. Traditional word
problems hence may not be the best context for developing mathematical modelling
skills, because often the particular wording of the problem already suggests the
choice of operation to be connected with the given numbers, thus the relationship
between the real-world context and mathematics does not need to be explored. In
order to foster and highlight cooperative mathematical modelling processes Fermi
problems have been used in the classroom based study.
Teaching and Understanding Mathematical Modelling through Fermi-Problems 135

3 Teaching and Learning Mathematical Problem Solving

This section describes how Fermi problems provided the context for the study as
well as the methodological and organisational details of the teaching experiment
conducted in a grade 4 classroom in an urban schools in a city in north-western
Germany. Furthermore, different student solutions will be introduced and analysed.

3.1 Fermi Problems: Context for Developing Mathematical

Modelling Skills

Enrico Fermi (1901–1954), who in 1938 won the Nobel Prize for physics for his
work on nuclear processes, was known by his students for posing open problems
that could only be solved by giving a reasonable estimate. Fermi problems such as
“How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?” share the characteristic that the
initial response of the problem solver is that the problem could not possibly be
solved without recourse to further reference material. However, while individuals
frequently reject these problems as too difficult, Clarke and McDonough (1989)
pointed out that “pupils, working in cooperative groups, come to see that the knowl-
edge and processes to solve the problem already reside within the group” (p. 22).
The following criteria guided the development/choice of problems used in the re-
search project:
• the problems should present challenges and intrinsically motivate cooperation
and interaction with peers,
• the wording of the problems should not contain numbers in order to avoid that
the children immediately start calculating without first analysing the context of
the given situation, and to challenge students to engage in estimation and rough
calculation and/or the collection of relevant data,
• the problems should be based on a selection of real-world related situations that
include reference contexts for third and fourth graders, and
• the problems should be open-beginning as well as open-ended real-world related
tasks that require decision making with respect to the modelling process.
Overall ten such problems were either selected from the literature or developed
by future teachers in a methods course and then trialled in a pilot study. The fol-
lowing four problems met the above criteria best and provoked mathematically rich
solutions. Therefore they were chosen for the main study and posed in grade 3 and
grade 4 mathematics classes during the teaching experiments:
• How much paper does your school use in 1 month?
• How many children are as heavy as a polar bear? (van den Heuvel-Panhuizen,
(1996)
• Your class is planning a trip to visit the Cologne Cathedral. Is it better to travel
by bus or by train?
136 A. Peter-Koop

• There is a 3 km tailback on the A1 motorway between Muenster and Bremen.

How many vehicles are caught in this traffic jam?
The traffic problem which was taped from the radio traffic announcements one
morning fascinated the students most and stimulated heated discussions and impres-
sive mathematical thinking. It was therefore selected for discussion in this chapter.

3.2 The Classroom-Based Study

This section focuses on the conduction of the teaching experiment in a grade 4

classroom and offers a detailed description of the students’ solutions to this problem.

3.2.1 Introducing the Problem

The lessons conducted as part of the study all followed the same procedure: After
the presentation the problem a brief round of discussion was allowed in order to
make sure that all students had understood the task. The class then was split into
small groups of four or five children. In this particular grade 4 class the students
were invited to form their own groups which led to a group formation primarily
based on friendship, gender and similar ability. The members of two of these groups
(one male, one female) were also so called “low achievers”.
Equipment and literature for the data collection (such as scales, information on
bus/train fares, books on animals, measuring tapes etc.) were held available for im-
mediate use according to specific requests by the students. Each lesson took 90 min.
Up to 60 min were allowed for the group work (half of this time was frequently
needed for the data collection and background research) and the remaining time
was used for the introduction and discussion of the group’s solution. It was made
clear to the groups that their work would be presented to the whole class and that
each group member was expected to be able to describe and explain the group’s
solution. A worksheet was provided for the groups to write down their work and
overhead copies of these worksheets helped the students to explain their work as
well as to relate to the results and strategies of the other groups during the strategy
conferences (see 3.2.3) following the group work. The students were encouraged
to generate tables, make drawings (see Fig. 3), or do little experiments in order to
foster their solution processes.

3.2.2 Data Collection and Analysis

While solving the problem, each group was videotaped. In order to ensure sufficient
audio quality, the groups were working in different rooms supervised by two future
teachers – one being responsible for the audio and video recording, the other acted
in the teacher’s role observing and supporting the group with material requested and
organisational advise while not interfering with their solution process. Small group
138 A. Peter-Koop

3.2.3 Strategy Conferences and Assessment

For the presentation and discussion of the groups’ results, the whole class came back
together in their maths room for strategy conferences at the end of the lesson. These
strategy conferences were also videotaped and subsequently analysed.
It is interesting to note that young children obviously prefer what seems to be
an unstructured approach which often only during the presentation of their work
to the whole class becomes systematic (Peschel, 1996). Hence, the strategy con-
ferences lessons provided substantial opportunity for the students to reflect on and
compare their work with other approaches. In this context, the fact that there was al-
ways more than one reasonable and acceptable solution only initially presented the
children with irritation and led to controversial discussions. After that, they demon-
strated increasing confidence and enjoyment with respect to the challenges set by
the different problems.
While, traditionally, the assessment if the problem solution is seen as the respon-
sibility of the teacher, the strategy conferences also provide a suitable forum for peer
assessment. In this context each student has two roles: on the one hand as a group
member he/she shares responsibility regarding the appropriate solution of the given
task and its presentation. On the other hand, each student also acts as a critical and
informed evaluator with respect to the work of the other groups and hence has to
argue from both perspectives. In our observations, this led to friendly and construc-
tive criticism while successful solutions and innovative approaches were honoured
with praise.

3.2.4 Results of the Group Work in a Grade 4 Class

Immediately after the video recordings of the group work episodes, the future teach-
ers involved expressed the impression that the work in the groups was “rather
chaotic” and “haphazard”. However, the groups’ working sheets suggest, that most
groups – including the low achievers – were highly successful in finding an ap-
propriate solution to the question of how many cars would be caught in the 3 km
traffic jam. While the future teachers were clearly impressed with the accuracy
of the children’s estimates, at the same time most of them were doubtful as to
whether the group members would be able to present and explain their solution
to the whole class. As it turned out, with the exception of one mixed-ability group,
all groups from this grade 4 class managed to explain their solution process. In-
terestingly enough, it was the group (group B) who illustrated the situation in a
drawing (see Fig. 3) of their understanding of a traffic jam acknowledging a one
metre separation gap between the vehicles.
Figure 4 in contrast shows the work sheet of group C. The solution of this four
supposedly low achieving boys clearly reflects the ideas and strategies they have
developed. The first part of the group work was dedicated to measuring the length
of different vehicles in the school car park and the direct school neighbourhood. In
our experience most groups preferred to work with authentic data rather than basing
their work on estimations.
Teaching and Understanding Mathematical Modelling through Fermi-Problems 139

Fig. 4 Solution of group C (four low-achieving boys)

After initial difficulties rounding the calculated 26.93 m length of five cars to a
more manageable number they struggled for some time to understand the propor-
tional relationship between the number of cars and their added lengths. The derived
number of cars (500) they finally multiplied by two because they thought the mo-
torway in the section between the two cities had two lanes.
140 A. Peter-Koop

Fig. 5 Solution of group D (four low-achieving girls)

The four low-achieving girls in group D started their group work by the recording
of their individual estimates of the cars caught in the 3 km traffic jam (see Fig. 5).
However, they realised the need to mathematically validate these estimates in order
to find out which is most accurate. Like the other groups they collected data by
measuring different vehicles in the school car park. When adding their length they
realise that their total length was about 16 m and conclude that one vehicle is roughly
4 m long. Having established an estimate of the length of one car they then tried to
find a number that multiplied with 4 equals 3,000. Based on their knowledge of
times tables they attempted to determine that number – first trying 800 which was
too big, then 600 which turned out to be too little, then 700 and finally 750. One girl
insisted that the motorway between Muenster and Bremen had 3 lanes, hence they
multiplied 750 by 3 and arrive at the answer 2,250 cars.
While groups B and C managed to mathematically model the given situation
I a way that lead to plausible – yet still not perfect solutions as the discussions
during the strategy conference suggested – the three boys and two girls of group A
(a mixed ability group) did not manage to find such a solution and were quite aware
Teaching and Understanding Mathematical Modelling through Fermi-Problems 141

of that fact. Their answer was 51 cars – a number they realised to be definitely too
small. However, several reviews of their solution process including some stimulus
from the future teacher looking after this group did not lead them to realise the
mistake in their mathematical model (see Fig. 6). They started by repeatedly adding
the lengths of different vehicles they had measured and found that this was not
an optimal approach when they found the length of 17 cars to be roughly 115 m.
Through multiplication they then tried to reach 3,000 m – firstly multiplying by
9 (2,035 m) and then by 3 (3,105 m). However, while they were multiplying the
metres, unlike group C they did not recognise the proportional relationship between
the total length and number of the vehicles. Hence, they considered 17 cars to be
the number of cars in one lane and multiply that by 3 which gives them a total of 51
cars, because they know that the stretch of motorway has three lanes.

Fig. 6 Calculation of group A (a mixed ability group of three boys and two girls)

In order to solve the traffic problem in a satisfactory way for the whole class,
the strategy conference was of crucial importance. During the introduction and
discussion of the different solutions by the four groups several aspects became clear:
When being confronted with the group C’s solution the members of group A realised
their mistake, while the boys of group C learned from group A and group D that the
respective motorway stretch has three lanes. Group D was confronted with the crit-
icism that their data sample did not include trucks or caravans and therefore would
not authentically model the types of vehicles using a motorway. Furthermore, all
three groups realised the potential for improvement of their solutions when they
saw the drawing of group B (see Fig. 3) that suggested to add 1 m to each vehicle to
acknowledge the distance between the vehicles in the model.
The depth and quality of the classroom discussion and the structured and well
explained introduction of the solutions by the groups came as surprise for the
future teachers involved in the study. After the completion of the group work
142 A. Peter-Koop

they expressed their perception of the group work to a large extent as “chaotic,
unstructured and erratic” and their doubts as to whether the group members would
be able to present and explain their solutions and critically assess the solution pro-
cesses of their peers. The opposite held true.

4 Understanding the Modelling Process

The interpretative analyses to a large degree confirm the future teachers initial im-
pressions. In general, the sequential analyses of the transcripts reveal a rather aim-
less and unstructured approach. Most groups did not develop and then execute a
solution plan as suggested by Pólya (1957). Hence, the modelling processes did
not match the strategy taught in class (question–calculation–answer). However, un-
derstanding the problem (the first stage described by Pólya) obviously played an
important role in the solution, because extensive discussions of the real-word situ-
ation and related personal experiences generally preceded the mathematical mod-
elling process. Furthermore, the analyses frequently identified a slowly developing
process in which hypotheses were generated, tested, confirmed or neglected while
arithmetic results were interpreted leading to the development of further solution
ideas. The literature, however, suggests only one modelling cycle (see Fig. 1). The
interpretative analyses in contrast suggested an interweaving of the factual and the
conceptual domain. But the transcripts of the group work turned out to be too de-
tailed to enable identification of the underlying general structure of the students’
modelling processes. Therefore, the transcripts were condensed in the format of
episode plans (see Fig. 8 on the following page) in order to highlight the stages
characterising the mathematical modelling approach. These episode plans indicate
that the different stages outlined in the literature are revisited several times. Figure 7
shows the modelling process demonstrated by group C which is representative of the
analysis of other group work episodes.
The analysis of the classroom based data suggests that word problems with a
high level of complexity (such as Fermi problems) can be solved in sensible and ap-
propriate ways by third and fourth graders. While in traditional problem solving at
primary school level only one modelling cycle is needed, Fermi problems can serve
as “model-eliciting tasks” (Lesh & Doerr, 2000), because the required modelling
process extends beyond the application of a standard algorithm and necessitates
multiple modelling cycles with multiple ways of thinking about givens, goals, and
solution paths (Bell, 1993). Lesh and Doerr point out that model development is
learning. In this context, the group work data shown above indicates that the out-
come of the modelling activity is a conceptual tool that exceeds the solution of a
specific problem. During their solution process, the four fourth graders of group C
(supposedly low achievers) developed new mathematical knowledge. Their working
(see Fig. 4) as well as the interpretations of the group work documents that they have
discovered the concept of proportionality in using proportional calculation in order
Teaching and Understanding Mathematical Modelling through Fermi-Problems 143

How many vehicles are modelling lengths of the vehicles

in a 3 km traffic jam? as representatives
addition of
the lengths
interpretation
number of cars is sum of the lengths of the cars is
not large enough smaller than that of the traffic jam
modelling
lengths of the vehicles
as representatives
proportional
calculation
interpretation
number of cars in one sum of the lengths of the vehicles
lane is equal to that of the traffic jam
modelling number of cars as represen-
tative for one lane

doubling
total number of cars in interpretation
the traffic jam number of cars in two lanes

FACTUAL DOMAIN CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN

Fig. 7 Graphical representation of the modelling process of group C

to determine the number of cars in a 3 km tailback based on their estimate that five
cars occupy ∼30 m. In addition, the four girls in group D who were also considered
as low achievers by their teacher, discovered the concept of mean, which to that
point had not been taught, when reflecting the result of the addition of the length of
four different vehicles.
The results of this study agree with the findings from the analyses of secondary
students’ modelling processes by Lesh and Doerr (2000) who highlighted “the need
for teachers to examine students’ developing models in order to assess student
knowledge and understanding and to foster continued model development in ways
that evolve as the student models evolve” (p. 375). Qualitative analyses of the fu-
ture teachers’ learning processes document that they had profoundly underestimated
primary students’ mathematical modelling competencies. In addition, this study re-
vealed multi-cyclic modelling processes in contrast to a single modelling cycle as
suggested in the literature. Hence, it can be concluded that mathematical modelling
processes should be given more attention in mathematics teacher education as well
as mathematics education research.
144 A. Peter-Koop

Episode Plan “Traffic-Problem”

Preparation Phase
André reads out the problem again and the group decides to measure some cars in the school car park.
After returning to the classroom the lengths of different cars are noted on the worksheet.
1st Idea Phase
David and Peter argue, that the caravan can not be considered by itself – it needs a large car pulling it.
1st Calculation Phase
The lengths of the Mercedes and the caravan are added (11.35 m).
2nd Idea Phase
The children collect ideas as to what needs to be calculated and what other information could be
relevant for solving the problem. They decide to start by adding the measured lengths of the cars in the
car park.
2nd Calculation Phase
The lengths of the 4 cars and the Mercedes and caravan together are added (26.93 m).
1st Reflection/Recording Phase
The future teacher helps the children to deter-mine the number of the vehicles (5)
3rd Idea Phase
The students think about how the arithmetic result can be related to the total length of the traffic jam.
2nd Reflection/Recording Phase
The total length of the 5 vehicles is noted.
3rd Calculation Phase
The students want to round the result (26.93 m). David suggests to round it up to 30.90 m
4th Idea Phase
Once again the students try to make a relation to the length of the traffic jam.
3rd Reflection/Recording Phase
The future teacher summarises their thinking and the according interim results so far.
5th Idea Phase
David suggests to double the determined length of 5 cars and to round this result.
4th Calculation Phase
David and Ralf calculate 2 x 30.90 m.
4th Reflection/Recording Phase
They decide to write down that the total length of 10 cars is 61.80 m.
6th Idea Phase
The students try to find out how to get to 3000 m based on the 60 m that they have calculated so far.
5th Reflection/Recording Phase
The future teacher repeats that the total length of 5 cars is 30 metres and that of 10 cars 60 metres.
5th Calculation Phase
They continue to calculate the total length of 15 cars (90 m) ... 50 cars (300 m) and call out the results.
7th Idea Phase
David suggests to multiply the last result by 10, because he realised that 10 x 300 is 3000.
6th Calculation Phase
Together they multiply 10 times 50.
6th Reflection/Recording Phase
Prompted by the future teacher they write down their calculation (10 x 50 = 500 cars = 3000 m).
8th Idea Phase
André points out that the motorway has 2 lanes.
7th Calculation Phase
They multiply their result (500 cars) by 2.
7th Reflection/Recording Phase
David summarises again why they doubled their result and writes the answer sentence.

Fig. 8 Episode plan based on the transcript of the group work episode of group C
Teaching and Understanding Mathematical Modelling through Fermi-Problems 145

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A Research-Based Workshop Design
for Volume Tasks

Mariana Sáiz and Olimpia Figueras

Three tasks related to the concept of volume that are suitable for workshops de-
signed for inservice and preservice primary school teachers are described; in some
cases, they are useful for secondary school teachers as well. The tasks have been
selected in order to serve as a means to confront specific common errors and mis-
conceptions related to the concept of volume reported in the research literature on
mathematics education, and to support teachers in a process of rethinking about
their knowledge of this concept. For each one of the tasks an explanation of why it
was selected is included and the difficulties that can be brought to discussion and
the competencies that can be developed when carrying them out are described. The
way to perform the tasks is illustrated and their objectives are mentioned. Variants
and possible modifications of the tasks are included. The results of the experiences
applying the tasks are presented and what was observed during those applications is
discussed, so there is a foresight and a point of comparison for those who wish to
use them in the future.

1 Introduction

As is well known, volume is a mathematical concept included in the primary and

secondary school curricula of many countries. In our experience as teachers’ edu-
cators, we have found that school primary teachers pointed out volume as a difficult
concept to teach and to learn, together with fractions and division. One reason of

M. Sáiz
Professor, Learning and Teaching of sciences, humanities and arts, Universidad Pedagógica Na-
cional Mexico City, Mexico
O. Figueras
Researcher, Mathematics Education Department of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies
of the National Poly-technique Institute (Cinvestav), Mexico
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
148 M. Sáiz and O. Figueras

the complexity of the concept of volume is its several meanings; Piaget, Inhelder,
and Szeminska (1970) found three different meanings assigned by children to the
term volume. The first one is interior volume, for which these researchers use two
definitions that they consider equivalent: “the number of unit bricks in the construc-
tion” (p. 360) and “the amount of matter which is contained within the boundary
surfaces” (p. 359). The second meaning of volume is as occupied space that is “the
amount of space occupied by the object as a whole in relation to other objects round
about” (p. 360) and the third one is complementary volume, which refers to the
volume of the water displaced when a body is submerged. From our research ex-
perience, other meanings were found: volume as a number and volume as a quality
“associated with the bodies’ characteristic of having three dimensions” (Sáiz, 2003).
Another difficulty with the teaching and learning of volume is a tendency to use
this term as a synonym for capacity and the lack of relationship between the two con-
cepts except for that given at school by the equivalence between the measurement
units of capacity and volume. Further complexities of this mathematical concept are
linked to its physical nature that relates it with other properties of bodies such as
surface area, weight, and mass and the Archimedean principle.
From a solely mathematical point of view, the concept of volume entails a lot
of complications besides the difficulties related to any type of magnitude such as
length, area, capacity or weight; for example the effect on the volume by enlarging
or diminishing a body’s linear dimensions and others that will be mentioned later on.
In this chapter three tasks related to the concept of volume that are suggested
as appropriate for teachers attending basic training and upgrading courses are de-
scribed. The tasks have been proved effective in several workshops for inservice
teachers carried out in different places in Mexico. These tasks are also suited for
future teachers as will be discuss throughout this chapter.
When the tasks were designed or selected, the first objective was to obtain in-
formation for a research study about primary school teachers’ conceptions related
to the concept of volume. One aim at that moment was to make teachers “think
aloud” about volume’s features and properties. In the context of our professional
duties and commitment to give quality mathematics courses for inservice teachers,
a workshop about volume for inservice primary school teachers was offered. In-
formation obtained during the building up of the theoretical framework developed
for the aforementioned research was taken into account for the selection of tasks,
activities and problems that were to be included in the workshop.
In order to develop that framework, the phenomenological analysis applied by
Freudenthal (1983) to the concept of volume was considered and a review of litera-
ture about the teaching and learning of the concept of volume regarding children and
adults was carried out. In this process the more common errors and misconceptions
related to this concept were identified. Some of these are:
• Children have difficulties with two-dimensional representations of bodies; specifi-
cally with counting cubes that are not visible (Battista & Clements, 1996; Figueras
& Waldegg, 1986; Hart, Brown, Kerslake, Küchemann, & Ruddock, 1985)
• Children do not distinguish between weight and volume (Potari & Spiliotopoulou,
1996; Ricco & Vergnaud, 1983).
A Research-Based Workshop Design for Volume Tasks 149

• Children believe that enlarging k-times the linear magnitudes of a body enlarges
k-times its volume (Hart et al., 1985; Ricco & Vergnaud, 1983).
• Children and teachers do not distinguish between volume and capacity (Jan-
vier, 1994; Potari & Spiliotopoulou, 1996; Sáiz, 2002, 2005).
• Children and teachers do not distinguish between surface area and volume
(Enochs and Gabel, 1984; Janvier, 1997; Ricco & Vergnaud, 1983).
• Children and teachers believe that two bodies with equal surface area have the
same volume (Janvier, 1994, 1997; Sáiz & Figueras, 2000).
• Children and teachers relate the rise of liquid to weight rather than to volume
(Freudenthal, 1983; Potari & Spiliotopoulou, 1996; Sáiz & Figueras, 2000).
• Teachers have difficulties obtaining a body’s volume if it does not have a regular
form (Enochs and Gabel, 1984; Sáiz, 2003).
• Teachers have difficulties working with volume units and relating units of volume
and capacity (Enochs and Gabel, 1984; Sáiz, 2002, 2005).
In the course of selecting and designing the tasks, we noticed that a task suit-
able for making teachers “think aloud” was compatible with making them reason,
reconsider their ideas, and look at an old concept from a new point of view. We
considered that this approach, together with the fact that the tasks were organized in
a workshop (where the dynamic was based on working in teams, discussing ideas
with peers and so on) would make teachers participating in the experience build up
a new and/or richer conceptualization of the concept of volume.
As previously mentioned, the first time the tasks were applied we also had a re-
search agenda. Therefore it was decided to video and audio record the workshop
sessions in order to have some evidence of the tasks’ effectiveness, strengths, weak-
nesses and possibilities. In subsequent applications of the tasks there has been no
systematic data collection; nevertheless it has been observed that many of the results
obtained in the first application occur.

2 General Aspects of the Workshop

In our experience, organizing participants in teams of three or four inservice teach-

ers works well. At the same time, when a problem or task is first introduced to the
students we consider it important that all participants first read the problem or in-
structions silently. For some of the tasks posed, it’s important to request an initial
intuitive answer. Afterwards, participants are invited to discuss how to solve the
problem or carry out the activity with their team partners and together come up
with a conclusion that satisfies all participants. Once team members have reached
an internal agreement about how to solve the problem, a final discussion is held in
which the diverse approaches applied by the members of all teams are shared and
all participants comment about their thoughts, strategies, answers and conclusions.
After a general agreement is reached regarding the solution(s) of the problem or
task performed, it’s interesting to promote a discussion about the relation between
the problem just solved and teachers’ professional practice.
150 M. Sáiz and O. Figueras

Some questions that may be posed to initiate such a discussion are: Do you think
this task is applicable to your present or future pupils? How would you modify this
task or problem to fit into your regular practice? Do you think that it’s not possible
to incorporate this problem into your daily practice? What do you think will be the
principal difficulties that children confront when solving this task? How will you
help children solve the problem?

3 The Tasks

For each one of the tasks described in the following sections:

1. An explanation of the activity and how to implement it is given; providing when
necessary its potential variants and possible courses of action to follow depend-
ing on the events taking place during its presentation.
2. A description of the errors or misconceptions that the activity is designed to make
participants confront is made, mentioning the published source or experience in
which a difficulty was first reported.
3. Tasks’ objectives are mentioned.
4. Comments about the application of the activity and the various experiences that
it promoted are included, and
5. The results of analyses of previous information are given.

3.1 Task One: The Cylinders

The following problem is posed to the workshop participants:

A factory produces tanks made of rectangular metal sheets. The tanks have
no top and the bottom is made with other material, so the rectangular metal
sheets are only used for the cylinder’s contour. If we want the tanks to have the
largest capacity possible, and if we consider that length is the longest side of
the rectangle and width the shortest one, answer the following questions: Is it
more convenient to roll the sheets lengthwise or width-wise? Is the result the
same? Justify or explain your answer.

Before performing any calculation it’s a good idea to ask participants to give a
first intuitive answer and to register on the blackboard:
1. How many of the participants think that the first cylinder will have the largest
volume?
2. How many teachers think that the second cylinder have the largest volume?
3. How many think that both will have the same volume?
In each case it’s important that participants explain their responses.
A Research-Based Workshop Design for Volume Tasks 151

4 Why did the Cylinder Task was Included in the Workshop?

At the time the first workshop was set up, one of the few published results con-
cerning teachers’ conceptions about volume was Enochs and Gabel’s report (1984)
about the confusion teachers participating in their study had with volume and sur-
face area. The common belief: “As the surface area of a body increases, so does its
volume”, has also been observed by Ricco & Vergnaud (1983) who carried out their
study with children.
More recently, Merseth (2003) describes a case related to this conception, in-
volving this task, which she called “Slippery Cylinders”. Although Merseth’s work
is not a research report, the cases discussed in her book are results of her work as an
instructor of teachers, so the situation and the examples presented in the cases reflect
a real experience. The actors in that case were future teachers, and the problem was
proposed in almost the same way as the one we posed to the inservice teachers – one
difference being that participants were also asked to obtain the lateral surface area.
As in our study, Merseth (2003) also asked for a first intuitive answer finding that the
larger part of participants believed that both cylinders would have the same volume.
After they were given the chance to perform calculations they couldn’t trust their
result: the two cylinders had different volume. Merseth mentions that even three
students who had correctly solved the problem eagerly checked their calculations;
they were sure that cylinders had equal volumes and thought this incredible outcome
was due to a numerical mistake.

5 Objectives of the Task

As it has been said, it is important to ask teachers for a first intuitive response be-
cause they acquire awareness of the beliefs they have regarding the topic.
The main objective of the activity is to make future teachers consider the truth of
the statement: If bodies have equal lateral surface areas (not including the lids) then
they have equal volumes. However, the activity involves other knowledge or skills
such as the application of the formula to obtain the volume of a cylinder and the
development of competencies related to spatial imagination, among others.

6 Experiences Applying the Cylinder Task

1. Most of the teachers when reading the problem thought that both cylinders have
the same volume.
2. Some teachers solve the problem making two cylinders like those described in
the problem using sheets of paper and filling them with seeds to compare their
volumes. With only these outcomes, of a particular case, which were what they
expected, they generalize the results. Most of the teams used a letter-sized sheet
152 M. Sáiz and O. Figueras

of paper. In some cases, teachers constructed two paper rectangles, more often
than not their dimensions were 5 cm by 10 cm.
3. Teachers who solve the problem using an arithmetical approach assigned a given
value to the dimensions of the rectangle, frequently, the length and width of a
letter-size sheet of paper, and applied the formula V = π r2 h. The result they
obtained with this single example was enough for them to reach a general result:
“it is better to roll lengthwise”.
4. After the experience, some teachers, insisted that as surface area increases so
does the volume, reasoning that the area of the contour of both cylinders is the
same, but not that of the lids.

7 Analysis

From point 1 above, it can be observed that the belief that the same surface area
gives place to the same volume is a common misconception. There are teachers that
doubt or disagree with this response; however, in the majority of cases this is due
to a suspicion that in this kind of workshop the questions always have a surprising
answer. Merseth (2003) also mentions this behaviour in her experience.
In several occasions we found that primary school teachers were reluctant to deal
with problems in which no numerical data is provided. It is relevant to recall that
Ricco & Vergnaud (1983) observed that children showed the same type of resistance
to begin a reasoning process when they were confronted with a problem lacking
numbers.
As was mentioned before, spatial imagination is needed for solving the problem:
for some teachers it’s not clear that the perimeter of the cylinders’ base corresponds
to the length of the sheet’s side, so dividing by 2π they will obtain the radius of the
basis which is needed to calculate its area and then the cylinder’s volume. That is
why they prefer to construct the cylinders and compare their volume using seeds. A
similar difficulty is also mentioned by Merseth (2003): a student peeled off the tape
she had used to attach the sides of the paper to form a cylinder in order to understand
how to calculate the lateral surface area.
During Merseth’s experience some future teachers insisted that the volumes were
the same because they believed that volume is “perimeter times height”. This con-
fusion was not perceived in our experiences.
On various occasions the cylinder task has been posed to groups of primary
school teachers; the use of literals or algebraic methods to solve the problem has
not been observed. Although, as pointed out in point 3 (see previous section), teach-
ers generalize their results taking into account the outcomes of one single example.
In some cases, suggestions have been made to teachers for trying to generalize their
results using algebra, and with a good deal of assistance they were able to find a
general response.
As may be concluded from point 4, the cylinder problem is not ideal for the
activity’s objective, which is to make teachers observe that some bodies with the
A Research-Based Workshop Design for Volume Tasks 153

same surface area may have different volumes, because, in the case of the cylinders,
despite the contour being the same, the lid of the cylinder with a smaller volume
will always have a lesser surface area than the lid of the cylinder with a larger
volume; thus, teachers may persist in their idea. Nevertheless, the problem must
not be discarded because it generates insights concerning the surface area-volume
relationship.
When teachers argue that the smallest surface area is the one with the smaller
volume, it is useful to pose other problems. A simple one is to construct differ-
ent structures with six cubes and calculate the total surface area for each one, and
then focus the attention of teachers on structures that have different surface areas
although their volume is fixed. A more complicated problem is the following: a box
with a square base is going to be constructed out of a piece of cardboard that has
a side measuring 60 cm. To do so, small squares of length c will be cut from the
corners of the original cardboard and then the sides will be folded up by the dot
line. How long must c be in order to make a box with the largest volume possible?
(Janvier, 1994).
This problem reveals that while c increases, making surface area smaller, volume
increases to a maximum and then decreases.

7.1 Task 2: The Eiffel Tower

The following problem was proposed to teams of teachers in workshops:

The height of the Eiffel Tower is 300 m; it is made of iron and it weighs
8,000 tons. A reproduction of the tower is going to be made. If we want to
make a model of iron that weighs one kilogram, how tall must it be? Before
doing any calculations try to guess: will it be taller than, smaller than, or as tall
as a one litre bottle of milk? (Balbuena et al., 1995).

8 Why was the “Eiffel Tower” Task Included in the Workshop?

The effect on volume of enlarging or reducing the dimensions of a body is an im-

portant fact, as Freudenthal (1983) states: “Understanding that the multiplication
of length by d, areas by d 2 , volumes by d 3 go together with the geometrical mul-
tiplication by d, is mathematically so fundamental, that, phenomenologically and
didactically it should be put first and foremost” (p. 267).
Ricco and Vergnaud (1983) named this idea “homothecy” and they mentioned
its significance in the conceptualization of volume’s formula. They also mentioned
154 M. Sáiz and O. Figueras

the difficulties homothecy carries for children. In Hart et al. (1985) we found that
in the test they applied to secondary school pupils, a problem that involves this kind
of relation is one with a lesser percentage of success. Also we have found in the
course of our experience, that some teachers share the belief that doubling the linear
magnitudes of a body doubles its volume.

9 Objectives and Goals of the Task

One of the main objectives of the Eiffel Tower task is that teachers use the homoth-
ecy relationship. A related goal of this objective is to focus the attention of teachers
at the relationship between weight and volume. The fact that the problem states that
the original tower and the model are made out of the same material is important. At
a later stage of the workshop, it results interesting to ask the teachers what could
be said if the model is made with a different material. To promote the use of tables
to register the results of calculations, that is, to organize data is another goal that
could be pursued. Other principal objectives of the Eiffel Tower task are to encour-
age teachers to search for a proper strategy to solve the problem and to obtain a
general procedure to solve similar problems.

10 Experiences Applying the Task

1. Most of the teachers, when they tried to guess the height of the model, thought
that it will be as tall as a bottle of milk (almost 30 cm, while the correct answer
is 1.5 m).
2. The majority of the teachers use a linear proportionality to solve the prob-
lem; they calculated 300/8,000,000. Before they did the division, they suspected
something was wrong and when they obtained the result they were sure they were
mistaken.
3. Some of the participants recognize that the answer obtained (with the procedure
explained in point 2) was incorrect but could not explain why that was wrong.
4. More often than not, in order for teachers to find the solution to the problem
it was necessary to solve similar – but easier – problems first. Examples are
doubling the linear magnitudes of a box or a rectangular prism made of cubes
and observing what happens to its volume.
5. In a workshop session with five primary school teachers who were trying to solve
this task, after constructing several prisms and doubling their linear magnitudes,
they discovered that the volume is multiplied by eight always. One of the teachers
asked: “Where does this eight come from?” That comment provided an invalu-
able opportunity to invite them to think about the general case of a prism with
length a, width b and height c. One of the students went to the blackboard and
drew the “doubled prism” at the same time that she wrote the new dimensions:
A Research-Based Workshop Design for Volume Tasks 155

2a, 2b, and 2c. The eight appeared in a natural way: 2 × 2 × 2. Then the question:
“What happens if the linear magnitudes are all multiplied by three?” was posed
smoothly. After two or three examples teachers referred to the general case and
found out that one needs to multiply the former volume by 27. They realized
that multiplication by 27 is the same as: 3 × 3 × 3. Continuing in that way for 4
and 5 and carrying out the necessary computations the teachers found out that
enlarging the linear dimensions by k causes the volume to increase by k3 .

11 Analysis

As was stated in point 1, the most common guess is that the model will measure
about 30 cm. Perhaps this is so because in Mexico 1-litre milk bottles are approxi-
mately that height and a litre of milk weighs almost 1 kg.
People do not compensate in order to distribute the weight from the rectangular
prism to the slender and graceful form of the Eiffel Tower. Nevertheless, this first
approximation to the real answer is helpful because it provokes a conflict with the
response obtained by applying a linear model to the relation between height and
volume (a fact established in point 2 regarding the applications of the Eiffel Tower
task).
Using a linear relation is a response that has also been observed in the case of
some secondary school mathematics teachers. In Mexico, secondary school mathe-
matics teachers have a stronger mathematical background than primary teachers and
must have mastered algebraic procedures. Nevertheless, their first attempt to solve
the problem was of the same type as that made by primary school teachers.
Regarding this behaviour Owens and Outhred (2006) have said: “Research on
proportional and non-proportional reasoning related to area and volume tasks indi-
cate how powerful an impact the linear model has on student reasoning” (p. 104).
This coincides with our own experiences working with volume.
The Eiffel Tower problem is suitable for the task’s objective because the answer
obtained by using the erroneous procedure is absurd (as mentioned in point 2), so
teachers become eager to understand what is going on and are favourably disposed
to work with the homothecy relation.
Another important feature is highlighted in point 4: a very simple procedure is
obtained when using a convenient factorization of 8,000,000 (once 8,000 tons have
been converted to kilograms). When teachers solved other easier, but similar prob-
lems, they found out that when dividing the height by 2, the weight has to be divided
by 8. In this way, they apply this procedure sequentially and arrive at an approxi-
mation of 3.8 kg. If they divide again by 8 they arrive at an answer of ∼0.48 kg.
At this point some of them paralyzed – they did not know how to obtain a better
approximation. Others began again: this time they first divided the length by 3 and
the volume by 27 and continued dividing length by 2 and weight by 8, obtaining a
better approximation: 1.13 kg and 1.56 m tall.
156 M. Sáiz and O. Figueras

As has been pointed out, this problem has been posed to secondary school math-
ematics’ teachers and they also answered as mentioned in points 1 and 2. When
making secondary school teachers reflect about the relation between doubling the
linear magnitudes of a body and the effect of this transformation on its volume they
hastily became aware of their misconception and rapidly found the exact answer
considering the cubic root of 8,000,000, that is 200, and then dividing 300 by 200.
When the secondary school teachers’ procedure was shown to the primary school
teachers, they said they understood better the method of dividing the height by k
and the volume by k3 . Nevertheless, in all the sessions with secondary and primary
teachers where the Eiffel Tower problem has been used, the strategy that takes you
directly to an exact answer, that is divide the tower’s height, 2 times by 10 and then
by 2 and consequently, divide its volume, 2 times by 1,000 and then by 8, has not
been discovered by any of the participants.

11.1 Task 3: Clay Figures

Teams of teachers are asked to mould a clay model of a dove whose volume will
be 130 cm3 . Each team is given a bar of modelling clay weighing ∼ 250 g and the
following instructions: they may use only this material and the instruments given
to them to solve the problem. The instructor gave to some teams a ruler with a
centimetre measuring scale. Other teams got a 1-L transparent container that has ten
marks spaced at equal distance. (It is important that the container is not graduated
nor has other marks, except for those that indicate the equipartition of the container’s
height). When the container is given to the teachers they should be told that it has
a capacity of 1 L and that the marks divide it into ten equal parts. Finally, the rest
of the teams were given a beam scale and a ruler; the teachers were told that they
could use the ruler as a secondary aid but that the beam scale should be the primary
instrument employed.
When the teams had finished making their doves, they were asked to put the
figures aside and to refrain from using them in the activities to follow. The teams
then exchange instruments and were asked to use the new ones to make another clay
figure of 130 cm3 (or another quantity), and so on, until each team has used the three
types of instruments.
Once the teams have all their clay animals they were asked to share with the oth-
ers how they made each figure. In the first place, they should comment and discuss
the use of the ruler for solving the problem; afterwards each team should describe
how the container was used, and finally the members of the teams discussed the use
of the beam scale. If the explanation implicitly included a demonstration that the
volume of the model at hand was the requested one (i.e. 130 cm3 , or a good approx-
imation), the discussion was passed over to the next team. If not, the members of
the team were asked to demonstrate that their model had the requested volume.
A Research-Based Workshop Design for Volume Tasks 157

12 Why was Clay Figures Task included in the Workshop?

During the research carried out we could verify that some teachers think that the dif-
ference in the level of a liquid that occurs when an object is submerged in it is due to
the weight of the submerged object and not to its volume (Sáiz & Figueras, 2000).
It was also found that some teachers did not know how the volume of an object is
related to its weight, according to the material it is made of (Sáiz, 2004). Likewise,
evidence was obtained regarding teachers’ difficulties when making conversions be-
tween units of volume and units of capacity; Enochs and Gabel (1984) also have
reported this fact. Finally, we know that some teachers think that it is not possible to
calculate the volume of irregular bodies, that is, bodies that do not have the shape of
the geometric bodies commonly used in schools (Sáiz, 2003) or that the calculations
for obtaining the volumes of irregular bodies are very difficult for them (Enochs and
Gabel, 1984).

13 Objectives and Goals of the Task

The first objective of this task is that teachers experience different ways to measure
the volume of a body (immersion, measurement of linear dimensions, weight). A
second objective is that teachers find a geometric solid that has dimensions such that
its volume is 130 cm3 . The third objective is that teachers work with equivalencies
between units of capacity (litres, decilitres) and units of volume (cubic decimetres,
cubic centimetres).

14 Experiences Applying the Task

1. In general, teachers who were given only a ruler made a model of a rectangular
prism, measure its linear dimensions and calculate the volume. On this basis,
they use trial and error as they continue modifying the prism and calculating its
volume until they reach the desired volume; after that, they model the dove.
2. The teachers that have worked first with the container and water made a model of
the figure, measure it by immersion and then continue modifying and measuring
until they reach the requested volume.
3. Some teachers did not believe that the volume could be measured using immer-
sion.
4. Some teachers did not know the relationship between the marks in the transparent
container and the units of volume that they represent (cubic decimetres, cubic
centimetres).
5. The teachers who work with the beam scale took the longest period of time to
solve the problem. They did not understand how this instrument could help them
158 M. Sáiz and O. Figueras

in the task that they were asked to do. Based on the fact that 1 dm3 of water
weighs 1 kg they supposed that 1 dm3 of modelling clay also weighs 1 kg and
therefore used the proportionality to obtain the weight of water corresponding to
130 cm3 and then measured a piece of modelling clay of that weight.

15 Analysis

Usually, the study of volume has been reduced to the study of formulas and of
measuring systems (Del Olmo, Moreno & Gil, 1993; Enochs & Gabel, 1984;
Janvier, 1994, 1997; Ricco & Vergnaud, 1983). The initial idea of the task is that
the first thing that each team does is to obtain a piece of modelling clay of the ap-
propriate size and then mould it as a dove. However, this idea is not always the first
thought that members of the teams have (see points 1 and 2 above). The idea of first
measuring a piece of clay of the desired volume and then moulding does not occur
spontaneously; this could be attributed to a behaviour linked to diverse aspects of
non-conservation of volume (Piaget, Inhelder, & Szeminska, 1970), that is, thinking
that its not worthy obtaining the correct piece of clay since moulding it into another
figure will change its volume, but for adults this is not likely to be the case, maybe
they don’t know how to obtain a prism with the required volume.
The experience students have with the study of the concept of volume at school
is limited to the application of formulas. More frequent than not, the problems they
have to solve are those where the linear dimensions are given and the computation
of the volume is demanded.
The inverse problem, that is, finding the linear magnitudes of a body based on a
given volume, surprised the teachers (points 1 and 2). The instruction in arithmetic
that they have had, did not helped them much: to solve the problem one has to find
three numbers that when multiplied together come to 130 – for some teachers this
problem was not so simple.
With respect to point 4, it is a well-known fact that one litre of water weighs 1 kg.
When teachers have not thought enough about the problem, they conclude that 1 L
(or cubic decimetre) of any material weighs 1 kg. However, it does not require much
effort or discussion for teachers to realize that the weight of an object and its volume
are related according to the type of material the object is made of; for example, ask
teachers to think about the volume that 1 kg of lead occupies in comparison to the
volume that 1 kg of cotton occupies. For some teachers, going from these ideas to
the idea of specific weight is not a big problem. In the task discussed here, using
this knowledge is not really necessary but it can be interesting for them to discuss.
The beam scale and the ruler can be used to construct any rectangular clay prism,
measure its length, width and height, obtain its volume and finally weigh it. Subse-
quently, by using proportionality the weight corresponding to the required volume
(130 cm3 ) is obtained, so a piece of moulding clay with that weight can easily be
obtained and then moulded as a dove.
A Research-Based Workshop Design for Volume Tasks 159

This procedure can make some teachers wonder how it is possible that a lin-
ear proportional relationship can be used to solve the problem, when in the Eiffel
Tower task this was not the case. This confusion may be resolved after a profound
discussion or after experiencing weighing and obtaining the volume of bodies made
of different materials. However, for many teachers the workshop will be the first
time that they can reflect about the different aspects that the study of the concept of
volume involves.
During the development of the research project carried out, in one of the work-
shop’s sessions, stones were measured using immersion. At first, many teachers
thought that immersion measured the weight. After various experiments they re-
alized that the weight did not affect the change in the water level. In the subse-
quent workshop session they were asked to compare the volumes of some geometric
solids, all of them made of the same kind of wood, using weight. The result obtained
in the previous session totally confused them. What they remember was that weight
and volume were not related in any way and therefore they did not understand how
it was expected that they use weight to solve a volume problem (Sáiz, 2004). Only
after much discussion some of the teachers were convinced that it is indeed possible
to compare volumes using weight when the bodies to be compared are made of the
same material, but some other teachers remained confused.

16 Final Reflections

Although teachers have problems with different aspects of the concept of volume,
we believe that the majority of these difficulties are easily overcome with relatively
simple problems and tasks. However, this is not the case regarding the difficulties
and erroneous conceptions involved in the tasks that were chosen; the evidence col-
lected in the studies carried out sustain this statement.
The tasks exhibited put into play many properties of the concept of volume,
some of them fundamental. While it is not expected that those tasks are enough for
helping teachers constitute a strong volume mental object (in the sense of Freuden-
thal, 1983), we do believe that they are essential to improve teachers’ competencies
when faced with tasks and problems related to volume.
Although there are few references about teachers’ conceptions regarding the con-
cept of volume, there are many studies that show that primary school teachers have
not mastered the concepts that they have to teach. For example, related to measure-
ment topics, the work of Menon (1998) and Reinke (1997) can be mentioned. Since
volume is a complicated notion due to its conceptual richness, it is possible that
many mathematics teacher educators could find that the students in their courses
have the same difficulties we have indicated here or other similar ones. If for some
future or inservice teachers these tasks are easy to solve, it is possible to use them
as a base and adjust them taking into account the mathematical knowledge of the
workshops’ participants.
160 M. Sáiz and O. Figueras

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Task-Based Lessons: The Central Focus
of a Mathematics Content Course for Future
Elementary Teachers

Anne R. Teppo

A task-based lesson serves as the organizing principle for a university mathematics

content course for future elementary teachers. The course, which provides the first
semester of a year-long sequence, covers the arithmetic of numbers. The daily class-
room activities follow a Japanese-style lesson plan and use tasks developed through
a didactical phenomenological analysis. A situated learning perspective frames an
understanding of the classroom activity. The goals for using and the criteria for
developing task-based lesson materials are discussed and an example of an actual
classroom lesson is provided to illustrate the power of this instructional approach.

1 Introduction

Mathematics and education are peculiar subjects, but even more peculiar bedfellows. . . . for
whereas mathematics develops by reducing the problematic and creative to establish pro-
cedures and techniques, effective education enables students to reconstruct and regenerate
those procedures from their own understanding. (Mason, 1997, p. 377)

This chapter describes an effort to address the “tensions” identified by

Mason (1997) through the use of task-based lessons in a mathematics content
course. While the course is intended to fulfill the future elementary teachers’ math-
ematics requirement, it is designed to reflect the special needs of the students it
serves. The topics are unpacked, and the classroom activities carefully structured,
not only to deepen the students’ conceptual understanding of the subject mat-
ter, but also to purposefully address how the future teachers come to know this
mathematics. The task-based lessons provide students opportunities to engage in
what Ball (2003) characterizes as the mathematical work that teaching involves.
“Teaching requires justifying, explaining, analyzing errors, generalizing, and defin-
ing. It requires knowing ideas and procedures in detail, and knowing them well

A.R. Teppo
Independent scholar who collaborates with other mathematics educators around the world
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
162 A.R. Teppo

enough to represent and explain them skillfully in more than one way. This is
mathematics” (p. 4).
The course engages students in active learning in ways that they may not have
previously experienced, having learned the subject in more traditional K-12 math-
ematics programs. For such students, mathematics is perceived to be “rule-based,
where problems are solved and exercises completed by applying memorized formu-
las and algorithms” (Teppo, 2001, p. 4). The challenge of the course is to enable
such students to build conceptual understandings for ideas that they had formerly
assimilated only procedurally (Hiebert, 1999). As Ball (2003, p. 9) notes, “Teachers
cannot be expected to know or do what they have not had opportunities to learn.”
A set of carefully sequenced task-based lessons, rather than a textbook, serves
as the focus and primary learning resource. A typical class period, which involves
small group work followed by whole-class discussion, is centered on a particular
task that embodies the mathematics under study. As they process the task, students
are encouraged to use manipulatives, common sense, and experiential knowledge
rather than memorized rules and algorithms. The instructor then selects a range
of student strategies, which makes use of different components of the mathematics
under study, to be written on the board. These strategies are compared and contrasted
to focus attention on underlying structure and help the students begin to unpack
arithmetical processes and make mathematical connections. Experiencing, and the
explicit study of and reflection on, such tasks extend the students’ understanding of
what it means to learn mathematics deeply, as well as provide pedagogical examples
of reform-based classroom practices.
The classroom tasks were adapted from research reports, National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics Standards documents, reformed curricula material, and
journal publications, and were tested through 3 years of a multi-sectioned, class-
room implementation. They typically involve open-process situations that allow
students to enter into the problem from different ability levels and utilize multiple
solution strategies. The classroom activity illustrates how mathematics is used to
represent, organize, and think about everyday, real-world situations. The mathemat-
ical structures underlying the tasks are drawn out of the relationships and processes
used by the students. The study of this structure also leads to the development of
rich concept images encompassing conceptual understanding, specific procedures,
algorithms, formal definitions, and mathematical connections.

2 Theoretical Framework

2.1 Situated Learning

The task-based lesson follows an elementary school, Japanese-style lesson plan,

which places the processes of problem-solving at the center of activity and utilizes
student productions as the primary medium for learning (Becker & Shimada, 1997;
Peterson, 2005; Shimizu 1999; Stigler, Fernandez, & Yoshida, 1996). This type of
Task-Based Lessons 163

classroom organization is in sharp contrast to that of a typical American school

mathematics lesson. Here, a framework of situated learning is a useful lens for
considering the nature of the classroom learning. “How a person learns a partic-
ular set of knowledge and skills, and the situation in which a person learns, are
a fundamental part of what is learned” (Peressini, Borko, Romagnano, Knuth, &
Willis, 2004, p. 68).
A situated learning perspective focuses on practices. Knowledge is viewed as
“embodied, or as located in activity, where activity is broadly construed and in-
cludes perceiving, reasoning, and talking” (Cobb & Bowers, 1999, p. 11). Learning
is characterized as an individual’s reorganization of his or her (in this case) mathe-
matical activity. It develops through participation in the context of particular activity
and is evidenced by changes in the nature of this participation (Greeno, 1998).

2.2 Japanese-Style Mathematics Lessons

A Japanese-style classroom like those described by Shimada (1997) and Sawada

(1997) uses an “open-ended approach.” Students are presented a “small-scale” prob-
lem and asked to develop different methods or ways to arrive at a solution. During
the whole-class discussion that follows, the emphasis is not on the answer to this
problem, but on the variety of solution strategies that the students develop. The
teacher carefully orchestrates this discussion by selecting solutions, to be written
on the board, that exhibit a range of mathematical approaches. The students’ ex-
planations of their selected methods and the teacher’s synthesis of these methods
encourage students to reflect on and make connections among mathematical opera-
tions and relations. Because the students generate solutions that are based on their
present levels of mathematical understanding and skills, they provide familiar plat-
forms from which to develop new mathematical understanding.
Although the students’ productions influence the direction of the lesson, re-
flective planning prior to the lesson prepares the teacher for the range of ex-
pected solution methods. In a typical teacher’s lesson plan, he or she organizes
a list of anticipated solutions, arranged according to their mathematical features
(Sawada, 1997). This pre-planning is facilitated by Japanese reference books and
publications that have assembled student’s ways of thinking about topics in the
mathematics curriculum (Stigler, Fernandez, & Yoshida, 1996). The inclusion in the
lesson plan of expected student solutions is a key element of the success of this ap-
proach to classroom instruction. Knowledge of potential student solutions has also
been found to be an effective component for American elementary teachers who use
the program of Cognitively Guided Instruction (Fennema et al., 1996; Fennema,
Franke, & Carpenter, 1993; Knapp, & Peterson, 1995).
The effectiveness of a Japanese-style lesson can be understood in terms of
its coherence, characterized by four aspects of the teacher’s classroom discourse
management (Sekiguchi, 2006). “Rhetorical” management, or coherence between
goals and discourse production, is organized by the lesson’s “four-phase script,”
164 A.R. Teppo

comprising the introduction, student work, student explanations, and teacher sum-
mary. “Thematic” management, related to content, coordinates the related topics
within and across lessons that comprise a particular mathematical theme. “Refer-
ential” management refers to the ways that discourse participants in the classroom
keep track of referents through the teacher’s deliberate use of processes such as
naming, symbolizing, using blackboards, and homework problems. “Focus” man-
agement deals with strategies that center students’ attention on the “point” of the
lesson, including the use of comparison and contrast, discussion, and summary.
Taken together, these four aspects of classroom discourse management provide a
useful lens for analyzing the components of an effective mathematics lesson.

2.3 Didactical Phenomenological Analysis

Task selection is a critical component in any classroom in which students’ produc-

tions form the generative source of learning. In particular, the premises of math-
ematics education, articulated by Freudenthal (1983) and amplified in the Dutch
instructional theory of Realistic Mathematics Education, inform the selection and
sequencing of the task-based lesson (de Lange, 1987; Gravemeijer, van Galen &
Keijzer, 2005; van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, 2003). A key aspect of Freudenthal’s ap-
proach to education is that mathematics is not regarded as a body of knowledge
but as a human activity, and that mathematics is learned by doing. Learning comes
about as students are guided through the processes of “re-invention.” Knowledge
is constructed both through “horizontal mathematizing” – organizing and solving
everyday experiences, and “vertical mathematizing” – re-organizing and operating
within mathematics itself (Gravemeijer, van Galen & Keijzer, 2005; van den Heuvel-
Panhuizen, 2003).
Appropriate tasks that promote mathematization are identified through “didacti-
cal phenomenological analyses” (Freudenthal, 1983). “These analyses reveal what
kind of mathematics is worthwhile to learn, and which actual phenomena can
offer possibilities for developing the intended mathematical knowledge and un-
derstanding” (van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, 2005, p. 39). Tasks are derived from
situations that “reflect the essentials of the concepts that are to be embodied [and]
from those phenomena that beg to be organized” by the mathematics under study
(Freudenthal, 1983, p. 32).
Tasks are not developed as isolated activities. Their design should reflect a care-
fully sequenced instructional trajectory based on a didactical phenomenological
analysis of the mathematical concepts, skills, knowledge, and connections under-
lying the course content. Each task should be coherent with those that come before
and after it, and making mathematical connections should be an integral part of task
design. As Ball (2003) suggests, “seeing the mathematical horizon [and] . . . know-
ing how particular ideas anticipate later ones” (pp. 4, 6).
Task-Based Lessons 165

3 The Task-Based Lesson

3.1 Future Teachers’ and Instructors’ Responsibilities

A situated learning perspective and the Japanese approach to instruction, including

the notion of coherence, provide the framework for the design of the future teachers’
mathematics content course and, in particular, the task-based lesson. The lesson is
purposefully organized to optimize the mathematical and pedagogical richness of
the classroom activity. However, it is not enough to simply turn the students loose
on the task – the instructor must carefully orchestrate how the students’ work is
processed to draw out and reflect upon the intended focus of the lesson. Both the
future teachers and the instructor have important roles to play within the lesson.
The future teachers are responsible for devising solutions to the given problem,
using their small groups as thinking/doing resources. They are encouraged to use
basic processes of arithmetic rather learned algorithms, and model these processes
using manipulatives or drawings. Their solutions must be fully written down and
the students should be able to interpret their numerical answers within the context
of the given problem. During the whole-class discussion they should be prepared
to write their solutions on the chalk board or demonstrate their manipulations to the
class. They are expected to listen carefully to others’ explanations and ask clarifying
questions.
The class instructor is responsible for understanding the mathematical richness
embedded in the given task, the learning potential of the particular activity, and its
execution. She or he identifies the individual student solutions, to be used in the
whole-class discussion, that emphasize particular aspects of the mathematics under
study, asks probing questions of students to elicit full explanations of their presented
strategies, compares, contrasts, and synthesizes these strategies to construct new
knowledge, and uses appropriate mathematical vocabulary to name new concepts,
procedures, and operations.
In the implemented course a set of Teacher Notes (Teppo, 2001) was used to
manage the classroom complexity. These notes contain examples of strategies typi-
cally used by future teachers; interpretations of the mathematics embodied in each
strategy; a discussion of the mathematical construct under study – including con-
nections to other mathematical ideas and related vocabulary; and suggestions for
maximizing the instructional impact of the lesson. (The level of detail contained in
the Teacher Notes was important for successfully conducting the course, where the
majority of the instructors were graduate student Teaching Assistants, rather than
Teacher Educators.)

3.2 Characteristics of an Effective Task

A successful instructional task should be a contextualized “problem” that is open-

entry and open-process. The nature of the students’ engagement is based on the
166 A.R. Teppo

assumption that the future teachers have been exposed to the mathematics under
study but have, for the most part, internalized information previously only in the
form of memorized algorithms about isolated topics. While the task is real-world
based, the particulars of the context must invite, rather than divert attention, from
the mathematization of the problem. The problem should elicit a range of strategies
that unpacks key aspects of the mathematical construct. It should be possible to find
solutions and conduct a follow-up discussion of these processes during a single class
period.
The task-based lessons within each unit are carefully sequenced to move from in-
formal experiences with particular constructs, through explorations of the structure
underlying particular processes, to formal considerations of mathematical concepts
and their connections to the big ideas of the arithmetic of numbers. (In the imple-
mented course, the task, rather than a text, is the primary source of learning. A text is
available as a resource only – it is recognized that mathematics is learned by doing,
not by reading.)
Participation in the task-based lesson not only facilitates the students’ construc-
tion of mathematical knowledge, it also impacts their beliefs about the nature of
mathematics and what it means to learn the subject. As these students gain practice
in mathematical discourse, they experience the central role that student thinking has
both for their own learning and for that of their prospective students.

4 Task-Based Lesson: Introduction to Proportion

Excerpts from a typical task-based lesson, in this case covering an introduction to

proportional reasoning, is presented to illustrate how the underlying instructional
frameworks and principles of task design are operationalized. This lesson is the
third in a sequence of five class-long activities that introduces students to the con-
cept of multiplicative structures. The sequence begins with an activity that com-
pares additive and multiplicative structures. A second activity introduces students
intuitively to the concept of ratio. In the activity described below, students begin to
explore the meaning of proportional relationships. A fourth activity decompresses
the cross multiplication algorithm and ties this procedure to the underlying mathe-
matical structure explored in the preceding lessons.
The example comprises a selection of actual students’ strategies from the im-
plemented course for a set of six proportional word problems. Summaries from the
Teacher Notes (Teppo, 2001) identify how these procedures embody important as-
pects of the underlying mathematics and facilitate student learning.

4.1 Task: Proportion Word Problems

The goal of the activity is to develop an understanding of the mathematical struc-

ture of proportional relationships before introducing the standard solution method
Task-Based Lessons 167

(i.e., set up the proportion and use algebra (or cross multiplication) to solve for the
missing number). Students work in small groups to solve the six word problems,
shown below (taken from Kaput, & West, 1994, pp. 267–268). They are requested
to use common sense and intuitive reasoning about the mathematical relationships
given in each problem to reach a solution. They must not use algorithms such as
cross multiplication to find the answer.

1. Simon worked 3 h and earned US $12. How long does it take him to earn US $36?
2. In a certain school there are three boys to every seven girls in every class. How
many girls are there in a classroom with nine boys?
3. A large restaurant sets tables by setting 7 pieces of silverware and 4 pieces of
china on each place mat. If it used 392 pieces of silverware on its table settings
last night, how many pieces of china did it use?
4. A printing press takes exactly 12 min to print 14 dictionaries. How many dictio-
naries can it print in 30 min?
5. To bake donuts, Jerome needs exactly 8 cups of flour to make 14 donuts. How
many donuts can he make with 12 cups of flour?
6. To make Italian dressing, you need 4 parts vinegar for 9 parts oil. How much oil
do you need for 828 oz of vinegar?

4.2 Explanation of Student Solutions

When the students are required to use a method other than cross multiplication for
their solutions, they intuitively use processes that rely on either the scalar multiplier
or the functional rule (see below). The whole-class discussion of these strategies
provides an explicit focus on the nature of a proportion’s multiplicative relation-
ships. An understanding of this mathematical structure provides the foundation upon
which algorithmic approaches can be constructed.
The following student solutions (shown as “Sa),” “Sb),” etc.) illustrate the range
of approaches that can be used to solve the problems. The notes attached to each
solution include the student’s interpretations of the contextualized numbers, as well
as a brief discussion of the underlying mathematics. This commentary (included
in the Teacher Notes) informs the course instructor as to how she or he can draw
contextual and mathematical meaning out of the solution process. (Interpretations
of these meanings are informed by Kaput and West’s (1994) analyses of “competent,
but informal proportional reasoning patterns.”)
#1. Simon worked 3 h and earned US $12. How long does it take him to earn
US $36?
Sa) 12 ÷ 3 = 4 and 36 ÷ 4 = 9
Interpretation: The “4” is the rate – US $4 per h. Dividing this into US $36 gives
the number of hours Simon worked.
168 A.R. Teppo

Sb) h h h = US $12 (This strategy can also be

h h h = US $12 displayed in a table.)
h h h = US $12 Hours 3 6 9
9h = US$36 Earnings 12 24 36
Interpretation: Groups of 3 h and US $12 each are added until a total of US $36
is reached. This gives a total of 9 h. This strategy involves a building-up process that
coordinates the incrementation of each quantity.
#2.A printing press takes exactly 12 min to print 14 dictionaries. How many dic-
tionaries can it print in 30 min?
Sc) 14 ÷ 12 = 1.1667 dictionaries per min
1.1667 × 30 = 35 dictionaries
Interpretation: A unit rate is found and multiplied by the total time of production
Sd) 12 : 14 = 6 : 7, 30 ÷ 6 = 5, and 5 × 7 = 35
Interpretation: The “unit” sizes of “12 minutes” and “14 dictionaries” are corre-
spondingly reduced to produce a unit size that divides evenly into the known final
quantity. Thus, “5” is the number of groups of seven dictionaries each that are pro-
duced in 30 min, and 35 dictionaries are made in all.
12 × 2 24 24 + 6 30
Se) = and =
14 × 2 28 28 + 7 35
Interpretation: The ratio is first expressed in fractional form. Equivalent fractions
are then produced by a combination of multiplication and building-up addition. The
student recognized that the ratio was preserved by multiplying each part by the same
amount and then adding 6 to the numerator for every 7 added to the denominator.
#3. To bake donuts, Jerome needs exactly 8 cups of flour to make 14 donuts. How
many donuts can he make with 12 cups of flour?
Sf) 8 cups are changed to 12 cups. This is an increase of 4 cups or 1/2 of the origi-
nal quantity. To preserve the ratio, the number of donuts would also be increased by
1/2 of the original amount or by 7 more donuts. Thus, 12 cups of flour would make
21 donuts.
Interpretation: This strategy uses a building-up process with the increase for-
mulated as a fractional amount. The proportional nature of the relationship is rec-
ognized by the fact that both amounts increase by 1/2 their original number. (This
particular strategy may have been adopted because of the “friendly” nature of the
numbers involved.)
Note: Several students tended to see the creation of different pairs of numbers
that exhibited the same ratio as an additive rather than a multiplicative event. Using
a building-up process, they increased each number in the pair by repeatedly adding
to it the appropriate part of the given ratio – a kind of double skip counting.
#4. To make Italian dressing you need 4 parts vinegar for 9 parts oil. How much
oil do you need for 828 oz of vinegar?
Sg) 828 ÷ 4 = 207 and 207 × 9 = 1863
Interpretation: The 207 represents the number of times 4 is multiplied to produce
828. Therefore, to preserve the ratio, 9 must also be multiplied by 207. It was dif-
ficult for students to provide a contextual meaning for 207. Here “207” represents
the number of groups of related parts needed to constitute the total amount of Italian
dressing.
Task-Based Lessons 169

Several students had difficulty with the units in this problem, claiming that be-
cause the original ratio was given in parts and the final amount in ounces, they
couldn’t complete the problem. A discussion of the different units involved in the
problem brings out a property of ratio – when quantities have the same units, the
units are not important in stating the ratio, only the multiplicative relationship be-
tween the two numbers matters. (Here the ratio is “4 parts to 9 parts,” irrespective of
the units of measurement for the two liquids. It could equally have been “4 ounces
to 9 ounces.”)
Sh) 9 ÷ 4 = 2.25
828 × 2.25 = 1863
Interpretation: The amount of oil is always 2.25 times the amount of vinegar in
the dressing. (This number is the unit ratio of oil to vinegar, or 2.25:1.)

4.3 Mathematics Underlying the Activity

During the whole class discussion, it is the instructor’s job to highlight various as-
pects of the proportional structure implicit in the students’ solutions. While the no-
tion of proportion as the equality of two ratios is not explicit in this work, it forms
part of the underlying mathematical activity. However, the multiplicative relation-
ships of proportional situations are evident in many of the solutions.
The solutions Sg) and Sh) to problem #4 are a good example of this mathematical
structure. The within- and across-quantity natures of the multiplicative relationships
are shown in Fig. 1.
In 4g), “207” is the scalar multiplier. This number is a within-quantity multiplier.
It represents the factor by which each quantity must be multiplied to change its value
while maintaining the original ratio. This number can be interpreted in the context
of each problem as the number of “groups” of each quantity that are required to
constitute the larger related amounts.
In 4h) “multiply by 2.25” is the functional rule. This rule indicates the multiplica-
tive relationship across the different quantities. To maintain the same ratio, pairs of
quantities must maintain the same functional rule between them. This rule may be
stated as a unit rate. For example, in #1, Simon earns US $4 per h and in #4, the
press produces 1.1667 dictionaries per min.

Vinegar Oil
4 9
(Scalar multiplier) × 207
828 1863

(Functional rule) × 2.25

Fig. 1 Multiplicative structure of proportional relationships

170 A.R. Teppo

5 Discussion

As the above examples illustrate, the task that forms the basis for the classroom
learning activity need not be an elaborate problem situation. A good source for ma-
terial is research reports that design tasks for teaching experiments with elementary
school students. Such activities have been carefully developed to elicit student re-
sponses related to the mathematical constructs under study. In particular, the six
proportion problems (taken from a larger set of 15) were constructed based on the
researchers’ knowledge of school students’ informal proportional reasoning patterns
(Kaput, & West, 1994). When these problems were used in the future teacher course,
it was found that many of the students’ solutions paralleled the processes observed
by the researchers.
Standard homework problems, found in mathematics texts for future teachers,
are also a good source for tasks. For example, towards the end of an earlier unit
on operations with whole numbers, students were assigned a set of four such prob-
lems that used the lattice method of multiplication, the scaffold method of division,
and the Russian peasant method of multiplication. The techniques for using each
method were given in the problem set. During the subsequent class, these methods
were unpacked and the underlying structures of multiplication and division were
examined. The purpose of the activity was to provide the students opportunities to
unpack unfamiliar mathematical procedures and create clear explanations of under-
lying structures. (See Simonsen, & Teppo, 1999, for a discussion of this activity and
selected students’ responses.)
Of course, a key to the successful implementation of any task is a knowledge of
the mathematics implicit in the future teachers’ solution strategies. If a task-based
lesson approach is adopted for a particular course, several iterations of the sequence
of lessons may be required to assemble an effective set of “teacher notes.” [The first
several offerings of the course described here involved a great deal of work in be-
tween each lesson to understand the mathematics implicit in the students’ methods.
This process, while time consuming, was also an incredible learning experience for
the Teacher Educators (Teppo, & Simonsen, 1997).]
The task-based lesson responds to Ball’s (2003, p. 1) challenge for teacher prepa-
ration in the United States. “[U]sing curriculum effectively and working responsibly
with standards depend on understanding the subject matter. How teachers know
mathematics is central to their capacity to use instructional materials wisely, to
assess students’ progress, and to make sound judgments about presentation, em-
phasis, and sequencing.” The task-based lesson, with its focus on learning through
activity attends to the how of Ball’s statement. The careful selection and structuring
of these activities enables future teachers to deepen their understanding of the sub-
ject matter they will someday teach, in ways that go well beyond simply knowing
it for themselves. They become, along with their course instructor, participants in a
rich culture of mathematical activity.
While no formal research study was conducted to investigate the impact of the
task-based lesson approach on its participants, copies of students’ work and journal
responses were collected throughout the 3 years of the course’s implementation.
Task-Based Lessons 171

Based on this anecdotal evidence, I end the chapter with a comment written by one
of the future teachers in the assigned mid-term autobiography.
Math is not simply about doing problems and punching the calculator. This course has
prompted me to ask why? Instead of blindly accepting the functions of certain operations
and calculations, I have been motivated to learn why these operations work the way they
do. I have learned how they can be done differently with the same results. I have learned to
question and truly understand the relationships and procedures of mathematical operations.
(Teppo, 2001, p. 12)

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van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, M. (2003). The didactic use of models in Realistic Mathematics Edu-
cation: An example from a longitudinal trajectory of percentages. Educational Studies in Math-
ematics, 54(1), 9–35.
van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, M. (2005). Can research answer the ‘what’ question of mathematics
education? Cambridge Journal of Education, 35, 35–53.
Section C
Tasks as a Tool for Developing Knowledge
through and for Practice
Barbara Clarke

Many of us who work in teacher professional development lament the focus of some
teachers on the need to provide activities they can use “in the classroom tomorrow”.
The expectation for “tricks and tips” as the sign of a good session and the associated
critique that there is too much theory and not enough practice happens too often. The
chapters in this section provide some exemplars of how the vital links with practice
can be made while developing robust and important knowledge for prospective and
practising teachers. These exemplars have the potential to help us to understand and
focus on issues around the link between the practice of teacher education and the
practice of teaching. Some focus explicitly on teachers as mathematics learners and
then link to student learning while others focus on classroom situations and provide
opportunity for teachers to explore their own learning and that of their students.
Amato focuses on the need for children to develop relational understanding rather
than instrumental understanding. She acknowledges that this can be a challenge for
many teachers as they generally learned in an instrumental way during their own
school experience. She argues that this has also led to a negative attitude to math-
ematics on the part of many primary teachers and so the discussion highlights the
importance of teacher attitudes in helping to facilitate their own and their students’
mathematical development. She shares her research on the use of classroom tasks
in the context of teacher education as a way of re-learning the mathematics in re-
lational forms that will assist them in their future teaching careers. The specific
tasks involved rational number games and the use of representations. The outcomes
included the development of deeper understanding of the mathematical needs of
primary school children, a more positive view of their ability to teach mathematics,
and strategies for teaching in a more relational manner. Most of the trainee teachers
said that they enjoyed experiencing children’s tasks. These results triangulated with

B. Clarke
Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Staff, Faculty of Education, Monash University,
Australia
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
174 B. Clarke

the results from practising teachers, arguably in part due to the interactive nature of
the activities but also the explicit link to the classroom.
One of the disturbing observations of Amato’s research is that anecdotal evidence
of the lack of confidence of some of the teachers in the teaching of mathematics re-
sults in a reduction in the time that they give to it in the curriculum, thereby avoiding
the teaching of mathematics. While there is no data on how wide spread this prob-
lem is, even single anecdotes are disturbing. The reader is also reminded of the chal-
lenges that are faced in many developing countries with limited resources and large
class sizes but are encouraged by constructive ways to manage these challenges.
Next, Ashline and Quinn present a series of tasks based on Pythagoras’ theorem
that are intended to develop practising teacher’s content knowledge. The authors
share the experiences of a group of teachers in a school as they work through these
tasks and provide some insight into the impact these experiences have on the teach-
ers’ practice, While the study of Pythagoras is beyond the typical curriculum of
the primary school, it does represent a development of their personal mathematical
knowledge for many of the teachers and an example of how the structuring and se-
quencing of the tasks provided insights and developed knowledge for the primary
classroom. The modelling of an exploratory teaching approach was intended to pro-
vide the teachers with the experience of learning mathematics as well as an oppor-
tunity to reflect on the process for use in their own classrooms. A powerful model
is presented through the use of a carefully constructed sequence of mathematically
rich tasks which begin with content and the use of tools focusing on children’s de-
velopment of mathematical understanding and move to a point where the teachers
are the learners.
Carillo and Climent make an explicit link between the practice of teacher educa-
tion and the practice of teaching through the use of videos of classroom situations.
The specific video clip involves a series of episodes in a grade 5 lesson where the
children are exploring folding shapes to create halves and quarters. Focused ques-
tions are provided to facilitate an analysis and critique of the lesson. Through im-
plementing the task with both student and practising teachers, the authors explore
issues around the differences between the notions, processes, tools and contexts for
each group. There is a clear link between the mathematical knowledge, pedagog-
ical knowledge and practices highlighted through the analysis. The authors argue
for the importance of this linking and comment that, for the teachers, “doing math-
ematics or doing mathematics problem solving for its own sake does not interest
the teachers”; however, the task provides for both the doing of the mathematics and
the reflecting on the practice of teaching to be accomplished. Clearly the success
of the video as a tool is dependant on the appropriate choice of mathematical task,
the implementing teacher and the questions asked. Video clips in teacher education
are also used as a tool in the chapter of Gadanidis and Namukasa and the chapter of
Millman, Svec, and Williams in Section B.
With a similar emphasis, Malara and Navarra bring the classroom into teacher
education through the use of classroom scenes or scenarios. Their particular focus
was on developing understanding and awareness of the role and extent of early al-
gebra. A simulation was designed specifically to facilitate discussion and to elicit
Tasks as a Tool for Developing Knowledge through and for Practice 175

specific aspects of learning and teaching early algebra. Quite detailed analysis of
their theoretical basis as well as the implementation is included and provides impor-
tant insights in to some useful tools for future and practising primary teachers.
Moss, in her chapter on outdoor mathematical experiences, makes an argument
for the value of outdoor activities for children’s mathematical development. She
presents a range of tasks and ideas for many mathematical concepts in the elemen-
tary classroom. Powerful ideas such as large scale Cartesian graphs and number
lines where the scale or physical engagement has the potential to enhance mental
models as well as more traditional tasks that link the mathematics to realistic and
multidisciplinary contexts are shared. She uses these tasks in teacher education and
argues that teachers are more likely to implement outdoor activities with their own
classes if they have had positive experiences in their own learning using this type
of activity. Through the engagement and practice of these tasks in the preservice
setting, the potential and possibilities are more obvious.
Finally, Palhares, Gomes, Carvalho and Cebolo discuss the implementation of a
task exploring polyminoes with teachers in a professional development setting. The
task was an investigation that made visible both traditional mathematical content
and more process oriented reasoning and strategies. A further implementation by
these teachers in the school classroom highlighted a number of differences or con-
trasts from observing their teaching. The authors argue that these reflect the con-
trasting traditional and constructivist approaches to teaching. There was evidence of
a loss of some of the mathematical power of the task – more telling by the teacher
than exploring by the children.
The mathematical and pedagogical knowledge demanded for the successful im-
plementation of current models of teaching mathematics is significant for prospec-
tive and practising teachers. These chapters represent some promising practices that
explicitly link the school classroom with teacher education settings.
The Use of Relational Games in Initial Teacher
Education: Bringing the Classroom
into the Lecture Theatre

Solange Amorim Amato

The research results presented in this chapter are only a small part of action research
performed with the aims of improving Brazilian primary school teacher trainees’ un-
derstanding of, and attitudes to, mathematics. The teaching strategies were similar
to those suggested for their future use in teaching children. They involved the use of
multiple modes of representation for communicating the concepts, operations and
relationships in the primary school curriculum. One of the most interesting chil-
dren’s tasks performed by the trainees was trading games which clearly expose re-
lationships among two or more number concepts. The data collected indicated that
playing these games was an important strategy to improve trainees’ understanding
of, and attitudes to, fractions. Teacher educators in developing countries who face
similar problems to the ones presented here may find the tasks in this chapter useful
for training primary school teachers.

1 Introduction

For Skemp (1976) relational understanding involves knowing both what to do and
why it works, while instrumental understanding involves knowing only what to do,
the procedure, but not the reason why it works. My initial experiences as a novice
mathematics school teacher in Brazil and much later my experiences as a teacher
educator led me to think that both mathematics teacher trainees and primary school
teacher trainees do not have an appropriate relational understanding of the mathe-
matics content they are supposed to teach. It did not take long, after I started teach-
ing at schools, to notice that I did not have enough mathematics understanding to
teach even the most basic curriculum contents to my first class of 11-year-olds (5th
graders). I could present my students with correct procedures, but could not answer
most of their questions concerning the reasons for using certain steps in the proce-
dures (Amato, 2004a).

S.A. Amato
Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Brası́lia, Brasil
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
178 S.A. Amato

Later in my work as a teacher educator, I could hear primary school teachers and
trainees express their feelings about their instrumental understanding of, and dislike
for, mathematics. Although their understanding of, and attitudes to, mathematics
were not probed in any systematic way, during workshops and inservice courses
they would spontaneously make comments such as “I had never realized that was
the reason for writing a zero in the remainder, I just did it,” or “not fractions, I hate
them.” These experiences led me to undertake a research project with the main aim
of investigating ways of helping primary school trainees to improve their under-
standing of, and attitudes to, mathematics in preservice teacher education.
Similar problems seem to exist in developed countries and have been discussed
in the literature about teacher education. It is widely recognized that primary
school teachers and trainees’ knowledge of mathematics is, on the average, in-
sufficient (e.g., Ball & McDiarmid, 1990; Goulding, Rowland & Barber, 2002;
Southwell & Penglase, 2005). Research has also revealed that some primary school
teachers and trainees demonstrate negative attitudes toward mathematics (e.g.,
Ball & McDiarmid, 1990; Hannula, Kaasila, Laine, & Pehkonen, 2005; Philippou
& Christou, 1998). Yet Ball and McDiarmid (1990) argue that continued documen-
tation about teachers and trainees’ insufficient knowledge of mathematics will not
contribute much to ameliorate the problems encountered in teacher education and
teaching. The implication is that research-based methods of tackling the problem are
required. Improving trainees’ understanding involves “working with what they bring
[to teacher education] and helping them to move toward the kinds of mathematical
understanding needed in order to teach mathematics well” (Ball, 1990, p. 465).

2 Some Background Literature

Shulman (1986) identified several knowledge components which teachers may use
in order to make decisions for the purpose of teaching and to help them promote
understanding on the part of their students. One of these components is subject mat-
ter knowledge (SMK) which includes both the substantive and syntactic structures
of the discipline. The focus of this study was on teachers and trainees’ acquisi-
tion of substantive understanding of the mathematics they are supposed to teach.
However, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) which includes “the ways of rep-
resenting and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others and . . .
an understanding of what makes the learning of specific topics easy or difficult”
(Shulman 1986, p. 9) and general pedagogic knowledge or “knowledge of generic
principles of classroom organization and management” (Shulman, 1986, p. 14) are
also mentioned.
Wilson, Shulman and Richert (1987) suggest that attitudes and beliefs are out-
comes of subject matter learning. Teachers’ attitudes to mathematics are said to
affect the way they will teach in the future (Ball, 1988) and the classroom ethos
(Ernest, 1989). Yet the literature provides little discussion about the particular ways
in which teachers’ attitudes to mathematics may affect their teaching practices and
classroom ethos. One exception is Bromme and Brophy (1986) who think that
The Use of Relational Games in Initial Teacher Education 179

teachers model their attitudes and beliefs during their teaching. In most cases mes-
sages are conveyed without teachers’ awareness. The most direct influence of pri-
mary school teachers’ negative attitudes to mathematics on their students’ learning
appears to be time allocation. Bromme and Brophy point out that “such teachers
have been found to allocate more instruction time to subject-matter areas that they
enjoy, and less to areas that they dislike” (p. 122).
Time allocation has been found to be a very important aspect in improving
mathematics learning (Brophy, 1986; Fisher, 1995), since for many students the
construction of mathematical knowledge is a slow process. Research also tends to
show that adults with a degree in other subjects (e.g., Quilter & Harper, 1988) and
primary school trainees and teachers (e.g., Brown, Askew, Rhodes, William, &
Johnson, 1997; Haylock, 1995) tend to blame instrumental teaching for their
negative attitudes to mathematics. So the main research questions of the present
study were
• In what ways can primary school trainees be helped to improve their relational
understanding of the mathematical content they will be expected to teach?
• Can trainees improve their liking for mathematics as a by-product of the efforts
to improve their understanding of the subject?
There are some suggestions in the literature about how to improve trainees’ and
teachers’ relational understanding of mathematics. Most of these involve helping
them re-learn mathematics in teacher education. Simon (1993), for example, rec-
ommends that the mathematics education of primary school trainees should focus
more in helping them to understand, construct connections and organize the knowl-
edge they will have to teach than in teaching additional content (vertical coverage).
In the literature about trainees’ SMK, there are also a few results of teacher educa-
tors’ efforts to improve trainees’ knowledge of particular mathematics content. In
the intervention carried out by Stoddart, Connell, Stofflett, & Peck, (1993), concrete
materials and iconic representations were used in an attempt to reconstruct trainees’
understanding of rational number concepts. Many other teacher educators probably
attempted to improve their trainees’ SMK because it is implicit in what they wrote
(e.g., Sowder, Bezuk, & Sowder, 1993) but not many seem to have reported the
results achieved.
Previous attempts to improve trainees’ attitudes to mathematics in teacher educa-
tion also involve improving their understanding of the subject (e.g., Haylock, 1995;
Philippou & Christou, 1998). The integration between the re-teaching of mathemat-
ics (SMK) and the teaching of mathematics pedagogy (PCK) is said to be a way of
improving trainees’ understanding (e.g., Bezuk & Gawronski, 2003) and attitudes
to mathematics (e.g., Weissglass, 1983). Teacher educators often suggest that such
integration involves re-teaching mathematics to teachers and trainees by using the
same tasks that could be used to teach mathematics in a relational way to school stu-
dents. According to Weissglass (1983), to develop positive attitudes to mathematics
in children, future primary school teachers must learn how to set up learning expe-
riences that are enjoyable, interesting and give the learner a sense of accomplish-
ment. In order to be able to do this, the teachers must have had such experiences
themselves.
180 S.A. Amato

Some teacher educators also argue that the integration between the teaching of
mathematical content and pedagogy is beneficial to trainees’ acquisition of PCK
(e.g., Ball & Bass, 2000; Polya, 1981; Sernadini, 1983; Sowder et al., 1993) This
is probably because they think that PCK is dependent on SMK. Trainees “should
understand the subject in sufficient depth to be able to represent it appropriately and
in multiple ways” (Ball, 1990, p. 458). Learning some initial ideas about PCK was
thought to be more easily achieved from trainees’ efforts to re-learn mathematical
content through tasks which were new to them and from trying to understand how
those tasks have helped them to acquire a more relational mathematical knowledge
(Sowder et al., 1993). In teacher education it does not seem to be a good idea to tell
trainees that their conceptions about teaching acquired during their long experiences
in learning mathematics at school are inappropriate. They must be provided with
new experiences to be able to form their own opinions about what may be better.
So using children’s tasks was thought to help trainees acquire some PCK in an
experiential or tacit way (Sotto, 1994) in initial teacher education.
The ability to translate SMK into representations is considered a fundamental
part of teachers’ PCK (Shulman, 1986). Yet there is also some research evidence
which shows that some teachers, especially novice primary school teachers, do not
have a good knowledge of mathematical representations (e.g., Ball, 1990). Teachers
have the social responsibility of helping students learn mathematics. So they must
develop the ability to work backwards from their symbolic ways of representing
mathematics to more informal ways of representing the subject (Ball & Bass, 2000).
Otherwise they may lose precious opportunities of using representations in unpre-
dicted moments and helping students construct further relationships. According to
Rowland, Huckstep and Thwaites (2005), it is part of a teacher’s job to execute
“contingent actions.” This means that they must be ready to “respond to children’s
ideas . . . and to deviate from an agenda set out when the lesson was prepared” (p.
7). Acquiring a repertoire of representations and tasks that can be transformed by
the teacher for classroom use seems to be an adequate and initial form of PCK
for a course component about mathematics teaching in preservice teacher educa-
tion. Although it is a very basic form of PCK, knowledge of representations was
also thought to be the most appropriate knowledge about teaching in order to foster
trainees’ initial feelings of success that would be needed to continue their learning
from teaching mathematics.
Bromme and Brophy (1986) argue that it is not enough for trainees to be-
come confident about their mathematical knowledge; they must also become
confident that they can teach the subject effectively to their students. There-
fore, I had to select the most basic children’s tasks in order to help novice
teachers start teaching in a more relational way. I also had to consider the
short time available in Brazilian teacher education for course components about
mathematics teaching and trainees’ instrumental understanding to deal with
certain teaching strategies. Another issue related to PCK which I had to con-
sider was the viability of certain tasks with large classes of primary school
children which is the usual situation in Brazil. Making the decision was fur-
ther complicated by the fact that there have always been different perspectives
and no general consensus on what constitutes good teaching (Stones, 1994). So
The Use of Relational Games in Initial Teacher Education 181

for the purpose of this study, good children’s mathematics tasks for initial teacher
education courses were defined as those which
• have the potential to help trainees develop a strong relational understanding of
the mathematics they are supposed to teach in the future (SMK);
• improve their liking for the subject;
• help trainees to acquire a repertoire of representations (PCK); and
• can be adopted and sustained with large classes.
One of the most interesting forms of children’s tasks that can be performed with
trainees is games adapted for large classes. Ernest (1987) presents the rationale for
the use of games in the teaching of mathematics. He argues that games provide
active learning, enjoyment, co-operation and discussion. The enjoyment generated
may result in an improvement in attitudes toward mathematics after a period of time.
According to Orton (1994), through playing games students have mental practice
which “is not forced and it takes place in a natural and enjoyable way” (p. 47).
Play does not finish with childhood. Even adults cannot maintain themselves on a
task for long periods if the work involved is not done in a way that is amusing or
engaging. It is very common to see adults enjoying themselves while playing with
cards, dominoes and even 22 mature men happily chasing a ball in a football game.
Games which clearly expose important relationships among two or more math-
ematical concepts can be called ‘relational games’ because they have the po-
tential to develop students’ relational understanding of mathematics. They were
thought to be particularly important in re-teaching rational numbers to trainees. Re-
search has shown that many school students’ (e.g., Ni & Zhou, 2005; Stafylidou &
Vosniadou, 2004) and even trainees (e.g., Domoney, 2002) see fractions as two sep-
arate natural numbers and not a single number and develop a conception of number
that is restricted to natural numbers. Ni and Zhou (2005) suggest that the teaching of
fraction concepts should start earlier than is it is often recommended by curriculum
developers in order to avoid the development of what they call ‘whole number bias.
Yet if teachers have not themselves developed an understanding that fractions are
numbers, they cannot help school students’ to avoid the development of such bias.
Teachers must develop a strong understanding of rational numbers which, among
many other things, involves the ability to distinguish between natural numbers and
fractions.

3 Methodology

I carried out action research (Amato, 2001) with the aim of improving primary
school trainees’ understanding of mathematics. McTaggart and Kemmis (1982, p.5)
emphasize the knowledge which must be sought through the action research method
“trying out ideas in practice as a means of improvement and as a means of increasing
knowledge about the curriculum, teaching and learning.” According to McTaggart
and Kemmis (1982, p. 21) one of the aims of the reconnaissance stage is to answer
182 S.A. Amato

questions such as “What is happening already? What is the rationale for what is
happening already?” In a first phase of the reconnaissance stage, trainees’ liking
for and understanding of mathematics were investigated empirically through two
small questionnaires that were administered to two different samples of trainees
(n1 = 224 and n2 = 184, respectively). In a second phase of the reconnaissance
stage seven primary school teachers were interviewed in the hope that their answers
and suggestions would provide more information in order to clarify the two research
problems and to improve the plan for the first action step. As this action research
was concerned with my teaching practice as a teacher educator, they were teachers
whom I had taught in inservice courses with similar content to the course compo-
nent I would be teaching in the action steps of the research. Those teachers had
also completed a similar course component at preservice teacher education and had
experience in teaching mathematics to children, so they were thought to be more
able to provide information about novice teachers’ initial difficulties in the teach-
ing of mathematics than trainees or teacher educators. They could also reveal their
opinions about how their preservice teacher education could have been different and
prevent them from having some of those difficulties. So they could provide useful
suggestions for the action steps of this research.
The action steps of the research were performed at University of Brası́lia, Brazil,
through a mathematics teaching course component (MTCC) in preservice teacher
education. This component consists of a semester with about 80 h of lectures in
which both theories related to the teaching of mathematics and strategies for teach-
ing the content in the primary school curriculum must be discussed. So the previ-
ous MTCC teaching program was mainly related to trainees’ acquisition of PCK.
This is the only compulsory component related to mathematics offered to primary
school trainees at University of Brası́lia. There is an optional course component
about mathematics teaching (MTCC2), but it is offered infrequently because of a
shortage of mathematics teacher educators. There were two main action steps and
each had the duration of one semester. Thus each action step took place with a dif-
ferent cohort of trainees. As the third and subsequent action steps were less formal
in nature and involved less data collection, limited results will be reported from this.
In the action steps of the research, the re-teaching of mathematics (SMK) was
integrated with the teaching of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) by asking the
trainees to perform children’s tasks which have the potential to develop relational
understanding for most of the contents in the primary school curriculum. A new
teaching program was designed with two other aims in mind:
• To improve trainees’ relational understanding of the content they would be ex-
pected to teach in the future; and
• To improve their liking for mathematics.
The tasks performed by the trainees had four more specific aims in mind:
• To promote trainees’ familiarity with multiple modes of representation for most
concepts and operations in the primary school curriculum;
• To expose trainees to several ways of performing operations with concrete
materials;
The Use of Relational Games in Initial Teacher Education 183

• To help trainees to construct relationships among concepts and operations

through the use of versatile representations; and
• To facilitate trainees’ transition from concrete to symbolic mathematics.
Versatile representations such as straws, part-whole diagrams, and number lines
(English & Halford, 1995) were often used in practical and written tasks in an at-
tempt to help trainees relate natural numbers to fractions, decimals and percentages.
The idea is to represent together two or more related concepts in order to make their
relationships clear (e.g., 35 whole straws and 3 pieces of 1/4 to represent the mixed
number 35 3/4). A summary of the main tasks in the teaching program can be found
in Amato (2004b).
In my previous courses, tasks involving translations among and within multi-
ple modes of representation and the use of versatile representations were being
advocated to help children construct relationships among mathematical concepts
and operations, but they were not being used with the teachers and trainees often
enough. As trainees needed to improve their relational understanding of the con-
tent in the primary school curriculum, they also needed to be treated as learners of
mathematics. Therefore, about 90% of the new teaching program became children’s
classroom tasks.
Teaching time was anticipated to be the greatest problem in this research as all
teaching strategies I am familiar with to help children acquire relational understand-
ing require a certain amount of time to be put into practice. The problem was aggra-
vated by my decision to re-teach the trainees most of the primary school curriculum
and not just a sample of it. So an analysis of the MTCC syllabus was performed in
order to reduce or exclude certain items and increase the time devoted to the teaching
of more complex mathematical content. I decided to reduce the theoretical content
of the syllabus and to exclude from the program a few mathematical contents such
as the teaching of small numbers (zero to 9) and measurement of capacity, mass
and time. Providing examples of the theories in practice was thought to be more
profitable than asking the trainees to read books and articles about them.
Four data collection instruments were used to monitor the effects of the strate-
gic actions in the action steps of the research: researcher’s daily diary; middle and
end of semester interviews; beginning, middle and end of semester questionnaires;
and pre- and post-tests. The daily diary was a way of keeping a record of my own
thinking and of observations made inside and outside the classroom concerning the
research questions, the strategic actions and the problems encountered during the ac-
tion steps of the research. The questions in the questionnaires and interviews focused
on trainees’ perceptions about their own understanding of mathematics and their at-
titudes toward mathematics before and after experiencing the tasks in the teaching
program. They also focused on an evaluation of the tasks in the teaching program.
The tests involved open-ended questions in such a way that relational understanding
could be probed through a context of teaching children. For example, “How would
you help your students to understand the reason for the result of 3/4 × 1/2?” The data
analysis was mostly qualitative, but a simple quantitative analysis (frequency and
percentages) was also used to describe some of the results. Much information was
produced by the data collection instruments administered in the two phases of the
184 S.A. Amato

reconnaissance stage and in the two main action steps of the research but, because
of the limitations of space, only some teachers and trainees’ responses related to
their use of children’s tasks and relational games will be presented here.
According to Thompson and Walle (1980, 1981), teachers can help students to
translate from concrete to symbolic modes of representation by asking them to si-
multaneously manipulate concrete materials and digits to solve word problems on
a Place Value Board (PVB). Orton and Frobisher (1996) also argue that students
should not be asked to write symbols at a distance from the operations performed
with concrete materials and propose similar association of concrete materials and
symbols on a PVB. The PVB I use with Brazilian teachers, trainees, and school stu-
dents (Fig. 1) is a cheaper version of the PVB proposed by Thompson and Walle. It
consists of a sheet of white A3 paper (or 2 sheets of A4 paper glued together) folded
into four equal lines and three unequal columns: large, medium, and small columns
which can be used to represent either
• natural numbers with three digits such as 215 and 134 (First PVB, Fig. 2);
• mixed numbers such as 15 3/5 and 34 4/5 (Second PVB, Fig. 2) and decimals such
as 27.8; or
• decimals with three digits such as 1.56 and 3.48 using paper strips (Third PVB,
Fig. 2).
I also use a bigger teachers’ version of the PVB made with transparent plastic pock-
ets for displaying concrete materials and digits during whole classroom discussions
(Fig. 3).
Pair work is used during the games and other tasks with the students’ PVB
(Fig. 1) to encourage trainees’ interaction and sharing of ideas. The pairs also in-
teract among themselves if they get stuck. Some of the representations used for
natural numbers were extended to fractions, mixed numbers and decimals in order

Fig. 1 Students’ Place Value Board

The Use of Relational Games in Initial Teacher Education 185

Fig. 2 Three Place Value Boards with concrete materials for representing natural numbers, mixed
numbers and decimals, respectively

Fig. 3 Teachers’ Place Value Board

186 S.A. Amato

to help school students develop the concept of rational numbers as an extension to

the number system (Amato, 2005). Versatile representations such as straws, part-
whole diagrams, and number lines are often used in practical and written tasks in an
attempt to help trainees relate natural numbers to fractions and decimals. The PVB
is used to represent place value concepts and the four basic operations with natu-
ral numbers, proper fractions, mixed numbers and decimals. Therefore, the use of
these versatile representations is a way of developing trainees’ learning of rational
numbers in a meaningful way by relating rational numbers to their prior learning
of natural numbers (Ausubel, 2000). The idea is to represent natural numbers and
fractions together in order to make their relationships clear. For example, I use 15
whole straws and 3 pieces of 1/5 to represent the mixed number 15 3/5 (Second PVB,
Fig. 2). Natural numbers (First PVB, Fig. 2) and fractions (Second PVB, Fig. 2) are
represented together with plastic drinking straws as follows:
• units = loose whole plastic straws of any color;
• tens = bunches of ten straws gathered with a rubber band;
• hundreds = bunches of ten tens gathered with a rubber band; and
• several pieces of straws: halves (red pieces), quarters (yellow pieces), fifths
(green pieces), eighths (blue pieces) and tenths and hundredths (purple or pink
pieces).

3.1 The Forward and Backward Trading Games

The forward and backward ‘trading games’ suggested by Thompson & Walle (1980;
1981) to help students develop the concepts of place value with natural numbers
were extended to fractions and mixed numbers. These are games that can be played
in pairs and that are orchestrated by the teacher. If the class is small, the pairs are
responsible for rolling a spinner. If the class is large, the teacher rolls a giant spin-
ner (Fig. 4) for all the pairs. In the forward version of the trading game for mixed
numbers, the pair of players select the materials needed for the game (a box with 40
divisible units such as colored drinking straws, 20 fifths, and 4 rubber bands). Each
player chooses one of the lines of the PVB to play the game and rolls a spinner with
numbers such as 5/5, 1, 1/5, 2 1/5, 2/5, 1 4/5, 3/5 and 2 3/5 (for the version of game with
fifths) written on it. The player who gets the bigger number starts the game. If both
players score the same number, each player must roll the spinner again. Each player
in his/her turn
• rolls the spinner and gets as many units and pieces as indicated by the spinner;
• places the units and the pieces in the correct places in his line of the PVB (i.e.,
units in the medium column and pieces in the small column); and
• changes 5 fifths for one unit and places the new unit in medium column (the
units’ place) of the board. Players continue accumulating units and fifths until
they get ten units. Then the units are joined together with a rubber band forming
a ten which should be placed in the large column (the tens’ place). The winner is
the player who first gets two tens.
The Use of Relational Games in Initial Teacher Education 187

Fig. 4 Teacher’s spinner

In the backward version of the trading game for mixed numbers, the materials
needed, and the way of deciding who starts the game, are the same for the forward
version of the game. Each player places the number defined by the teacher (e.g., 2
tens, 4 units and 3 fifths) in the correct places in his/her line of the PVB. Each player
in his/her turn, rolls the spinner and removes as many units and pieces as indicated
by the spinner. Players continue removing units and fifths from the PVB. If the
player does not have enough units to remove the amount of units indicated by the
spinner, he/she removes one ten from the tens’ place and takes the rubber band from
the ten to get more loose units. If the player does not have enough fifths to remove
the amount of fifths indicated by the spinner, he/she removes one straw from the
units’ place of the PVB, and changes the straw for 5 fifths to get more fifths. The
winner is the player who first removes all his/her whole straws and pieces from the
PVB. When played with fractions and mixed numbers the trading games can help
school students and trainees visualize the relationship between fractions of the type
n/n, n = 0 (e.g., 5/5) and the natural number one (e.g., 5/5 = 1) (Amato, 2005).
Other versions of the forward and backward trading games with rational numbers
were also used with the trainees. The rules were the same as described above, only
the symbols written on the spinner varied. In the second version, the spinner had
improper fractions such as 6/5, 7/5, 8/5, 9/5, 10/5, 11/5 and 12/5 (for the version of game
with fifths) written on it. In this version, the trainees had first to convert the improper
fractions to mixed numbers mentally and then play the forward and backward trad-
ing games as before. In the third version, the spinner had decimals such as 0.1, 0.2,
0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, and 1 (for the version of game with tenths) written
on it. In the fourth version, the spinner had decimals such as 0.01, 0.02, 0.03, 0.04,
0.05, 0.06, 0.07, 0.08, 0.09, and 0.1 (for the version of game with hundredths and
played with paper strips) written on it. In this last case, the winner is the player who
first gets three units in the forward trading game (Third PVB, Fig. 2).
188 S.A. Amato

Apart from playing the trading games with straws for base 10 with whole num-
bers (First PVB, Fig. 2) and later their extensions for rational numbers (Second and
third PVB, Fig. 2), the trainees were initially asked to play the games for smaller
bases than 10 with whole numbers (e.g., base 3, 5, or 4) as proposed by Thompson
& Walle (1980, 1981). Both Polya (1981) and Sernadini (1983) recommend the in-
clusion of trainees’ reflection after performing similar actions to those proposed for
school students. So after performing the trading games, I often invited trainees to
participate in short methodological discussions. I usually start the discussions with
questions such as “How can this game be adapted to younger children?” or “Which
relationships can this game help children construct?”

4 Some Results of the Second Phase of Reconnaissance Stage

In the second phase of the reconnaissance stage I did not ask the teachers about their
attitudes to mathematics. This was done in the first phase of the reconnaissance stage
with primary school trainees. The focus of the interviews with the teachers (second
phase) was on their initial experiences in teaching mathematics and on the inservice
courses. However, some teachers revealed how their negative attitudes to mathemat-
ics and/or their weak PCK had affected their initial teaching (Amato, 2004a). These
teachers said that, at the beginning of their careers, they avoided teaching math-
ematics when possible. One example was “We spend more time on teaching the
subject which we feel better. We often make students dislike mathematics because
we [teachers] do not identify ourselves with the subject.”
Another teacher expressed her perceptions about her colleagues’ feelings toward
mathematics and how this appeared to affect their teaching in terms of time alloca-
tion: “I hear my own school colleagues saying that they emphasize something else
because they do not like mathematics. Then they do not teach much mathematics to
their students.” In this action research, similar to the findings reviewed by Bromme
& Brophy (1986), low time allocation to the teaching of mathematics seemed to
be related to teachers’ negative attitudes and instrumental understanding. Avoiding
the teaching of certain content could be even more damaging to children’s learning
than only teaching them instrumentally. As a low time allocation restricts students’
opportunities to learn, teachers need to be aware of the benefits of increased teach-
ing time particularly focusing on tasks that have the potential to develop relational
understanding.
In the inservice courses a few tasks were undertaken by the teachers pretending
they were children. After the first interview it was decided to ask the rest of the
teachers what they felt when they were asked to participate in this way. All six
teachers said that they found the idea valid, as they were being prepared to teach
children. It was interesting to note that one of the teachers spontaneously mentioned
the idea before being asked specifically about the theme:
It was also important for me to place myself in the role of the student and experience some
of the tasks in the inservice course. When I went to the classroom I could see a lot of things
The Use of Relational Games in Initial Teacher Education 189

I could do with my students. My lessons became richer and the students became more
involved.

All the teachers interviewed said that they enjoyed the more practical aspect of
the inservice course (Amato, 2004a). They said that learning how to use the con-
crete materials improved their own understanding of mathematics and their teach-
ing practice. One of the teachers also mentioned the role of the children’s classroom
tasks with concrete materials in improving her attitude to mathematics: “I started
liking mathematics together with my students. I noticed that, when you lean on
something concrete and when you see the “whys,” mathematics is not a monster
with seven heads.” Yet most of the time in the inservice courses, the teachers only
saw examples of children’s tasks and the manipulation of concrete materials by a
pair of colleagues who volunteered to play the game or perform the actions to the
whole group on the teacher’s PVB. However, it seems that just seeing other teachers
play the game or use concrete materials helped them in gaining some confidence in
teaching mathematics.
The teachers also said that everything in the inservice course had been very help-
ful to their work. However, with the exception of one of the teachers, they com-
plained that the inservice course had been too short to discuss the teaching of certain
mathematical contents in greater detail (Amato, 2004a). Their main suggestion was
to increase the duration of the inservice courses. In the past I had opted for teaching
less content, to be able to do it in a more detailed way. After the reconnaissance
interviews, it became clear that teachers should be asked to perform children’s tasks
and games much more often than it had been done in previous courses. Such de-
cision could be even more appropriate in the case of trainees who may not have
had much experience in teaching and who needed to improve their understanding
of, and/or liking for, mathematics. Besides, as many trainees would be teaching any
primary school grade in the very near future, they needed to perceive the curriculum
as a more coherent and organic whole. Therefore, I decided to help them acquire
some relational understanding of a wide range of mathematical content in the pri-
mary school curriculum.

5 Some Results of the Action Steps

Only a few trainees presented some relational understanding in the pre-tests, mainly
concerning addition and subtraction of natural numbers and a few fraction concepts.
The pre-test median mark was 10% and the post-test median mark was 70%. The dif-
ference in the two medians indicates a considerable improvement in understanding,
as judged by the tests. Using children’s tasks proved to be an appropriate strategy
to improve trainees’ relational understanding of mathematics since the majority of
trainees said, and many indicated in the post-tests, that their understanding had im-
proved. Some also said that they had improved their liking for the subject and their
remarks clearly demonstrated a connection between the affective and cognitive do-
mains (Amato, 2004c). However, one of my main worries about the new teaching
190 S.A. Amato

program for initial teacher education was the effect on the trainees of asking them,
as adults, to perform many children’s tasks for one whole semester. The data tended
to show that most of the trainees did not mind experiencing children’s tasks. They
appeared to accept it as a normal strategy in a course component about teaching chil-
dren. On the contrary, many trainees mentioned that experiencing children’s tasks
had been a positive aspect of the program and had improved their understanding of,
and liking for, mathematics (Amato, 2004b).
Especially during the trading games, the classes of trainees were as noisy as any
children’s class. After playing them, it was common to hear comments such as “It
was very good” or “The children will love it.” It was also common to hear one or
more of the trainees asking “Are we not playing a game today?” when they noticed
that the lecture was finishing and no games were played on that day. One of the ques-
tions on a questionnaire administered at the end of the semester asked the trainees
to evaluate the tasks in the teaching program: “Write if you liked or didn’t like
participating in the tasks listed below. Tick your answer in the appropriate column
according to the following code: (a) Strongly Disliked; (b) Disliked; (c) Indifferent;
(d) Liked; and (e) Strongly Liked.” Item (9) of the list of tasks was “to play the trad-
ing games with concrete materials on the PVB.” In the first semester, 100% of the
trainees who answered the questionnaire said that they liked (marked either liked or
strongly liked) to play these games. In the second semester, 8% answered that they
were indifferent and 92% answered that they liked to play these games.
There were also many remarks (12 trainees and 18 remarks in the first semester
and 20 trainees and 45 remarks in the second semester) in several of the open-
ended questions of the interviews and questionnaires about their enjoyment of the
games. Those responses were considered more valid as they were not prompted by
the wording of the question. The number of remarks about “playing tasks” which
included games was even greater (17 trainees and 29 remarks in the first semester
and 26 trainees and 69 remarks in the second semester). Some of these trainees
(3 trainees and 3 remarks in the first semester and 5 trainees and 8 remarks in the
second semester) suggested the inclusion of even more games in the program. The
trainees commented that the games improved their understanding of, and liking for,
mathematics and was one of the aspects they enjoyed in the MTCC. For example,
Maria explained that the games affected her understanding by helping her to relax,
and Ana said that they helped to change her attitude to teaching mathematics in the
future:
Maria (Interview): Games are great. They represent relaxing moments. When you relax it
seems you broaden your insight. You say: Ah! I understood. It is nice to say: ‘I understood’.
They are not a useless task. Have you noticed how the child inside you teaches you about
life? What does a child like to do? They like to play.
Ana (post-questionnaire about the tasks in the teaching program): I would like only
to emphasize the great consolidating power that the games in the classroom and the tasks
involving identifying misconceptions in children’s exercises. They definitely belong to this
course component.
Ana (Interview): My attitude to mathematics changed for the better. . . . There are so
many games and ways to teach the students. Now I know how to enter a classroom and talk
about something. Of course I will have to prepare the lessons, but not with so much fear
and lack of confidence.
The Use of Relational Games in Initial Teacher Education 191

One of the problems I have to face every semester is the number of trainees
enrolled in each teaching group (for example, there were 42 in the first semester and
44 trainees in the second semester). I explain that their classes are a similar size to
those they will be facing in the future. It is not easy to convince teachers that these
teaching strategies are possible with classes of 35 to 45 primary school students,
which is the usual situation in Brazil. Some adaptations and extra energy from the
teacher are certainly needed, but strategies like practical work and games can still be
used. Experiencing, observing and reflecting about some of the adaptations I made
while using practical work and playing games was thought to help trainees see the
possibilities and limitations presented by large classes. It was also thought to help
them implement these tasks in their future teaching.
Games are difficult to implement even in small classes. There are always some
students complaining that their partners are cheating while rolling the spinner. My
previous experiences has showed me that the best way to avoid classroom manage-
ment problems when playing games with large classes is to have the teacher (or
teacher educator in the case of playing them in teacher education) orchestrating the
game. The class is divided into pairs and I roll a giant spinner (Fig. 4) for all the
pairs. In this way, all the pairs have the same scores at any given time. This allows
me to ask quick short questions during the game in order to check if the pairs under-
stand well the rules of the game and if they are doing the trades appropriately. For
example, “How many straws does the left hand side (All students sitting on the left
hand side of the pair) have?” and “How many straws does the right hand side (All
students sitting on the right hand side of the pair) still need in order to win?” I think
these adaptations are a very important form of PCK to teachers who face similar
problems of large class sizes.
Apart from helping trainees relate fractions to natural numbers (e.g., 5/5 = 1)
(Amato, 2005), other important connections were facilitated by the use of the trading
games on the PVB, especially the connections between the fraction and decimal
notations. During a whole classroom discussion after a trading game was played
with quarters, I asked how many units we had in the number 3/4. Several trainees
said “none.” Then I asked the class what digit I could write in the units’ place in
order to say more clearly that there were no units in the number 3/4. A trainee replied
that I could write a large zero in front of the fraction. Then I wrote on the blackboard
a zero in front of the fraction (i.e., 03/4) and asked the class what was the difference
between the number written with the zero and the one written before without the
zero. Most trainees replied none, but one trainee said jokingly that I was “wasting
chalk.” In other classes the trainees enjoyed the idea of writing a zero in the units’
place and “wasting ink on paper” to transform a proper fraction in a mixed number
with zero units. Writing a zero in the units’ place became an important link between
the notations for fractions and decimals, because the two notations become visually
more similar (i.e., 0 7/10 = 0.7 ).
Some trainees suggested the inclusion of even more playing tasks in the pro-
gram. The trading games were the main games played in the first two action steps.
Yet more relational games and other children’s tasks involving rational numbers
concepts and operations were included in the third and subsequent semesters and
192 S.A. Amato

also in recent inservice courses and workshops for teachers. These changes proved
to be quite effective in helping other classes of teachers and trainees overcome their
difficulties with, and dislike for, fractions. Relational games also proved to be a way
of motivating adult learners, such as teachers and trainees, to manipulate concrete
materials which become the materials used in a game, and not a tool used only by
young children to help them understand mathematics.

6 Some Conclusions

Most trainees said that they enjoyed experiencing children’s tasks. These results
triangulated with the results obtained in the reconnaissance stage with the practicing
teachers. Those teachers and the trainees in the action steps appeared to accept the
main teaching strategy; that is, the use of children’s tasks, as normal in a course
component about teaching children. Part of trainees’ dislike for mathematics was
perceived as related to their instrumental understanding of the subject. Along the
action steps of this research, the use of relational games proved to be one of the
most effective children’s tasks to improve their understanding of, and liking for,
mathematics in initial teacher education.
Although my belief that instrumental teaching was going on in schools in Brası́lia
was confirmed by what the teachers said in interviews and by trainees’ instrumental
understanding demonstrated in the pre-tests, I was not expecting primary school
teachers to allocate less teaching time to mathematics than to other subjects. More
research is certainly needed in order to investigate the extent of this “avoidance”
problem and how it can be prevented. Taking into consideration that the teachers
who participated in the reconnaissance stage of this research all had done a teacher
education course at tertiary level and that the avoidance problem has already been
mentioned in the literature in English language (e.g., Bromme & Brophy, 1986), it
seems appropriate to suggest that teacher educators and researchers from developed
countries should also investigate its existence and ways of ameliorating the problem.
Some teacher educators seem to believe that working toward developing teach-
ers who are autonomous, and who seek study groups and other means of learning
and growth, is incompatible with the idea of learning about SMK and PCK through
formal instruction in preservice teacher education. On the contrary, my own ex-
periences as a novice mathematics teacher and the ideas about the relationships
between knowledge, democracy and autonomy elaborated by social theorists such
as Antonio Gramsci (Gramsci, 1998) led me to think that trainees’ acquisition of
SMK and PCK in preservice teacher education is an important precondition for their
future autonomy as teachers. My professional autonomy as a novice mathematics
teacher was, in many moments, hindered by my instrumental understanding and by
my insufficient knowledge of appropriate representations to deal with my students’
difficulties.
Novice teachers have to face many constraints and challenges at the beginning of
their careers (e.g., Sullivan, 2004). Natural classroom settings can be quite stressful
The Use of Relational Games in Initial Teacher Education 193

for novice teachers whose pedagogical thinking appears to be dominated by con-

cerns of classroom management. I think that artificially constructed environments
in teacher education may help trainees focus more on learning SMK and PCK by
avoiding the complexity and stress associated with whole classes. Acquiring some
SMK and PCK from my own teaching experiences proved to be a very slow process.
It took me a long time and a great effort to acquire some relational understanding
and PCK while teaching several large classes every day. Learning mathematics from
teaching also seems to be a slow process for primary school teachers, as they have
to teach several subjects to the same class.
I think that trainees must acquire in preservice teacher education SMK and PCK
of an adequate level to face the responsibility of providing effective learning expe-
riences to all school students since the beginning of their teaching careers. When
teachers find the time to work together in study groups, they should be discussing
complex problems related to their practice and not dedicate their time trying to ac-
quire SMK of the mathematics they teach, which I consider a basic part of their
professional knowledge and so the responsibility of preservice teacher education.
An initial knowledge base, which is a combination of a strong relational under-
standing of mathematics (SMK) and knowledge of a repertoire of representations
(PCK), must be available to trainees in preservice teacher education when they
are supposed to have the time to dedicate themselves to such learning. Otherwise
their first students may well be led to think that mathematics is a complicated
and unreachable form of knowledge because teachers have not yet learned ways
of communicating the subject in a relational way. Students’ learning may also be
greatly harmed by their novice teachers’ low time allocation to the teaching of
mathematics.
Increasing general theoretical knowledge has been the main focus of teacher ed-
ucation courses at University of Brası́lia. The discussion of teaching strategies such
as games and practical work and discussions about representations for the teach-
ing of particular mathematical content, may be interpreted by some academics in
a negative way and as providing trainees with recipes or procedures. These are
indeed very simple forms of teachers’ knowledge, but also a very basic form of
pedagogical content knowledge. I think that novice teachers’ reflections on what
happened in the classroom as a result of their actions are much more important than
where the ideas they have used in their teaching planning have come from. Slowly
they can start combining the ideas gathered from textbooks, from other more ma-
ture teachers and from teacher educators with their own ideas. Teachers need to
be creative, but it is important to know some of the teaching alternatives devel-
oped in the past in order to make useful adaptations and informed choices while
planning and teaching particular mathematical content. Hart (1993) believes that
students benefit from a sense of confidence on the part of the novice teacher: “Re-
member, if you are being fed by a ‘plain cook’ it might be best to have the food he
can cook, everyday, rather than starve until he is able to produce a single gourmet
dinner” (p. 30). With time and teaching experience trainees will certainly be more
able to use such basic knowledge in combination with more sophisticated teaching
strategies.
194 S.A. Amato

Acknowledgments This work benefited extensively from the insights and support of the late Mr.
John Backhouse, the supervisor of my Doctorate thesis. I am also very grateful to Dr Anne Watson
who supervised the thesis after his death. Acknowledgements are also due to the teachers and
trainees who provided valuable information for this research.

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Using Mathematically Rich Tasks to Deepen
the Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Primary
Teachers

George Ashline and Regina Quinn

Professional development experiences for elementary educators in the United States

are often of insufficient depth, duration or relevance to have an impact on teaching
(Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). To counter this prevailing norm, mathemat-
ics and education faculty involved in the Vermont Mathematics Partnership (VMP)
design courses and series of workshops for inservice and preservice elementary
teachers to help them more deeply understand mathematics and the critical role of
the primary curriculum in building young students’ foundation for learning complex
mathematics.
This chapter describes primary grade teacher professional development sessions
which focused on mathematically rich tasks that featured:
• adult exploration of significant mathematical content,
• engaging activities designed and carefully sequenced to build conceptual under-
standing of mathematics that most educators have previously learned as simple
rote procedures,
• open-ended design so that challenging tasks were accessible to all participants –
regardless of their prior learning, and
• mathematical content that, although not directly transferable to the primary class-
room, was clearly linked to the fundamental roots that develop in the early grades.
The tasks included in these sessions were one feature of the Vermont Mathemat-
ics Partnership, a comprehensive initiative to improve mathematics teaching and
learning in schools across the state of Vermont.

G. Ashline
Professor of Mathematics, Saint Michaels College, Vermont, USA
R. Quinn
Project Director and co-PI of the Vermont Mathematics Partnership, USA
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
198 G. Ashline and R. Quinn

1 Introduction

Primary teachers in the United States face significant challenges in preparing all
of their students for success in mathematics. Since the publication of standards by
the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in 1989 and subsequent updates
(National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000), the expectations for student
learning have expanded in scope and in depth to encompass more mathematical
topics and to place a greater emphasis on conceptual understanding and complex
problem solving, beginning in the earliest grades. During the 1990s, curriculum re-
searchers, developers and publishers produced materials designed to address the in-
creased scope and depth of the standards; however, few primary grade teachers have
had adequate preparation to use those materials effectively or to plan instruction that
fosters deep mathematical understanding.
Over the past decade, nearly all Vermont elementary schools adopted these cur-
ricula, yet most struggled with implementation. When teachers, administrators, and
higher education faculty were asked to identify the challenges and the priorities for
professional development, three themes, consistent with current research, emerged:
deeper content knowledge (Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences, 2001;
Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 1999), experience with instructional practices that
build conceptual understanding of that content in the primary grades (Kilpatrick,
Swafford, & Findell, 2001), and assistance with lesson-design that encourages
young students to make connections and generalizations (Weiss, Pasley, Smith,
& Heck, 2003).
Teachers of mathematics at all grade levels require significant expertise in math-
ematics content and instruction; however, primary grade teachers face unique chal-
lenges that require specialized knowledge. Teachers of young children need to rec-
ognize the very early roots of abstract mathematical concepts in the primary grade
curriculum, to discern the mathematical significance of deceptively simple primary
grade activities, and to elicit mathematical conjectures, connections, and general-
izations from their young students. This is particularly difficult if teachers know
mathematics simply as a set of rules and procedures to be memorized.
In response to these challenges and needs, the Vermont Mathematics Partnership
was established in 2002. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and
the U.S. Department of Education, the VMP builds upon more than a decade of
successful, statewide efforts to improve mathematics teaching and learning. VMP’s
core partners include mathematicians from public and private institutions of higher
education, educational leaders and researchers, assessment specialists, and K–12
educators dedicated to achieving equity and excellence in mathematics education.
The VMP founding partners share a history of substantive collaboration, such as
through the Vermont Mathematics Initiative (VMI), a three-year, content-focused
master’s degree program at the University of Vermont that prepares mathematics
teacher leaders who work in schools across the state.
The heart of the work of the Vermont Mathematics Partnership is to provide op-
portunities for all students to succeed in learning rich, rigorous mathematics.
A fundamental question, “What will it take to help all of the students in this system
Using Mathematically Rich Tasks to Deepen the Pedagogical Content Knowledge 199

succeed in mathematics?” guides every aspect of the VMP –from interactions with
individual teachers to major partnerships with state and national organizations and
institutions. With this focusing question in mind, VMP works with schools systems
to design long-term, comprehensive plans for improving mathematics teaching and
learning. A key component of these plans is to strengthen teachers’ pedagogical
content knowledge, the mathematical knowledge needed to teach all students
effectively.
Based on the particular mathematics content knowledge needs of Vermont pri-
mary teachers, VMP instructional teams, comprised of mathematicians and educa-
tors, develop original tasks and resource materials or modify existing VMI graduate
course materials to make them appropriate and accessible to a general audience of
inservice and preservice teachers. As teams plan and sequence mathematical tasks,
they are faced with a set of opportunities, dilemmas, and questions:
• How to maintain the intellectual rigor of the materials while respecting the im-
mediacy of teacher concerns about classroom applications?
• How to get past the widespread belief that primary grade teachers need to know
only rudimentary mathematics?
• How to translate materials that were originally designed for a graduate program
for mathematics leaders into a format that is intellectually engaging and relevant
to all teachers?
• How to provide ample opportunities for primary teachers to make mathematical
generalizations and to see the connections between the mathematics they learn
as adults and the mathematics they teach young children?
In this chapter, we provide a detailed description of the tasks designed for a series
of three teacher professional development sessions, illustrating one example of how
the VMP responds to these questions and challenges. These tasks were implemented
in sessions totaling approximately two and a half days over a 5-month period. The
tasks were developed for all faculty and support staff from one of Vermont’s largest
elementary schools with approximately seventy-five K–6 teachers and teacher as-
sistants (also known as “paraeducators”) with widely varied backgrounds and levels
of confidence in mathematics.

2 Initial Planning

Mathematics instructional leaders at this partner school invited a VMP instructional

team, consisting of mathematicians and educators, to design a series of inservice
sessions for their faculty. For many participants, these workshops constituted their
first in-depth exploration of mathematics content as adult learners. Introductory
sessions were designed to provide fruitful and enjoyable mathematical explorations,
filled with opportunities to understand an important mathematical idea more deeply
through a sequence of exploratory tasks. These tasks encouraged primary teachers
to recognize connections across branches of mathematics and ways in which their
200 G. Ashline and R. Quinn

curriculum builds the foundation for more complex mathematics. As instructors,

we also intended to provide a comfortable starting point for faculty, who might
otherwise feel reticent about voluntarily enrolling in a mathematics course.
Drawing from existing materials designed for VMI graduate courses, we selected
an engaging mathematics exploration that allowed teachers to revisit a topic with
which they most likely had some familiarity, but not a deep understanding. This
task, a hands-on investigation of the Pythagorean Theorem developed by Dr Edwin
Marsden (Marsden, 1999), involves physically manipulating a set of right trian-
gles and linking the resulting geometric models to algebraic approaches, ultimately
recreating some of the classical proofs of the Theorem. We realized that most fac-
ulty members likely had learned the Pythagorean Theorem as a rule to be applied
in particular problem situations, without understanding why it works, how it is con-
nected to other mathematics they know, or how it relates to the mathematics they
teach in the early grades.
In designing the inservice sessions, two overarching questions that guided our
planning emerged: “How can we design these inservice sessions so that participants
develop a conceptual understanding of a theorem they may have only memorized in
high school?” and “How can we design tasks and sessions to foster teachers’ ability
to apply their conceptual understanding of mathematical ideas to the primary level
curriculum they teach?”
As we analyzed the original Pythagorean Theorem task, we considered the ques-
tion: “What will teachers need to understand so that they will be able to get the most
out of this activity?” We knew that if we moved directly from the manipulation of
a concrete model to its algebraic representation, we risked leaving participants with
the same kind of superficial understanding retained from their initial high school
exposure to the Pythagorean Theorem. Based on several years of experience de-
signing content-rich professional development, we knew that it would be important
to take time to build deep understandings of basic mathematical ideas, described by
Liping Ma as “profound understanding of fundamental mathematics” (Ma, 1999).
Another important guiding principle was to base instruction on current research on
how people learn new material – anticipating, eliciting and working with partial
understandings and misconceptions (Bransford et al., 1999).

3 Organizing a Series of Tasks to Deepen Content Understanding

3.1 Building Conceptual Understanding and Establishing

the Culture for Conjecture

Participating teachers from this school use the Everyday Mathematics Program, de-
veloped by the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project (UCSMP, 2004).
Like other curricula founded on current U.S.-based mathematics standards, this pro-
gram emphasizes solving problems, formulating conjectures, evaluating arguments,
Using Mathematically Rich Tasks to Deepen the Pedagogical Content Knowledge 201

testing hypotheses, and making generalizations. While educators may acknowledge

the importance of establishing this kind of culture, few have had the opportunity to
learn mathematics in such an environment.
To help establish an environment that encourages mathematical reasoning, we
began our initial inservice session with a quote from the Scarecrow at the end of
the Wizard of Oz movie (LeRoy, 1939). Endowed by the Wizard with certification
that he had a brain, the Scarecrow quipped, “The sum of the square roots of any
two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.”
To the casual listener, this mathematical proposition, filled with technical jargon,
may sound reasonable. We decided to use this familiar quote to engage teachers in
thinking critically about an erroneous conjecture and in generating arguments, based
on their evolving understanding of related mathematical principles.
As groups completed tasks, they explored conjectures and solved problems
building toward a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. We circulated, observed,
and carefully monitored progress, noting specific problems with which partici-
pants struggled, made errors, or demonstrated misconceptions. Participants were
encouraged to construct mathematical arguments to defend their solutions and to
evaluate conflicting ideas. The ensuing discussion shed light on numerous partial
understandings, worthy of further exploration.

3.2 Explorations in Geometry

Based on our earlier experiences of using these tasks with teachers, we determined
that it would be most useful to build foundational understandings in geometry in
advance of more direct explorations of the Pythagorean Theorem. Highlighting sev-
eral geometrical concepts, these initial tasks helped to provide the language needed
for later proof investigation. We developed explorations on the classification and
properties of basic geometric shapes, the concept of area and how formulas for
finding the area of various polygons are generated, the area model for multipli-
cation and a concrete, physical basis for algebra and geometry. These exploratory
tasks were designed to assist teachers in making connections across branches of
mathematics and in developing vocabulary needed for deeper mathematical analysis
and proof.
During the first inservice session, teachers investigated the characteristics of par-
allelograms and triangles and generated rules for measuring areas, considering ini-
tial examples of rectangular area as the product of the length and width:

A room that is 5 m by 9 m requires 45 m2 of carpet to cover the floor.

A base-ten block that is 10 cm long and 10 cm wide has an area of 100 cm2 .

Groups of teachers worked together to use that basic knowledge to determine the
areas of a variety of triangular and quadrilateral regions, such as those illustrated in
Fig. 1.
202 G. Ashline and R. Quinn

Fig. 1 Examples of geometric figures included in initial explorations

As groups shared their work, we stressed the importance of their precise use
of mathematical terminology when communicating in mathematics. Teachers were
asked to formulate definitions for the base and height of a triangle and parallelogram
and to use their definitions to find the areas of any right triangle, generic triangle,
and parallelogram. Whereas a number of the teachers had memorized the formulas
for the areas of a parallelogram as the product of base and height and a triangle as
half the product of base and height, teachers better understood the origins of these
results through this investigation.
During the second inservice session, fundamental concepts that had been ex-
plored during the first session were highlighted, reinforced and extended to include
other properties of triangles. Teachers were encouraged to conjecture and general-
ize about properties of various types of triangles. Some noted that right triangles
can have side lengths which are multiples of 3, 4, and 5 units. Others stated that it is
impossible for the longer side length to equal or surpass the sum of the two smaller
side lengths. These insights led to the conclusion that, to form a triangle, the sum of
any two side lengths of a triangle must be greater than that of the third. By starting
with concrete examples, teachers were able to reach more general conclusions, and
ultimately predict whether or not a given set of three numbers represents the side
lengths of a triangle. By providing time to rediscover formulas and revisit funda-
mental ideas, the stage was set for the challenging task of proving the Pythagorean
Theorem in the final session, which will be detailed in a later section of this chapter.

3.3 Working Toward a Proof with the Tri-square Rug Activity

To facilitate a deeper understanding of the relationships between initial geomet-

ric explorations and the Pythagorean Theorem, we used the “tri-square rug activ-
ity,” adapted from the Integrated Mathematics Program (Fendel & Resek, 1999),
Using Mathematically Rich Tasks to Deepen the Pedagogical Content Knowledge 203

Fig. 2 Example of a “tri-square rug”

in which teachers rediscovered the statement and meaning of the Pythagorean

Theorem. In this task, Al and Betty have designed a game using a “tri-square rug”
that is made by sewing three separate square rugs together at their corners, with an
empty triangular space resulting, as illustrated in Fig. 2.
In Al and Betty’s game, a dart falls randomly on the rug, with three possible
outcomes:
• If the dart hits the largest of the three squares, Al wins.
• If the dart hits either of the other two smaller squares, Betty wins.
• If the dart misses the rug, they just let another dart fall.
The goal of this task was for teachers to find tri-square rug configurations ul-
timately yielding fair games or wins for Al or Betty. Listing several examples for
each category, teachers noticed patterns and were able to efficiently predict the long
term outcome by carefully looking at a tri-square rug (See Picture 1 on p. 206.).
Through this task, teachers reinforced their understanding of the types of trian-
gles discussed in the first inservice session. Given a particular tri-square rug, they
recognized that by measuring the largest angle C of its middle triangle T , they
could find the winner by determining if the triangle was obtuse, acute, or right.
Furthermore, in subsequent discussion, teachers connected this with the relation-
ships among the middle triangular side lengths of a, b, and c (the longest side of T ).
A summary of their conclusions is given in Table 1.

Table 1 Tri-square rug activity conclusions

Al wins Betty wins Fair game

T is obtuse T is acute T is right

C > 90◦ C < 90◦ C = 90◦
a2 + b2 < c2 a2 + b2 > c2 a2 + b2 = c2
204 G. Ashline and R. Quinn

Picture 1 Teachers engaging in tri-square rug activity

Discussion also ensued on the need to carefully measure triangular angles and
side lengths and to recognize precision limitations of common measuring devices
such as compasses and rulers.
This task offered insight into a concrete model for the Pythagorean Theo-
rem. The squares of the side lengths of the triangle are actually areas of square
regions.

3.4 The Area Model for Multiplication

The goal of the final inservice session was to provide teachers with the opportu-
nity to discover a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. As a prelude to the hands-on
proof of the Theorem, we designed a task to introduce the area model for multipli-
cation. This task also provided an opportunity for primary teachers to understand
connections between algebraic and geometric approaches. We knew that this was
an important focal point because we have found that most teachers have had limited
opportunities to understand and appreciate the intimate linkages between algebra
and geometry, although current standards and curricula emphasize the importance
of building young students’ understanding of these connections.
Teachers began their exploration of the area model for multiplication with a con-
crete application, multiplying two-digit numbers. This model builds upon teachers’
knowledge of multiplication algorithms, such as the partial product and lattice meth-
ods, and connects to algebraic and geometric representations. For example, consider
the area model for 24 × 37, depicted in Fig. 3.
Using Mathematically Rich Tasks to Deepen the Pedagogical Content Knowledge 205

24
20

3 7
37
Fig. 3 Example of a specific application of the area model for multiplication

Herein, teachers envisioned the area of the entire region in terms of its four de-
composed subregions as follows:

24 × 37 = (20 + 4) × (30 + 7)
= (20 × 30) + (20 × 7) + (4 × 30) + (4 × 7)
= 600 + 140 + 120 + 28
= 888

Building from this relevant example, teachers then investigated the algebraic rep-
resentation of general area models for multiplication, namely,

(x + y)2 = x2 + 2xy + y2 and

(x + y)(z + w) = xz + xw + yz + yw

These equations can be represented and verified using the models in Fig. 4.

y y

x+y x+y
x x

x y z w
x+y z+w
Fig. 4 Generalized area models for multiplication

The total area of the square on the left of Fig. 4 with side length x + y is (x + y)2 .
It is also the sum of the areas of its four pieces: one square with side x (and area x2 ),
one square with side y (and area y2 ), and two rectangles with side lengths x and y
(and areas x · y = y · x). In the more general setting, the total area of the rectangle on
206 G. Ashline and R. Quinn

the right with side lengths x + y and z + w is (x + y)(z + w), but its total area is also
the sum of the areas of its four rectangular pieces, namely (taken from bottom to
top) xz + xw + yz + yw. As teachers analyzed the illustrative models in this task, they
better understood and appreciated the rule of “FOIL,” in which the area of the four
rectangular pieces corresponds to the algebraic product of the First, Outer, Inner,
and Last terms of the binomial product (x + y)(z + w).

3.5 Framing the Pythagorean Theorem

After recognizing rich connections between algebra and geometry and discussing
area model results, teachers were prepared to work cooperatively on the culminating
task – a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. More specifically, for the right triangle
pictured in Fig. 5 with leg lengths a units and b units and hypotenuse length c units,
teachers worked toward a proof that a2 + b2 = c2 .

c
a

b
a + b2 = c2
2

Fig. 5 The Pythagorean Theorem

To help them focus their efforts, we encouraged teachers to create a “picture

frame” region with the four congruent triangular regions pictured in Fig. 6. (This
“picture frame” would be shaped less like something purchased in an art supply
store, and more like something constructed by a math teacher!) Each group of teach-
ers was supplied with four large, labeled, congruent right triangles like the ones in
Fig. 6, as well as poster paper on which to arrange them. This paper also provided
space to record observations, ideas and conjectures about the relationships between
geometric and algebraic representations.

b b

a c a c

c
c a a

b
b
Fig. 6 Set of right triangles used in the culminating task – “Framing the Pythagorean Theorem”
Using Mathematically Rich Tasks to Deepen the Pedagogical Content Knowledge 207

Viewing these triangles as “picture frame components” and applying area model
results, teachers strove toward a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. This process
was challenging for many. Some groups struggled to find a configuration connect-
ing the side lengths of the four right triangles; others began by forming frames with
irregular areas or containing no space for an enclosed “picture.” With encourage-
ment and minimal assistance by instructors, groups persevered through this task and
found geometric representations leading to a proof of the Theorem. Most frequently,
they created two types of frames: a “Small Frame” or a “Large Frame.”
While building their physical models, teams spontaneously began to represent
their work algebraically. After numerous false starts and refinements, they were ul-
timately able to translate from physical to algebraic models to prove the Pythagorean
Theorem.
Groups that created a Small Frame, as in Fig. 7, represented the total model
area as the sum of the areas of the inner square “picture” and the four congruent
“framing” triangles, as in Fig. 8.

a b a

c b b c

a b a

c
Fig. 7 Small Frame model for the Pythagorean Theorem

Ê1 ˆ
c 2 = (b − a ) 2 + 4 ⎜ ab ⎜
⎝2 ⎠

c 2 = (b − a ) 2 + 2ab

c 2 = (b2 − 2ab + a 2 ) + 2ab

c 2 = b 2 + a 2 − 2ab + 2ab

c2 = a2 + b2

Fig. 8 Algebraic equations for the Small Frame model

208 G. Ashline and R. Quinn

Another way teachers envisioned the connection between the physical model of
the Small Frame and its related algebraic expressions was to rearrange or decompose
the model into its components, depicted in Fig. 9.
Other teams formed a Large Frame, as in Fig. 10, and algebraically represented
the total area as the sum of the areas of the inner square “picture” and the four
congruent “framing” triangles, as in Fig. 11.
As shown in Fig. 12, the sections of the Large Frame can be rearranged into
component parts to clarify the algebraic progression in Fig. 11.
Using either approach to this task, teachers “framed” the proof of the
Pythagorean Theorem. For some teachers, this was the first proof they had ever
created, and hence represented a significant accomplishment. Despite the challenge
of working concurrently in an algebraic and geometric fashion, collaboration on this
proof enhanced teachers’ understanding and sense of ownership of these concepts.
(See Picture 2 on p. 209).
This hands-on task and resulting proof techniques offered an opportunity
for teachers to reflect upon contributions of various cultures in the history of

b–a

b–a

c b

a c

b a
Fig. 9 Rearrangement of the Small Frame

a b

c a
c
b

c b
a c

b a
Fig. 10 Large Frame model for the Pythagorean Theorem
Using Mathematically Rich Tasks to Deepen the Pedagogical Content Knowledge 209

⎛1 ⎞
(a + b) 2 = c 2 + 4 ⎜ ab ⎜
⎝2 ⎠

a 2 + 2ab + b 2 = c 2 + 2ab

a 2 + b2 = c2

Fig. 11 Algebraic equations for the Large Frame model

b a

a c a

b c b

b a
Fig. 12 Rearrangement of the Large Frame

Picture 2 Teachers discovering Large Frame proof

210 G. Ashline and R. Quinn

mathematics. The Small Frame idea was used by the 12th century Indian mathe-
matician Bhaskara (Weisstein, 2004), and the Large Frame idea can be traced back
to the ancient Chinese (University of South Australia, UNISA, 1996). These refer-
ences deepen discussion of the proof and illustrate ways to connect mathematics to
its rich history.

3.6 Building Pedagogical Content Knowledge

“Most of us encountered the geometry of Euclid with its axioms and theorems in
high school. And for many this was a mystifying experience. One reason is the
inappropriate structure and content of many of these geometry courses – a situation
that is slowly changing as new approaches to secondary school geometry instruction
are being developed. But an equally compelling reason is that many students have
little or no formal experience with geometry prior to their high school courses.
The Everyday Mathematics curriculum places significant emphasis on this part of
mathematics, beginning in Kindergarten.” (EDM Grades 4–6 Teacher’s Reference
Manual [UCSMP, 2004, pp. 160–161])
As we planned workshop sessions, we reviewed K–6 lessons from the Everyday
Mathematics program. Keeping in mind the importance of geometry in the curricu-
lum, we selected tasks across grade levels that build student experience with fun-
damental mathematics related to the Pythagorean Theorem to help teachers connect
their explorations of the Theorem to the elementary curriculum they teach. Through-
out the sessions, we provided opportunities for teachers to review lessons and tasks
at each grade level related to area, perimeter, properties of triangles and squares,
linear versus square units of measure, area models for multiplication, and algebraic
modelling.
Although the verification and application of the Pythagorean Theorem begins in
the sixth grade Everyday Mathematics program, there are many preliminary under-
lying concepts that are developed in earlier grades. Groups of kindergarteners ex-
plore perimeter and properties of triangles, squares and other shapes by using a large
loop of rope to make polygons with the same perimeter. Across the primary grades,
students encounter the concept of area through several “tiling” activities, in which
they cover surfaces with various objects such as pattern blocks or paper squares.
During the early grades, students use models to explore square numbers, find areas
of regular and irregular shapes, and solve multiplication problems by building ar-
rays. By sixth grade, students are expected to identify two-dimensional shapes and
the base and height of triangles and parallelograms and to generate formulas for
finding the area of those figures. Fifth and sixth graders play games to estimate the
square root of a number.
As teachers deepened their mathematical understanding and studied related K–6
lessons and tasks, they began to see their own curricular materials “with new eyes”
and considered questions such as those in Fig. 13.
Using Mathematically Rich Tasks to Deepen the Pedagogical Content Knowledge 211

• How will the deeper understanding you have developed during these sessions inform
the way you do this lession?
• What is important mathematically about this task?
• How will you guide your students to think about this mathematics?
• What questions could you pose that will help your students make mathematically sig-
nificant observations?
• In what way does this lesson or task relate to the Pythagorean Theorem?

Fig. 13 Questions to guide analysis of primary grade curriculum materials

They began to recognize that improving their understanding of mathematics and

of curricula across grade levels can positively impact their own instruction. As fur-
ther described below, teachers at the school participated in grade-level teams, and
the mathematics teacher leaders for those teams helped to facilitate some discus-
sions after our sessions and collect some of this feedback. As informally shared in
conversations and team meetings after our sessions, teachers reported the experi-
ence of being midway into a lesson and suddenly struck by a new connection be-
tween long-taught material and a new mathematical insight developed through our
sessions. Although making these connections takes time (sometimes days or even
longer), we were intentional about creating tasks to provide opportunities for teach-
ers to transfer their learning and to connect adult-level content with primary-level
teaching. Making these links explicit is neither straightforward nor simple. Even
with strong mathematics content knowledge, it is not always easy to see how a sim-
ple kindergarten activity lays the foundation for more sophisticated mathematics.
Exploring mathematics concepts in-depth and tracing back the roots to the earliest
grade levels helps teachers recognize the importance of understanding mathematics
content that is well beyond the grade levels they teach – a recurring theme of our
initiative.
Teachers who participated in these sessions weekly met in grade-level teams, to
review upcoming units of study and to discuss the important mathematical ideas and
strategies for helping their students learn that content. Having a common experience
in learning mathematics as adults, these teachers were better able to selectively use
or modify their own curriculum materials to focus on the significant mathematics
that underlies primary grade tasks and lessons.

4 Conclusion

We returned to the Scarecrow’s quote (LeRoy, 1939) during our final session after
spending significant time formulating and testing mathematics conjectures as out-
lined above. The Scarecrow, surprised by the words that came out of his mouth,
exclaimed, “Oh joy! Rapture! I’ve got a brain!” Teachers at our sessions experi-
enced their own excitement as they became more adept at finding the fallacy in the
212 G. Ashline and R. Quinn

Scarecrow’s statement and generating their own proof of the Pythagorean Theorem,
the culmination of these carefully sequenced tasks.
The sessions described in this chapter comprise one small part of a multiyear
comprehensive plan for strengthening mathematics teaching and learning at this
school. Other activities include on-site graduate courses, the formation of a team
of mathematics teacher leaders from each grade level, training for administrators,
technical assistance in the use of assessment to inform and improve instruction, and
classroom modelling and coaching by outstanding mathematics teachers. Midway
into this project, students at this school have demonstrated significantly improved
scores in mathematical problem solving and conceptual understanding on statewide
mathematics assessments. Teachers have demonstrated deeper content knowledge,
improvements in instructional practices, and greater confidence in their ability to
understand and teach challenging mathematics. Administrators report changes in
the quality of instruction they observe and the enthusiasm with which teachers and
students engage in mathematics.
In addition to this school, six other VMP partner school systems across the state
have implemented their own comprehensive plans for improving mathematics teach-
ing and learning. These plans are tailored to each school systems’ unique assets and
needs. Although models vary considerably, each plan maintains focus on the essen-
tial question, “What will it take to help all of the students in this system succeed in
mathematics?”
Through work at these seven partner systems during the first 4 years of the VMP,
project leaders and evaluators have found that primary teachers change and improve
their practice as they
• deepen their mathematics content knowledge,
• have multiple opportunities to link that knowledge to their curriculum,
• systematically use ongoing, formative assessment to collect evidence of student
understanding, and use that evidence to guide their instruction,
• engage in and learn about mathematics education research findings, and
• have direct experiences, such as observing master teachers, that demonstrate that
students are capable of learning more complex mathematics than previously be-
lieved.
The kind of learning described in this chapter ideally commences during initial
teacher preparation; however, sustained work in mathematics professional develop-
ment for primary teachers, throughout their careers, is critical in the current climate
of high expectations and increasing demands on educators and students. To have a
lasting, positive impact upon a school, it takes an in-depth, comprehensive approach
and commitment on the part of teachers, administrators and professional develop-
ers. To be effective, such professional development should offer many entry points,
including workshop sessions designed to stimulate interest in learning mathematics,
such as those detailed in this chapter.
It is essential for mathematicians and educators to collaborate and contribute
their expertise, in planning and creating the materials and services necessary for the
success of such endeavors. When mathematicians and educators work closely on all
Using Mathematically Rich Tasks to Deepen the Pedagogical Content Knowledge 213

aspects of planning and development, the resulting professional development can

result in powerful and engaging learning for participants and instructors. This ap-
proach to professional development contrasts sharply with approaches that relegate
the mathematics content to the mathematicians and the educational content to the
educators.
Finally, it is important to keep in mind the nature of elementary mathematics in
which this development is embedded. As Liping Ma points out (Ma, 1999, p. 116),
. . . elementary mathematics is not a simple collection of disconnected number facts and
calculational algorithms. Rather it is an intellectually demanding, challenging, and exciting
field – a foundation on which much can be built. Elementary mathematics is fundamental
mathematics.

In her conclusion, Ma argues (Ma, 1999, p. 153) that

The real mathematical thinking going on in a classroom . . . depends heavily on the teacher’s
understanding of mathematics . . . . If a teacher’s own knowledge of the mathematics taught
in elementary school is limited to procedures, how could we expect his or her classroom to
have a tradition of inquiry mathematics? The change that we are expecting can occur only
if we work on changing teachers’ knowledge of mathematics.

We heartily agree and feel that the implementation of professional development

opportunities, like the one described in this chapter, will allow primary teachers to
more deeply understand the mathematics they teach.

Acknowledgments The VMP is funded by a grant provided by the US Department of Educa-

tion (Award Number S366A020002) and the National Science Foundation (Award Number EHR-
0227057). ([Link]
The authors of this chapter have collaborated for several years on initiatives to improve math-
ematics teaching and learning: the Vermont Mathematics Initiative, a content-intensive, graduate
program for teacher leaders and the Vermont Mathematics Partnership (VMP), a project funded by
the National Science Foundation and US Department of Education to work with school systems to
improve mathematics learning for all students.

References

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of policy and practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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Ma, L. (1999). Knowing and teaching elementary mathematics. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
214 G. Ashline and R. Quinn

Marsden, E. (1999). The Pythagorean Theorem: A proof based on geometry. Activity created for
Vermont Mathematics Initiative.
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mathematics. Reston, VA: NCTM.
University of Chicago School Mathematics Project (UCSMP). (2004). Everyday mathematics pro-
gram (EDM). Chicago, IL: Wright Group/McGraw-Hill.
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From Professional Tasks in Collaborative
Environments to Educational Tasks
in Mathematics Teacher Education

José Carrillo and Nuria Climent

This chapter concerns the work of a group of primary teachers and teacher
educators-researchers in the field of Mathematics Education within a project of
collaborative research (PIC), which is aimed at promoting primary teachers’ pro-
fessional development as well as investigating such development. In the sessions of
PIC we have set some professional tasks, analysed how they promote professional
development and modified them according to our reflections. At the same time, as
primary teachers’ educators, we have adapted these tasks in order to use them in
preservice teacher education. The findings from the PIC have illuminated both our
and the student teachers’ decision-making concerning these tasks. In this chapter
we present an overview of these tasks and deal with actual examples concerning
their implementation in both preservice and inservice teacher education within the
collaborative environment of the PIC.

1 Context

In Spanish Primary Education today, teachers act as class tutors to their pupils,
and teach mathematics, society and nature studies, language, and art education. The
training they will have received depends largely on the syllabus they followed and
when they undertook their university studies, although in general, practising primary
teachers with children aged between 6 and 12 are not specialised in mathematics,
as is the case with the teachers we refer to in this chapter. Current student teachers
receive little teaching in mathematics, with few significant differences, in the main,
between one university and another. Specifically, at the University of Huelva, from
a total of 2,060 h, future primary teachers follow just one 45-h course dedicated

J. Carrillo
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Huelva, Spain
N. Climent
University of Huelva, Spain
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
216 J. Carrillo and N. Climent

exclusively to mathematics, along with another of 120 h which jointly covers math-
ematics and pedagogical issues. It is within this latter course, which takes place in
the third and last year of the degree, that the class-based task with the trainees that
we present here is undertaken.
Since 1999 a group of primary teachers and teacher educators-researchers have
been working together in the field of Mathematics Education within a project of col-
laborative research (PIC, Proyecto de Investigación Colaborativa) at the University
of Huelva. The PIC is currently composed of three primary teachers, two teacher
educators-researchers and two young researchers. There are three features which
have characterised and enriched the group throughout its existence: the importance
of reflection as a catalyst for professional development, collaboration – the design
process is collaborative as against cooperative, where the researchers design activi-
ties and schemes of work for the teachers’ use, and actual classroom practice as the
backdrop against which all group discussions are put to the test.

2 Theoretical background

The work described here is consistent with our perspective of professional devel-
opment as a continuum that includes pre- and inservice teacher education (Carrillo,
Coriat, & Oliveira, 1999). From our perspective, it is crucial that student teachers be-
gin to conceptualise practice in a way that promotes their professional development.
For that purpose, in both pre- and inservice teacher education (as teacher educators
and researchers) we use various theoretical notions as analytical conceptual tools.
Our notion of mathematics teacher development (Climent & Carrillo, 2002), in
which reflection plays a major role, has been influenced chiefly by Cooney and
Shealy’s (1997) autonomy and permeability of conceptions, on Krainer’s (2001) un-
derstanding of practice and Jaworski’s (1998) reflective practice. In PIC we specially
deal with Krainer’s (2001) reflection and networking. Also useful in describing the
context of the PIC is Jaworski’s (1992, 1994) teaching triad and the notion of the
educational triangle. Zaslavsky and Leikin (2004) make an interesting extension to
Jaworski’s triad into the context of mathematics teacher education. In this case, the
vertices of the mathematics teacher educator triad are Jaworski’s triad, management
of mathematics teachers’ learning, and sensitivity to mathematics teachers. This is
similar to the amplification we present from the educational triangle (Fig. 1) to the
professional development triangle (Fig. 2), although it foregrounds the learning con-
tent and professional knowledge more than the participants themselves, who receive
greater attention in the educational triangle.
The educational triangle comprises tree vertices: teacher, pupils and content
(Fig. 1).
This triangle, which can be considered as a specific case of one in which the ver-
tices are organiser, participants and content, has various expansions, in such a way
that we can design triangles that represent the context of professional development.
From Professional to Educational Tasks 217

Teacher

Mathematics
Pupils
(content, in general)

Fig. 1 The educational triangle

Educators-researchers

Teachers Educational Triangle

Fig. 2 Professional development triangle

We present the extension of the educational triangle to professional development

associated with the PIC (Fig. 2).
The educators-researchers vertex indicates the main activity of the researchers
involved in the PIC, but their role as co-learners in the environment of the PIC
should not be forgotten (Jaworski, 2001). We agree with Lesh and Lovitts (2000)
when they say,
To develop more productive links between theory and practice, it is naı̈ve to think in terms of
a one-way process in which practitioners present problems and researchers provide answers
that are distributed through external agents (p. 52).

Collaborative environments have been proven to promote links between theory

and practice, teachers and researchers (Climent & Carrillo, 2002, 2003). It is in
this spirit that Jaworski (2004), due to the complexity of mathematics teaching, pro-
poses joint research between teachers and teacher educators as a means of promoting
deeper forms of understanding in the teacher development community.
In both the PIC and our preservice courses we use video recordings of real
classroom situations. They are a powerful tool allowing close examination of
many aspects of teaching which can be returned to whenever required (Lampert
& Ball, 1998). In the group analysis, the (student) teachers learn to establish ways
of professional networking with their colleagues and ways of development. We do
not think the notions, processes, tools and contexts for preservice teacher educa-
tion and for inservice teacher education are the same. What we have learned from
our experience is that the development of trainee mathematics teachers is fostered
through a variety of means, chief amongst which are reflection, classroom-based ac-
tivities, and opportunities to ask real questions. Llinares and Krainer (2006), viewing
this development from the perspective of learning-to-teach, suggest that for student
teachers,
218 J. Carrillo and N. Climent

One way of coordinating messages produced by different contexts in which learning-to-

teach takes place is by incorporating teaching analysis in teacher education programs”
(p. 434).

Concerning the teachers participating in the PIC, we consider our analytical fo-
cus on teaching as a means of entering theoretical loops (from practice to theory
to practice) (Skott, 2004) that should be interpreted not as prescriptions for perfor-
mance, but as issues relevant to the teacher’s reflective activity.
Many authors have highlighted the importance of analysing classroom situations
(Moje & Wade, 1997; Shulman, 1992). We believe it is important to capture as full
a picture as possible (whole lessons, including students’ reactions and their interac-
tions with each other and with the teacher). Our goal is not only to draw theoretical
principles from practice, or to see how practice confirms these principles; rather, we
attempt to present a realistic situation as fully as possible, with its complexity and
richness of interpretations and its inherently interconnected theoretical principles.
We also share the philosophy of projects like MILE (Goffree & Oonk, 1999) with
respect to the relevance of the concepts of the reflective practitioner and practical
knowledge, and the principle of investigating real practice as a means of develop-
ment (Goffree & Oonk, 2001). What we contribute here is the simultaneity of both
scenarios: the PIC deals with real classroom situations and these situations (nurtured
by the discussions in the PIC) are subsequently transferred to the initial training pro-
gramme.
The aim is, therefore, to gather theoretical knowledge from actual situations,
and from this to develop a theoretical understanding of practice (Krainer, 2001),
learning to use theory to interpret practice. It is very important that theories are
seen as useful by teachers and prospective teachers, because they often put up a
barrier between theory (linked to initial education) and practice (primary schools).
In this sense, Goffree (1999) speaks about theoretical reflection, in which the teacher
educator analyses a concrete situation based on his/her experience and knowledge,
and emphasises how the theory may help understand the practice and, sometimes,
help make predictions. In our case, the tasks set for the (prospective) teachers are
mathematics-revealing:
There has been a deliberate and unmistakable shift in mathematics education away from a
focus on students and their learning to teachers, their mathematically-related knowledge and
the relationships of their mathematical knowledge to their teaching (Wood, 2005, p. 193).

We attempt to find an integrated way of building knowledge by the (prospective)

teachers through both the specific content of mathematics teaching and its pedagog-
ical content, promoting its functionality and the perception of this functionality. We
agree with Cooney (2001), and extend his conclusion to inservice teachers, when
he says:
The best entry into their [preservice teachers’] belief systems about mathematics and the
teaching of mathematics is through the study of school mathematics. It is here that reflection
can become commonplace with respect to both mathematics and pedagogy. Consequently,
I submit that the integration of content and pedagogy is a strategic site for encouraging
reflection and the consequences of that reflective thinking (pp. 26–27).
From Professional to Educational Tasks 219

It is a question of learning to reflect on mathematics teaching and learning situa-

tions, of being aware of the major role of mathematics (Jaworski, 1999).
Summarising, the key points of our approach to professional development are:
• The conception of the student teacher as a teacher in progress. Real practice situa-
tions and emerging issues in the PIC: transference to the initial teacher education.
• Collaboration (shared goals) between teachers and educators-researchers as a
means to go deeper in our understanding of teaching and learning mathematics
(Fig. 1) and teacher learning (Fig. 2).
• Classroom-based reflection, with special attention to the role that mathematics
plays in the process of teaching and learning mathematics.
• Reflection as a means of entering theoretical loops (that comprises theory and
practice). Theoretical reasoning about practice.

3 The Professional Task and its Role in Teacher Training

for Mathematics

We consider three main types of task:

1. Mathematics tasks. These deal with mathematics content, frequently problematic
for trainee and teacher alike, acting them as an apprentice. The objective is its
solution from the content perspective.
2. Classroom situations. These are presented on video for analysis. In this case, the
teacher or future teacher acts as a professional critically observing the practice
of a colleague in a real world classroom session.
3. The design, simulation and/or practice of classroom situations. The teacher tack-
les the problem of how to present specific content in given conditions (real or
fictitious), designing a solution and putting this into practice. In some cases a
group of student teachers might replace the school classroom.
The approach described here, used with both students in their initial training and
teachers participating in the PIC, involves a series of two or three of the task types
above in no particular order, but always interrelated. The following paragraphs offer
some specific examples of these tasks and the relations between them.

4 An Example from the PIC Inservice Training Context

The example outlined below is a series of tasks which arose from the PIC and were
then adapted for use during the initial training course.
The first task of the sequence is to view and analyse a real class session of one
of the teachers in the project (type B task). The analysis includes a discussion of the
teacher’s lesson plan, and moves onto consideration of an individual case arising
from the lesson in question (a variation of a type B task). This particular case was
220 J. Carrillo and N. Climent

selected by the teacher trainers for its pedagogical and mathematical interest, and
discussing it from a mathematical perspective naturally leads into the formulation of
problematic mathematical issue for the teachers (type A task), exemplifying a form
of mathematical reasoning which is useful for solving mathematical questions such
as the particular case mentioned above.

4.1 Task 1: Analysis of a Classroom

One of the activities that the PIC carries out is recording lessons given by the par-
ticipating teachers and analysing them afterwards. One such recording concerned
the introduction of the notion of fraction in 5th grade. We viewed the video in a
PIC meeting. The teacher trainers had watched it beforehand and divided the les-
son into different parts (which we termed episodes), selecting the most interesting
for viewing in the project. Accompanying notes were also prepared to guide view-
ers through the structure of the lesson. Using this guide the selected episodes were
watched, with pauses for comments to be made and observations to be noted down
for discussion at the end of the viewing. The aim of the group analysis is to dis-
cuss the lesson from the perspective of teaching the planned material, focusing on
the teacher, Ana’s, performance. In this case we will not go deeply into task design
(type C task), although the objectives which the teacher set in this session and the
adaptation of the task are considered.
The mathematical task that Ana sets to her pupils is “to fold as many ways as pos-
sible a rectangle, a circle and a square to make halves and quarters”. The students
work in small groups and afterwards a plenary is carried out. Before reading fur-
ther, we suggest reading the appendix to get a clearer picture of the lesson. In what
follows we focus on those aspects of the discussion which are most relevant to the
possibilities of this task from the point of view of the teachers’ professional devel-
opment (as well as those of great interest for their contrast with the analysis of the
student teachers – see section “Initial Teacher Training”).
Present during the video discussions in the PIC were Ana, another of the teachers
involved in the project (Pilar), and the two trainers. Pilar shows her enthusiasm for
Ana’s performance including making comments such as, “You come across as a
researcher!” In the face of this, Ana confesses that her impatience sometimes gets
the better of her and she doesn’t wait long enough for the students to give her their
ideas.
What follows are the most salient points of the discussion:
1. Ana clarifies why she explicitly proposed doing the divisions in all ways possible – that
she wanted the pupils to see that there is no single solution

On being asked about her interest in this, she places the emphasis on providing
mathematical tasks with more than one solution, and on emphasising not sticking
with the first solution that presents itself. This also values different solutions and
other ways of thinking. The emphasis is not placed, therefore, on representations of
From Professional to Educational Tasks 221

the concept of fractions and on the limitations imposed on the concept by a weak
conceptual image. Ana believes that unless she asks the pupils to do so explicitly,
they will not attempt to find more than one solution.
2. Both teachers underline the richness of the resulting representations

They question some of the solutions obtained and the possible number. Ana asks
whether there is an infinite number of ways to divide the square in half; Pilar ques-
tions solution 1.3.
3. Ana provides information about her pupils

It helps us to understand the lesson better and to understand her decisions.

4. They discuss the suitability of the task to group work and how effective it is

Their conclusion is that by working with classmates the task is really more pro-
ductive than individual work as a result of the help that these can bring (making
reference to the children’s zone of proximal development), as well as different ideas.
This leads on to the conditions that Ana asks of the pupils. They discuss whether it
might have been more appropriate in this sense to have given a single shape to each
group. They also discuss whether it would have better to have put a short period of
individual work before the group work so that the more able pupils would not get
too far ahead.
5. They discuss the task features in terms of a problem solving task for the pupils

They should be more open to its possible advantages and disadvantages. They
show some anxiety with respect to getting the most out of the time spent on it. In this
vein they discuss the roles of the teacher and pupils, and the necessary balance for
the former to direct things and the latter to discover things for themselves. Besides
timing, they wonder about controlling the lesson. Ana shows insecurity towards this
way of working (the tasks more open-ended than those she would normally set, and
the pupils in small groups).
6. They discuss the consequences of unexpected students’ ideas

Relating to the above, Ana states that this type of task causes ideas to arise during
the lesson which she had not previously considered and for which she did not have
an answer. Such is the case in episode 8. This causes her some anxiety.
7. We discuss whether this way of working in class is especially appropriate for introducing
new material

The teachers are agreed on the value of introducing the topic this way as it is
worth spending more time on it. When the time comes to go more deeply into it,
they see an advantage to moving onto individual work, using exercises taken from
the textbook.
8. Is the activity basically concerned with geometric concepts or is it focussed on the con-
cept of fraction? (Question thrown out by the teacher trainers)
222 J. Carrillo and N. Climent

Ana’s intention was not to focus attention on the geometric aspects of the activity
(the different ways of dividing the shapes), but when she decided that it should
best be done through physically manipulating things, this lead her to present it in
this way. They question whether the geometric element has been emphasised over
the numerical, hiding the objective of the activity – the concept of fraction itself –
from the pupils. Ana expresses her disappointment because despite believing that
the lesson was fruitful, there was no confirmation afterwards that it had helped to
clarify the concept of fraction for the pupils. Ana finds this interpretation logical,
indicating that instead of noting the number of pieces obtained in their notebooks,
they noted that “I’ve done six different ways” (of dividing the rectangle in half).

4.2 Task 2: A True Incident

During discussion of the video (task 1), the validity of the division in 3.2 arises,
along with the conjecture expressed by Miguel in episode 8 (the bigger the circle, the
more ways there are to divide it in half). In both cases the teachers are in agreement
that both are wrong. Once the discussion of the lesson is concluded, the trainers
come back to these cases, this time as an excerpt of a teaching-learning situation
(Climent & Carrillo, 2002). Summarising the discussion, and focusing on Miguel’s
conjecture, Ana admits to not having dealt with it in class because she didn’t know
if he was right or not. “At moments like those,” she says, “you realise you need to
know more about mathematics because you find yourself without the background.”
She feels that as a result it is not possible to pick up on interesting ideas from the
pupils for fear of giving them false information.
Initially, their intuition leads them to see the problem in much the same way as
the children. But then, in contrast, they make the supposition that the solution is
infinite, by which each circle would then have the same number of possibilities.
Although they find this reasoning logical, they find it difficult to believe. When we
illustrate the situation by drawing two concentric circles they see that any diameter
we draw for one is equally a diameter for the other. We mention other conceptual
problems similar to this (the different magnitudes of infinity, and the fact that there
is an infinite number of points along any line of finite length).
With respect to the folds suggested in answer 3.2, they believe that the folding
strategy used in class shows that it is wrong. They also believe that no folds done
in this way can be correct, as the two outer parts with circular borders would never
coincide with the central area. For this problem, we suggest considering the function
f given by the difference in area of both parts. If we accept that it should be a
continuous function and that it clearly has cases where it is greater than 0 and others
where it is less than 0, then at some point it must actually be equal to 0, or put
another way, both parts coincide (as halves) (Fig. 3).
Challenges like this have helped to change the thinking of the teachers in the PIC
about what knowledge of mathematics is needed by primary teachers. At the start of
the project they thought that not much more was needed than what is specified for
From Professional to Educational Tasks 223

a b a

Fig. 3 Assuming equal segments on diametrically opposite sides of the circle, the difference in area
of parts b and a[S(b) − 2S(a)] can be written as f (x), x being the distance between the centre of the
circle and one of those segments (0 ≤ x ≤ r). As f is a continuous function and f (0) < 0 < f (r),
at least a number x0 exists (0 < x0 < r) so that f (x0 ) = 0, that is to say: S(b) = 2S(a) in this case

the pupils at that level. The teachers were not sure how much more they needed, but
they recognise the need to know more so as to “see where the item you are working
on is going, so that you can get the most out of the pupils” ideas without letting
them fall into error.’ However, doing mathematics or doing mathematical problem-
solving for its own sake does not interest the teachers.

4.3 Task 3: A Mathematical Problem

In addition to gaps in their knowledge of mathematics (Ball, 1990), another difficulty

facing the teachers in problems such as those in task 2 is their lack of strategies and
resources to tackle mathematical problems and evaluate possible solutions. So as to
highlight the importance of this knowledge about mathematics the teacher trainers
presented them with a problem whose solution required the use of the same method
that was brought to bear on Miguel’s conjecture – the study of polar cases. The
proposed problem was:
Given a square with 8 unit sides, will it be possible to make another square inscribed within
this in such a way that the area of the inner square is half that of the outer?

(Climent & Carrillo, 2003).

We clarify that the inner square should not be limited to integer units sides and
the teachers set about working out the possibilities. After several attempts they hit
on a solution (Fig. 4). Beyond this, though, they were unable to find another solution
nor did they know whether this is the only possibility. We observe that each vertex of
the inner square necessarily divides the side of the outer square into two segments,

Fig. 4 Teachers’ solution

224 J. Carrillo and N. Climent

a
b

Fig. 5 General solution

a and b, in such a way that the segments on one side are equal in length to the
corresponding segments on the othe cited figures ther sides (Fig. 5).
The study of polar cases can be usefully applied here. Given that the problem
remains the same whatever the point along the edges of the outer square the vertices
of the inner square are positioned, then we need only consider the cases that we
consider polar extremes (with respect to the range of possibilities). In this case these
will be the instances where the vertices of the inner square are exactly halfway along
the edges of the outer square, and where the vertices of both squares coincide. Given
that in the first instance the area of the inner square is half that of the outer, and in the
second instance the areas are identical, then, following the same kind of reasoning
used in the discussion of Miguel’s conjecture, there can only be one instance in
which the outcome is half, as in all others it will be greater than half.
The research developed in the PIC with respect to professional development
in the teaching of mathematics has allowed us to verify how, with tasks like the
above, teachers re-examine their vision of school mathematics, finding it making
more sense than their initial preservice training. They come to value the importance
of specific subject knowledge and they re-examine their own professional necessi-
ties and their commitment to meeting them. They are more prepared to enter into
theoretical considerations of their practice via reflection, and to widen their didactic
knowledge of the content. They question their conceptions about how to teach math-
ematics and how it is learnt, and they evaluate the importance of using professional
tasks (such as the analysis of classroom situations) with colleagues.

5 Initial Teacher Training

In our initial teacher training courses we have implemented sequences of tasks in-
spired and extracted from the examples of the PIC, collecting at the same time in-
formation about this implementation. In keeping with this policy, we asked some
trainee teachers1 to watch and analyse the video of Ana’s lesson introducing frac-
tions. We prefaced the viewing with some brief background information on the
school, the teacher and her group of pupils, the year they were in and stage they

1 We focus on five, all women, who represent a varied sample of the viewpoints taken in the

analysis, and of the attitudes and abilities with respect to mathematics.

From Professional to Educational Tasks 225

were at in the school year. We also explained that the lesson had been divided
into episodes to make viewing and discussion easier. The trainees were first asked
to analyse the video individually. This they did using a sheet of chapter divided into
columns, writing a summary of what went on in the class in the first, and any com-
ments that occurred to them about this in the second. This way they were required
to be a little more analytical and systematic, and to appreciate the details and get
beyond a simple descriptive account of what they were watching. When this had
been completed we conducted a feedback session to share observations2 .
The following comments represent the issues and foci identified from their notes
and the feedback session which was recorded. First are those coinciding with aspects
which had been commented on by the teachers (1–4):

5.1 The Task as an Open-Ended Problem (Relating to i – All

Possible Divisions, and v Problem Solving)

They discuss the features of the task as a problem-solving situation for the pupils.
Is it really a problem for them? Is it within the scope of everybody? What underlies
this methodology as against the teacher explaining and giving the representations?
Many find the video confirms the advantages of setting tasks with more than one
solution and encouraging the pupils to think in various different ways (Marta: “She
shows them that they can fold the chapter in more than one way, so they don’t follow
just one route and I think that’s very positive” [M7]).

5.2 Representations of Fractions (Relating to ii – Representations)

They are surprised by the ideas that the pupils come up with and by the sophisti-
cation of their contributions. The reiterated comments of Marta set the tone: “The
pupils can see that 1.6 and 2 are the same, just in a different position” [M9], “They
are able to see halves that are not the typical ones you’d expect” [M11]. Some note
the role of the social construction of knowledge in the course of the exchange (Inma
says that the idea that there are millions of solutions for the halves of the circle arises
“after seeing all the different folds that their classmates had done. It is necessary to
follow these steps to reach that conclusion” [I22]).
They appreciate the pupils’ solutions not only for their sophistication and variety,
but also for what they represent with respect to the concept of fractions. They are not
the standard ones [M11 above], and the pupils do not associate them with the orien-
tation of the shape [M9]. In this sense, some of the trainee teachers make more con-
ceptual observations than the primary teachers, taking into account the mathematical

2 The aim here was that each trainee should make explicit their thinking about this particular
situation and about mathematics teaching in general, without feeling inhibited by other opinions.
226 J. Carrillo and N. Climent

subject content in question and its construction (delving into the area of pedagogical
content knowledge). Teresa’s comments are worth reproducing (from discussion of
the children in 3.1 and their confusion with thirds) when she notes that “one impor-
tant thing is that [. . .] the concept of denominator and the equality of the parts in the
fraction is introduced”. The fact that they work on this particular division is seen as
a potential obstacle to the pupils’ learning for many of them:
“When they divide the shape into three parts first they talk about thirds, but later
they reach the conclusion that they are halves (the middle piece is the same size as
the other two together, says one child!). I think this can confuse the class. I think it
should have been limited to talking about two equal halves given that this was the
aim, instead of mixing up the halves themselves. Being the first time they’ve seen
halves, this doesn’t strike me as right.” [Carmen, C14–15].
In the discussion with the trainee teachers the idea of representations of fractions
in continuous and discrete contexts is introduced, as all these are continuous, and
they consider the suitability of working on both types of representation. Some of
the trainees attribute the sophistication of the pupils’ ideas to the features of the
task and also to the teacher’s management of it (C33, relating to the millions of
possibilities with the circle: “I think that the children are the ones who have reached
this conclusion thanks to the teacher asking them for different possibilities”). They
give a positive evaluation to solutions which are discounted as wrong as these are
counterexamples to the concept of fractions (C12).

5.3 Group Work Issues (Related to iv – Group Work)

The appropriateness of putting the pupils into groups. There is almost unanimous
approval as they associate this with increased motivation on the part of the pupils.
Ana’s organising of the group work such that they are all working on the same thing
at the same time is positively viewed by most of them; according to Inma it allows
“the pupils to help each other”. For others, however, this can also affect the rhythm
of work as the faster pupils will be those that do the bulk of the work. This leads
them to consider how best to distribute the load in group work.

5.4 Methodological Issues (Related to v – Problem Solving)

The general methodology of the class attracted many comments. Many trainees
go no deeper than superficial observations (without entering into specific issues of
teaching and learning mathematical subject content). In general they are surprised
by what they see. “It really strikes me that a discussion starts and everyone can
stand up and give their opinion, and even draw what they think on the board” (I15),
and classify it as non-traditional. Some amplify this impression, noting several vari-
ables including use of pupils’ previous knowledge, use of textbook, the teacher’s
and pupils’ roles, material, and activity type. As a result during the discussion of
From Professional to Educational Tasks 227

the lesson these variables inevitably come up in the teacher training class. Some
of these concrete questions lead to more general questions such as other possibil-
ities or advantages and disadvantages of each option. In their contributions about
the lesson observed from a methodological point of view many trainees used fixed
terminological expressions from their early training such as:
“The teacher [. . .] is not a transmitter of conceptual subject content, but instead
tries to make the pupils themselves develop the concepts” [M5].
For some, the video supports their belief that this type of methodology has ad-
vantages for the pupils’ mathematical learning:
“As it’s clear to see, this type of activity encourages the pupils’ creativity and mo-
tivation, as well as promoting their logico-mathematical knowledge.” [T26, relating
to the debate about halves in episode 5].
Other trainees express their reservations, showing a concern for the less able
pupils:
“As for the pieces of the shapes divided into three, they find it difficult to see that
there are two the same and a third which is double the size of the other two. I think
that when this part is explained to them they are tending to repeat it without really
understanding” [Laura, L12].
On the other hand, there are aspects which were highlighted by the prospective
teachers but not by the teachers. We present them next.

5.5 Observations on Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Some trainees are able to make fairly conceptual observations, linked to pedagogical
content knowledge, as mentioned above with respect to the children’s shapes rep-
resenting halves. Teresa’s comments are particularly noteworthy here. She analyses
the ideas arising in the class and Ana’s performance from this perspective, along
with the set task:
“The shapes selected are suitable because they are an everyday means of repre-
senting fractions and because they offer a variety of possibilities” [T10].
“Suggesting that they number each part is useful for working on the concept of
numerator” [T11].
“It’s an introductory activity on the concept of fractions, and more importantly,
on part and unity” [T8]).
In contrast to many of her peers, a good ability in mathematics and a positive
attitude towards the subject coincide in this particular student.

5.6 Criticism on the Teacher’s Needs and Performance

Some trainees are highly critical of Ana’s performance, suggesting not only what
questions they would modify, but also what the teacher needs to be able to solve the
228 J. Carrillo and N. Climent

problems they detect. For example, in the debate, both Teresa and Inma underline
the need to plan the activity very carefully, giving substantial consideration to its
possibilities and what might arise.
In summary, through the analysis of real cases and videos of lessons during the
initial teacher training stage we have seen how this kind of activity encourages
trainees to articulate and to contrast their thinking on teaching and learning mathe-
matics, to draw on alternative examples of classroom performance which are under-
represented in the primary classroom, to appreciate pupils’ learning traits in a real
classroom context, to recognise and establish relations between analysis and their
theoretical knowledge as analytical tools, to acquire the habit of reflecting on the
teaching and learning of the subject, taking key issues on board and thinking about
the importance of specific aspects of the teaching of mathematical subject content,
to reflect on what knowledge and skills future primary teachers need, to assimilate
key questions relating to pedagogical content knowledge in a natural context (where
they will have to apply it), and experience the advantages of sharing this analysis
with peers and professionals within teaching.
With respect to the specific case presented in the PIC (task 2 in section “An Ex-
ample from the PIC Inservice Training Context”), the trainee teachers tend to locate
themselves in positions that are very similar to those described by the primary teach-
ers, with scant mathematical resources to evaluate the pupils’ conjectures and wrong
conceptions on the topic. In this instance they also discussed the appropriateness of
dealing with such conjectures in the primary classroom (when they come up, as in
Ana’s class) and what the teacher needs to know in order to do so.

6 Final Remarks

With these tasks we have tried to deal with various aspects which, in our experience
with the teachers in the PIC, have proved complex however the process suggests
that the tasks are effective: how to approach tasks in mathematics, driving home the
teacher’s need for subject matter knowledge, articulating opinions on mathematics
teaching models and how learning takes place, exploring questions related to peda-
gogical content knowledge, and assimilating the culture of sharing educational tasks
with colleagues. These aspects continue to be at the core of research on mathematics
teacher’s knowledge.
Although the types of task are the same and the tasks themselves can be very
similar (in relation to initial and continuous training), the two groups treated them
in different ways. Hence, regarding the analysis of the lesson which we used as
an exemplification, surprisingly, some of the trainee primary teachers were more
critical of what they saw than the PIC teachers. Among the reasons we can find for
this difference is that in the case of the teachers, it is a question of analysing the
classroom performance of their peers (although they have shown themselves to be
fairly critical in this respect on other occasions), and so they come at it from a class-
based perspective, giving considerable credit to the teacher’s efforts to incorporate
an innovative methodology. They empathise with the role of the teacher, intuitively
From Professional to Educational Tasks 229

understanding the classroom management issues incurred by the methodological

model being used, and so take a sympathetic attitude. Their positive responses make
them more tolerant and even lead them to miss possible areas for improvement. In
contrast, the teacher trainees take up a position from within the theoretical sphere,
applying expectations from what they have learned in their course as to the non-
traditional elements and their advantages. This results in them being harsher critics
and they focus more on the things that do not work out. On the other hand, the
teachers enjoy a fuller knowledge of the context, of the pupils’ difficulties with this
material, of the representations and activities for introducing the subject content
suggested in the textbooks and even by the pupils themselves in the observed class.
This leads them to understand aspects which remain unclear to the trainees. For
example, some of the latter doubt whether all, or the majority, of the pupils in the
class are following the matter arising, while the teachers are all convinced that such
is the case and that the set task is consequently more appropriate than another which
places the emphasis on working on previously studied elements.
The perspectives from which the trainee teachers analyse the video are varied.
While some centre on the less able pupils, others compare the teacher’s perfor-
mance with what typically happens in the primary classroom, and others compare
this with what they consider the ideal. We can discuss these differences on the ini-
tial teacher training course and try to approach more complex perspectives. Such
reflexive processes will improve their interpretation of teaching incidents (Sullivan
& Mousley, 1998).
In other series of tasks that have been implemented, in both contexts (PIC and
initial primary training), we have found significant differences regarding the poten-
tial of the tasks. For example, we have observed that while the trainee teachers seem
happy to deal with mathematical tasks for their own sake (that is, independently
of classroom considerations), tackling them initially as learners and only later con-
sidering the issues of taking them into the primary classroom, the teachers in the
PIC were resistant to doing mathematical tasks in this way, unless they were firmly
rooted in classroom practice. Considering the learning cycles which Simon (1994)
proposes, our investigation suggests that in the case of the practising teachers the
first cycle should move from the experiencing of mathematical situations to the ex-
periencing of mathematical teaching and learning situations, leading in a later cycle
to the development of knowledge of and about mathematics.
We consider that in both contexts the role of the group (of trainee teachers and
of teachers and teacher trainers) is fundamental for the sharing and comparing of
ideas, for taking a more critical stance of one’s own beliefs, for considering other
perspectives, and in the case of serving teachers, for tackling tasks which would be
unmanageable on one’s own.
Finally, we have shown a story of effective tasks, which is linked to our per-
spective of teacher’s professional development starting from initial teacher educa-
tion. These tasks provide opportunity for improving our understanding of teaching
and learning mathematics, and teacher learning. Reflection and collaboration have
proved their potential being central parts of the rich learning environments in which
these tasks are dealt with.
230 J. Carrillo and N. Climent

7 Appendix: Introduction to Fractions in Primary Year 5

(Ana’s Class)

It is the first hour of lessons of the day, so the children and their teacher have just
arrived at school. Ana has planned to begin the topic of fractions. The children’s
tables are arranged in the shape of a “U” so that everyone can see each other and the
teacher when she sits in front of them.
1st Episode
Ana introduces the activity. The children are sitting in their places and she stands
in front of the group. She tells them that are not going to work with the book,
but are going to work in groups, “the way they like” – she notes. She explains
the task:
“Each child is going to get a rectangle, a circle and a square (showing them cut
out of paper). What you have to do is to fold them to find different ways to make
halves and afterwards quarters. You have to do it as many ways as possible.”
Ana informs them that there is not just one way of doing it, and reiterates that
the important thing is to find more. She tells them that when a pupil finds one way,
they should show it to the rest of their group, who should then copy it (folding their
shapes the same way) and everybody draw it in their notebooks. By this means,
all the ways that the group discovers should end up drawn in their notebooks. She
underlines that they should make halves, so that one part must be the same as the
other.
When they have completed this part of the task, they then have to number each
one of the parts that they have differentiated. In response to a doubt raised by a child,
she says that if they can’t do it with numbers they can do it another way, not using
numbers.
The pupils form groups of 3 or 4 children and Ana distributes the paper shapes.
2nd Episode
Ana tells them that they must agree about which shape they will start with, so
that all the children in the group are working on the same one. She asks them first to
copy the order that she writes on the board. She writes the following order and the
children copy it into their notebooks:
Fold your chapter in half in different ways. Now draw the results.

How many pieces did you get in each case?

From Professional to Educational Tasks 231

3rd Episode
The children get down to work and Ana circulates around the groups (the pupils’
group work and the teacher’s monitoring of them constitute the 3rd episode).
4th Episode
The group work finishes. Various children put their hands up. Ana invites a group
of three girls to come to the front and asks them to draw their solutions to halves on
the board. She asks the rest to pay attention to see if they have really made halves
and if they have any other ways of doing it. The girls draw their solutions (1.1–1.6
of the shapes at the end of the 6th episode).
5th Episode
Various children put their hands up to contribute. The teacher asks for different
shapes and invites those with their hands up to respond. Several possibilities are
dealt with in this way.
1. One group says that it has a different fold for the squares (2). Although some
children say that it is the same as 1.2, they decide to consider it a different way.
2. A group of girls adds the suggestions for folding in half 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3.
Other children point out that these are “thirds” because there are three parts.
Ana: “Because there are three parts. And when we make three parts . . . are they
always thirds? . . . And so . . . whenever we make two parts are they halves . . .?” [José
says yes]. “Yes. In other words, if I take the same square” [goes to the board and
draws: ], “and I fold it here in two . . . they are halves . . .” [David says that they
have to be the same and José repeats it]. “Ah, so, I repeat, I ask you again, are these
thirds?” [José says no]. “Why not?” [“Because they are not the same”, says José].
“Because they are not the same! It’s true that there are three parts, that much is true,
but are they thirds?” [José says no]. “No! For them to be thirds . . .” [looking at José
for him to complete the sentence, who replies that they have to be the same]. “And
they have to be the same. The girls have said that they have made halves here. Now
you have to decide why or why not”.
The children discuss this possibility. Some say yes it is because the centre is
the same as the two outer parts together (referring to rectangle 3.1). Others say the
centre is larger. Ana asks those who say yes to demonstrate to the others that it is.
One of the girls in the group that came up with this solution shows that by folding
the two outer parts along the lines of division, the central part is exactly covered.
Everybody is then convinced of the equality.
Ana asks if any other group has more folds and various children come up to the
board, adding drawings 4, 5 and 6.
1. Ana draws their attention to drawing 1.3. “I wanted everyone to see clearly that
these lines go from here to here, and not from corner to corner”. She asks them
if it is halved or not. There are disagreements again so she asks those who say
yes that they convince the others. One girl from the group that came up with the
solution explains: “like that it’s not halved [folded, because they do not coincide]
232 J. Carrillo and N. Climent

but like this it is”, [as she opens it out, showing the two parts]. Some remain un-
convinced, so the teacher herself takes some scissors, cuts both halves and places
one on top of the other, stating that this is the only way that she thinks it will be
possible to see it. She asks the children why they have had to cut it in this case
to see that the parts coincided. Some children point out that “here it’s the wrong
way round”. Ana reminds them of an activity that they did in the art education
class where they drew symmetrical shapes about a vertical axis (without mak-
ing reference to the concept of symmetry, just indicating the positioning of the
drawings).
2. They move on to see how many pieces they have made in each case. In the case
of the three pieces, Ana pushes them to be more specific, so that they conclude
that in the other cases there are “two equal parts” and in these “three parts, two
equal pieces and one which is double the size of one of the other two”. This last
expression takes a long time for the pupils to be more precise, pushed by the
teacher.
It is now break-time and they have to finish. Ana suggests that after break, they
note down all the drawings that their group didn’t have in their notebooks, along
with the number of pieces that they have made in each case.

6th Episode
How the board was completed:
1.1 1.2 1.3 3.1 4 5

1.4 3.2

1.5 1.6 2 3.3 6

7th Episode
They talk about cases 3.2 and 3.3, on Ana’s request. Some pupils object that the
problem with 3.2 is that it is badly drawn, as a result of which the girl who gave
this solution rubs out the lines of division and redraws them closer to the centre of
the circumference. As there is some disagreement, Ana asks those who say yes to
demonstrate it to the others. When they do the folding as in the case of the rectangle,
they have two circular sectors left over at the edges. Consequently, they eliminate
this one. However, case 3.3 works out.
8th Episode
Ana then points out that they have just one way for the circles. Other children
come to the front and give new ways in the following order: with the diameter placed
vertically (there was already one placed horizontally), with the diameter inclined to
the right, with the diameter inclined to the left. All the children see these possibilities
clearly. Miguel draws another case where he slightly moves one of the previously
inclined diameters (turning it on the centre). A lot of pupils say that it is the same.
From Professional to Educational Tasks 233

Miguel conjectures that there must be “millions” of such diameters, as “you can do
it like this, like this, and like this . . . A centimetre more this way, a centimetre more
that way . . .” Miguel says that the number of halves that you can get depends on
how big the circle is, because “if it’s a small circle we can make fewer halves than
if it’s a big circle . . .” (as there will be less centimetres or millimetres to consider).
Another girl believes that it should come out the same, but cannot argue her case.
Ana decides to leave this topic and focus on what she had planned.
[The lesson ends with the children working on how to name each part and a
feedback session].

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The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes
as a Key Task in Teacher Training
for the Approach to Early Algebra

Nicolina A. Malara and Giancarlo Navarra

We synthesise here a theoretical framework outlined for the renewal of the teaching
of algebra, giving a prominent role to a linguistic approach to the discipline starting
from primary school. We tackle the issue of how teachers can be led to acquire con-
ceptions and models of behaviour suitable to foster such a view of algebra among
pupils and, in particular, to develop in them modelling, interpretation and thought
production skills. For this we propose a model of task addressed to teachers and
devoted to the analysis of activities and pupils’ productions, as well as on the design
of classroom discussions. The task is aimed at favouring the development of predic-
tive and interpretative thinking by teachers as to pupils’ behaviour. The structure,
made of enchained scenes, induces teachers to question and review their convic-
tions about their own role in the classroom and to become aware of the dynamic
processes involved in the social construction of knowledge.

1 Introduction

Everyday teaching and learning practice is very often characterised by mere trans-
mission of mathematical facts and application of rules, thus neglecting the conquest
of the underlying sense. It is extremely rare to find a teaching practice based on the
exploration of problems, in which focus is shifted from results to processes. Such
a shift in perspective would give the opportunity to build in pupils – and hence to
disseminate in the social context – an image of mathematics more in accordance
with its real nature: that of a discipline born from and for the study of problems.

N.A. Malara
Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, University of Modena & Reggio Emilia, Italy
G. Navarra
Department of Mathematics, University of Modena & Reggio E, Italy
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
236 N.A. Malara and G. Navarra

Current research points to the socio-constructivist approach as the most suit-

able to raise pupils’ interest in mathematics and foster in them a meaningful con-
ception of the discipline. This approach is based on a theory according to which
the mind constructs schemes through which knowledge develops by selection, or-
ganisation and continuous re-structuring of facts and relationships, drawing on the
richness of sensations and stimuli that come from the environment and from social
interactions.
This has notable implications for teaching and learning: the teachers’ role ac-
quires different and more complex features. The teacher cannot be a simple knowl-
edge conveyor any longer: he/she rather becomes a person in charge of creating an
environment that enables pupils to construct their own mathematical knowledge.
It is significant that, in recent years, research studies have been dedicated more
and more to the teacher, as underlined at the recent ICME-10 congress (Copenhagen,
2004).1 In particular, a model of teacher was outlined as a reflexive and critical
decision maker (Jaworski, 1998, 2003; Malara & Zan, 2002; Mason 1998, 2002;
Peter-Koop, 2001; Ponte, 2004; Schoenfeld 1998), pedagogically sensitive,2 able to
observe him/herself analytically in the moment he/she acts and to consciously make
decisions in real time.
Teacher training according to such a model is necessary to obtain a socio-
constructivist teaching practice based on the mastering of meaning as a prerequisite
for the growth of the pupils’ competencies. The challenge is thus in leading teach-
ers to reflect on both the discipline and the model of teacher they have and apply.
Training must be, therefore, an important time for reflection about central ques-
tions such as: What mathematics do we need to teach? How can we do this? What
should I refine, modify or reconstitute in myself in order to fit in the current trends of
teaching?
In this perspective, on one hand teachers need to be offered chances, through both
individual study and suitable experimental activities, to revise their knowledge and
beliefs about the discipline and its teaching, in order to overcome possible stereo-
types and misconceptions. On the other hand, they need to become aware that their
main task is to make students able to give sense and substance to their experience
and construct new knowledge by exploring situations and making links with familiar
concepts.

1 In her plenary lecture, Anna Sfard pointed out the features of research in mathematics educa-

tion in the last 50 years: from the ‘programs’ era’ in years 1960s–1970s there was a shift to the
‘students’ era’ in years 1980s–1990s, to get on the way of the ‘teachers’ era’ at the beginning of
years 2000. In brief: ‘good practices’ characterising the ‘programs’ era’, or knowledge of students’
cognitive styles and related changes, typical of the ‘students’ era’ are necessary but not sufficient
for a renewal of teaching if teachers are not given opportunities to refine their mathematical and
educational knowledge, to discuss and reflect upon their individual beliefs.
2 With this term we mean what Jaworski, (2003) calls ‘sensitivity to the students’ and concerns:

how the teacher knows pupils, his/her attention to their needs; his/her interaction with individuals
and ability of guiding group interactions.
The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes as a Key Task in Teacher Training 237

The actual attainment of these goals is strictly related to the type of mathematical
content at stake, as well as to teaching traditions and educational policies in the
different countries. This is extremely complex in the case of classical thematic areas,
such as arithmetic and algebra, which suffer from their antiquity, and the teaching
of which is affected by the way they historically developed.
Teacher training referring to early algebra currently is of great research inter-
est: this disciplinary area became increasingly important in the last decade, as an
answer to issues related to the teaching and learning of algebra. The work we
present here concerns this content area and deals with methods and educational
processes for teachers, aiming at a renewal of the teaching of arithmetic and algebra
in a socio-constructive perspective, developed in co-operation of researchers and
teachers.

2 Why Early Algebra

One of the most heartfelt problems for secondary school teachers concerns the dif-
ficulties that students have in their approach to algebra. The main reasons for these
difficulties essentially lie in the heavy loss of meaning felt by students about the
objects of study.
Since the 1980s, research has pointed to a way to modify this situation,
underlying the need to promote, since primary school, a pre-algebraic teaching
of arithmetic. This type of teaching would cast toward the observation of numerical
regularities, the recognition of analogies, generalisation and an early use of letters
to represent observed facts (Davis 1985; Linchevski 1995).
Starting from the second half of the 1990s, many theoretical and experimen-
tal studies were carried out on these aspects, mainly addressing 11–13-year-olds.
Some of these studies stand out due to a theorisation of socio-constructive models
of conceptual development; they emphasise the influence of the class environment
on learning and promote the use of physical instruments as means of semeiotic
mediation, in the frame of a view of algebra as a language (Da Rocha Falcão,1995;
Meira, 1990, 1996; Radford, 2000; Radford & Grenier, 1996).
Since 2000, broad studies concerning teaching experiments, carried out at pri-
mary school level in relation to algebraic contents, appear: resolution of simple
equations through problems with the introduction of unknowns; study of relations,
functions and sequences; introduction to proof (see for instance Carraher, Brizuela,
& Schliemann 2000, or Carpenter & Franke, 2001). Some of these studies also
concern the setting up of projects aimed at training primary school teachers on
these issues (Blanton & Kaput, 2001; Brown & Coles, 1999; Dougherty, 2001;
Menzel, 2001). Our ArAl Project, paths in arithmetic to favour pre-algebraic think-
ing locates within this frame (Malara & Navarra, 2003), and is a project that merges
teacher training and innovation in the classroom.
238 N.A. Malara and G. Navarra

3 Our Hypotheses and Basic Theoretical Elements

in the Approach to Early Algebra

Algebra is usually introduced as a study of algebraic forms, privileging syntactic

aspects, as if formal manipulation preceded meaning understanding. As a conse-
quence, algebraic language comes to lose some of its essential features: that of being
a suitable language for describing reality, by coding knowledge or making hypothe-
ses about phenomena; that of being a powerful reasoning and predicting instrument,
that enables the individual to derive new pieces of knowledge about phenomena, by
means of transformations allowed by arithmetic-algebraic formalism.
Our fundamental hypothesis is that one cannot focus exclusively on syntax and
leave semantics aside, but rather that there is a need to start from the latter, tak-
ing an approach to the teaching of algebraic language in analogy with the learning
modalities of natural language. We make use of the babbling metaphor to explain
this perspective.

3.1 Algebraic Babbling

In their early years children learn a language gradually, appropriating its terms in
relation to the meanings they associate with them, and develop rules gradually,
through imitation and adjustments, up to the school age, when they will learn to
read and reflect on grammatical and syntactic aspects of language.
Our hypothesis is that the mental models that characterise algebraic thinking
must be constructed since the early years of primary school, when children approach
arithmetical thinking: this is the time to teach them to think about arithmetic alge-
braically. In other words, algebraic thinking should be built up in children progres-
sively, in a rigorous interrelation with arithmetic, starting from the meanings of the
latter. Meanwhile, one should pursue the construction of an environment which can
informally stimulate the autonomous processing of what we call algebraic babbling,
i.e. the experimental and continuously redefined mastering of a new language, in
which the rules can gradually find their place within a teaching situation which is
tolerant of initial, syntactically “shaky” moments. In this process, a crucial point is
represented by understanding the difference between the concepts of representing
and solving.

3.2 Representing and Solving: Process and Product

A very common pupils’ belief is that the solution to a verbal problem is essentially
the statement of a result. This naturally implies that attention is focused on what
produces that result: operations. Let us consider the following problem that poses a
The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes as a Key Task in Teacher Training 239

classical question: There are 13 crows perched on a branch; another 9 crows arrive
at the tree while 6 of the previous ones fly away. How many crows are now on the
tree?
Now let us modify the question: ‘Represent in mathematical language the situa-
tion so that we can find the total number of crows’. Where is the difference between
the two formulations?
In the first case, the focus is on the identification of the product (16), whereas
the second concentrates on the identification of the process (13 + 9 – 6), that is, the
representation of the relationships among the elements in play.
This difference is linked with one of the most important aspects of the epistemo-
logical gap between arithmetic and algebra: whilst arithmetic requires an immediate
search of a solution, on the contrary algebra postpones the search of a solution and
begins with a formal trans-positioning from the dominion of a natural language to
a specific system of representation. If guided to overcome the worry of the result,
each pupil reaches an upper level of thinking, substituting the calculations with the
observation of him/herself reasoning. He/she passes to a meta-cognitive level, inter-
preting the structure of the problem.

3.3 Canonical or Non-Canonical Representation

of a Natural Number

Among the infinite representations of a number, the canonical one is obviously the
most popular. Thinking of a number means for anyone thinking of the cardinality it
represents. But the canonical representation is meaning-wise opaque, as it says little
about itself to the pupil. For instance: the writing ‘12’ suggests a certain ‘number
of things’, or at most the idea of ‘evenness’. Other representations – always suiting
pupils’ age – may broaden the field of information about the number itself: ‘3 × 4’
points out that it is a multiple of both 3 and 4; ‘22 × 3’, that it is also a multiple of
2; ‘2 × 2 × 3’ leads to ‘2 × 6’ and therefore to the multiple of 6; 36/3 or 60/5 that
it is sub-multiple of other numbers and so forth.
We can say that each possible connotation of a number adds information to get
to a deeper knowledge of it, as it happens with people: there are the first and family
name, opaque if compared to other more expressive connotations of the subject, for
instance with reference to other individuals he or she is linked to by social or family
relationships (father of . . . , teacher of . . . , brother of somebody’s husband . . . ). It
is extremely important that pupils learn to see as appropriate the canonical repre-
sentation of a number as well as any other arithmetical expression of which such
number is the result (non-canonical representation of the number). In the case of
twelve, appropriate and acceptable representations besides ‘12’ are also ‘9 + 3’ or
‘22 × 3’. This is done not only to favour acceptance and understanding of algebraic
written expressions like ‘a + b’ or ‘x2 y’, but mainly to facilitate the identification of
numerical relationships and their representation in general terms.
240 N.A. Malara and G. Navarra

In relation to this, there is a significant conceptual challenge, e.g.: in 1 ×

(4 + 2) = 90 a pupil, operating a reading left/right ‘sees’ 15 × (4 + 2) as an
‘operation’ and ‘90’ as its ‘result’. But he/she has to be educated to ‘see’ the sen-
tence as an equality between two representations of the same number. The following
section is devoted to this aspect.

3.4 The Equal Sign

In primary-school teaching of arithmetic, the equal sign essentially takes up the

meaning of directional operator: 4 + 6 = 10 means to a pupil ‘I add 4 and 6 and
I find 10’. This is a dominant conception in the first seven or eight school years
during which the equal sign is mainly characterised by a space-time connotation:
it marks the steps of an operative simplification or reduction path (operations are
carried out sequentially) which must be read from left to right up to its end (i.e.
the reaching of the result). Later, when the pupil meets algebra, the equal sign sud-
denly takes up a totally different, relational meaning. In a written expression like
(a + 1)2 = a2 + 2a + 1 it carries the idea of a symmetry between the expressions: it
points to the fact that they represent the same number, whatever the value given to a,
and the two expressions are said to be equal (in fact, they identify because they are
equivalent with respect to the relation ‘representing the same number, as a varies’).
Again, in the writing ‘8 + x = 2x – 5’ the equal sign points to the (still unverified) hy-
pothesis about the equivalence of the two writings for some value of the variable x.
Although nobody told him about this broader meaning, the student must now move
into a completely different conceptual universe, where it is necessary to go beyond
the familiar space-time connotation. But if the student thinks that ‘the number af-
ter the equal sign is the result’ he or she will be lost and will probably attach little
meaning to a writing like ‘11 = n’, although he/she might be able to solve the linear
equation leading to it.
This reasoning shows an evident correlation to linguistic aspects such as the con-
cepts of interpretation, translation, comparison of paraphrases and conscious re-
spect of rules. In order to make pupils get aware of the role of such aspects, we
introduced a fictional character called Brioshi.

3.5 Brioshi and the Algebraic Code

Brioshi is a virtual Japanese pupil, aged variably depending on his interlocutors’

age. He does not speak any other language except Japanese, but he knows how to
use the mathematical language. Brioshi loves to find non-Japanese peers for an ex-
change of mathematical problems via e-mail. He was introduced in order to help
pupils grasp the problem of the algebraic representation of relations or procedures
expressed verbally and, above all, in order to convey the idea (difficult for pupils
The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes as a Key Task in Teacher Training 241

aged 8–14) that on using a language it is necessary to respect its rules, which is
an even stronger need when the language is formalised, owing to the synthetic na-
ture of the symbols used. Brioshi was introduced along with structured activities: an
exchange of messages to be translated into mathematical language or natural lan-
guage; where the ‘expert’ Japanese friend plays the role of controller of the trans-
lation. If Brioshi cannot understand the translation, this must be revised through
collective discussion. Such ‘role-play’ works with all pupils, regardless of their age,
and Brioshi’s arbitral role as a call to correctness and transparency brings about very
positive results (for further details see Malara & Navarra, 2001).
So far we have reflected on mathematical and linguistic questions about early
algebra, now we shall analyse the elements which are at the basis of its method-
ological approach.

4 Relevant Methodological Aspects in Our Approach

to Early Algebra

The didactical situations we propose are born within stimulating teaching and learn-
ing environments, but they are not easily manageable by teachers. As a consequence,
those who wish to undertake innovative educational practices need to deal with a set
of relevant methodological and organisational aspects that actively support a culture
of change. We shall now discuss some of these aspects.

4.1 The Didactical Contract

The didactical contract is a theoretical construct (Brousseau, 1988) which indicates

the set of relationships, mainly implicit, that govern the pupil-teacher relationship
when they face the development of knowledge concerning a particular mathematical
content. These relationships make up a system of obligations, involving both the
teacher and his/her pupils within the teaching and learning process, which should
be fulfilled and for which each of them is responsible.
In the case of early algebra, with pupils aged 6–14, the contract concentrates on
the construction of mathematical conceptions rather than on technical competen-
cies. Pupils must be brought to an awareness of the essence of the contract: they are
protagonists in the collective construction of algebraic babbling. This means they
should be educated to gradually become sensitive towards complex forms of a new
language, through a reflection on differences between and equivalences of mean-
ings of mathematical written expressions, a gradual discovery of the use of letters
instead of numbers, an understanding of the different meanings of the “equal sign”,
the infinite representations of a number, the meaningful identification of arithmetic
properties and so forth. In this case, the didactical contract concerns the solution of
algebraic problems and is characterised by the fundamental principle ‘first represent
242 N.A. Malara and G. Navarra

and then solve’. This seems to be a promising perspective when we need to face one
of the most important key points of the conceptual field of algebra: the transposition
in terms of representations, from natural language (in which problems are formu-
lated or described) to formal-algebraic language (in which the relationships they
contain are translated).

4.2 The Interpretation of Protocols

Protocols are written productions made by individuals or groups with reference to

a task given by the teacher. In the case of activities aimed at the enactment of al-
gebraic babbling, constructing competencies for the interpretation of protocols and
a classification of translations made by pupils implies that the teacher has to face a
variety of mathematical writings, often elaborated through a mixed and personal use
of languages and symbols, linked to one another in more or less appropriate ways.
Such a variety develops when the teacher stimulates, through reflection, cre-
ativity. When the pupils realise that they are producing mathematical thinking and
contributing to a collective construction of knowledge and languages, they make a
variety of mostly interesting and non-trivial proposals, which altogether represent
a common legacy for the whole class. The collective analysis of the protocols is
sharply intertwined with the practices of discussion in the classroom.

4.3 Discussion on Mathematical Themes

By ‘mathematical discussion’ we mean the net of interventions occurring in a class

with reference to a certain situation on which pupils are requested by the teacher to
express their thinking and argue in relation to what other classmates expressed as
well. Through this net of interventions, the situation is analysed and debated from
different points of view, until shared solutions are obtained.
The enactment of a collective discussion on mathematical themes stresses
metacognitive and metalinguistic aspects: pupils are guided through a reflection
on language, knowledge and processes (like solving a problem, analysing a proce-
dure), to relate to classmates’ hypotheses and proposals, to compare and classify
translations, evaluate their own beliefs, make motivated choices. In this context, the
teacher should be aware of the risks and peculiarities of this teaching and learning
mode.
The teacher plays a delicate role in orchestrating discussions. First, he/she must
be clear about the constructive path along which pupils should be guided, and about
the cognitive or psychological difficulties they might encounter. From a method-
ological point of view, he/she must try to harmonise the various voices in the class,
inviting usually silent pupils to intervene, avoiding that leaders and their followers
prevail and that rivalries between groups arise. Finally, he/she must help the class
The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes as a Key Task in Teacher Training 243

recognise what has been achieved as a result of a collective work involving every-
body. He/she must learn to act as a participant-observer, that is to keep his/her own
decisions under control during the discussion, trying to be neutral and proposing
hypotheses, reasoning paths and deductions produced by either individuals or small
groups. He/she must learn to predict pupils’ reactions to the proposed situations
and capture significant unpredicted interventions to open up new perspectives in the
development of the ongoing construction.
This is a hard-to-achieve collection of skills and a careful analysis of class pro-
cesses is needed if a teacher wants to engage productively with pupils. We will
shortly come back to this point, after lingering on a theoretical instrument, the glos-
sary, which is progressively developed along with the various themes faced with
teachers. Our aim is to use this instrument in order to make teachers deepen their
reflection on important aspects of their action in class and to become aware that,
in order to achieve good practice, they should acknowledge the value of theoretical
knowledge (not only in the aspects attaining the discipline or its epistemology, but
also in linguistic, psycho-pedagogical and social aspects).

4.4 The Glossary

Early algebra is a polycentric set of themes. When dealing with it, there is no pre-
defined path leading to a goal. This can puzzle teachers, also because it is rather
difficult to insert these activities in their everyday work. We believe it is necessary
to outline a reference system that might help the teacher gradually achieve, through
a revision of his/her knowledge, a global view of early algebra that merges theory
and practice, in which connections existing between mathematics and linguistics are
considered, in order to get closer to a conception of mathematics as a language.
The hypothesis is that the exploration of the glossary which is undertaken by
the student teachers is an individual adventure that depends on the way in which
the teacher decides to interact with it. Our intention is to make teachers find out
a reading key that can promote a reflection on the grammar needed to explore it.
Through the application of this grammar, everyone can get to know everything they
will be capable of in that particular moment, as well as move within the polarity
local/global along two directions: (1) within the single local; (2) in the map of pos-
sible connections between the various locals.
If we see early algebra as a machine the functioning of which must be understood
through the re-construction of the relationships among its mechanisms, the glos-
sary is its core, the constitution of which is based on the assumption that: (a) one’s
own knowledge is constructed by organizing exploration in a personal way; (b) the
process of knowledge acquisition is a constructive act itself.
The glossary can be seen as constituted by five categories which reflect our ap-
proach to early algebra. Here are some examples (Table 1).
Each term is described by a text containing other terms in the glossary, to which it
cross-refers for a wider and deeper analysis. For example, the term Arguing leads to
244 N.A. Malara and G. Navarra

Table 1 Five categories of an approach to early algebra

General Pre-algebraic thinking, relational thinking,
process/product, metacognitive/metalinguistic,
Brioshi, representation, represent/solve,
opaque/transparent representations, mediation
Categories

tools . . .
Mathematical Formal coding, additive/multiplicative form,
mathematical sentence, unknown, regularity, relation,
structure, equal, variable, . . .
Linguistic Arguing, algebraic babbling, canonical/non canonical
form, letter, language, metaphor, paraphrase,
semantics/syntax, translate, . . .
Social-educational Collective (exchange, . . . ), sharing, didactical
contract, discussion, social mediation, negotiation, . . .
Psychological Perception, emotional interference, semantic
persistence, . . .

Collective, Process/product, Representation, Relation, Semantics/syntax. We con-

ventionally name this set of terms the Net of the term Arguing. Generalising, a Net
of a term is ‘the set of cross-references that link the term with other terms of the
glossary’. So the Glossary can be seen as a matrix of Nets.
General, psychological and social questions represent a methodological support
to mathematical and linguistic questions. Although early algebra concerns mathe-
matics education, it is certainly true that the importance of the three ‘supportive’
components is fundamental. The approach to arithmetic in an algebraic perspective
is based on a strong basis of social and psychological assumptions and on a set of
general basic concepts that the teacher should learn to promote and manage.
In order to carry out mathematical activities, teachers cannot forget that (a) the
construction of knowledge occurs through promotion of social dynamics that favour
exchange and verbalisation in the classroom; (b) the identification of suitable didac-
tical mediators (such as Brioshi) is crucial to a stable acquisition of meanings; (c)
it is necessary to promote activities highlighting metacognitive and metalinguistic
aspects.
All these interrelationships are highlighted in the glossary by the nets of its terms
and by numerousness of the occurrence of each term in the nets.

5 The Present Study and Its Methodology

Our research experience with the teachers made us aware of their difficulties in de-
signing and managing classroom discussions (Malara 2003, 2005). This persuaded
us about the importance of the analysis of classroom processes in order to help
teachers acquire the necessary competencies for the orchestration of discussions.
For this reason, in these past few years we have addressed our research towards
the individuation of methodologies and tools aimed at producing in teachers the
The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes as a Key Task in Teacher Training 245

mathematical/pedagogical competencies necessary to approach early algebra in a

socio-constructivistic way.
Our research methodology is based on: (1) planning didactical classroom routes
with the teachers; (2) teachers’ production of diaries, i.e., transcripts of audio-
recordings of the classroom activities intertwined with their comments and re-
flections); (3) joint (researcher & teacher) analysis of diaries; (4) sharing of the
diaries among the teachers involved, writing of meta-comments, discussions and
reflections.
Documenting the classroom episodes analysis – paradigmatic in highlighting
the sharp correlation between the students’ mathematical constructions and the
teacher’s sensitiveness in the discussion – brought us to elaborate the model of task
we focus on in the following paragraphs.

6 A Model of Task for Teachers: The Analysis of Classroom

Scenes in Sequence

Our model of task gives teachers the chance to deal with the practice of constructive
teaching ‘theoretically’, forcing them to focus on provisional and reflection-related
aspects. The task develops along 5 or 6 Scenes, structured as a ‘connected set of
issues’, and a Final Reflection. The scenes are based on excerpts of transcripts of one
of our experimentations. Each scene is composed of two sections: the first concerns
the presentation of a classroom situation, and the second focuses on questions for
the teacher.
Teachers are sequentially proposed scenes at regular time intervals (of about 20–
30 min): while they are working on the first scene they do not know the second
yet; when they work on the second one they do not know the third one yet and
so forth up to the conclusion. After analysing the input proposed in the first part
of the scene, the teacher makes hypotheses about the class’ reaction. In the sub-
sequent scene these hypotheses are compared with what actually happened and so
forth up to the last scene. At the end, a global review of the work carried out is
formulated.
This kind of task has developed with time and can be seen as the result of a
research process. The first idea was born of producing interconnected e-learning
worksheets for teachers in order to promote a constructive and linguistic approach
to algebra, to which a transposition of these materials in a first version of the task
for teacher workshops followed. The present version of the task has been used in
workshops for teacher-trainees of junior secondary school since 2005. The example
we report was given to 45 teachers as the final test of a 40 hour course on didactics
of early algebra. Here, 20 hours were devoted to workshops dealing with similar
tasks together with the analysis of excerpts from classroom discussions.
246 N.A. Malara and G. Navarra

6.1 An Example of Task in Early Algebra

The First Scene

The class teacher presents the situation:
Ann likes chocolate cookies and finger biscuits , which she eats for break-
fast every school day. She eats different quantities every day, but follows a rule she
set.
Then she shows a drawing with two ice cream spots which are hiding only the
finger biscuits Ann ate on Friday and the chocolate cookies she ate on Saturday.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

At this moment the teacher gives a first task: Write down Ann’s rule in natural
language.

Task for teachers:

1. Carry out the task.
2. Give a short explanation of why it is important to search for regularities
in mathematics.
3. Discuss the instruments and/or strategies you view as the most effective
to identify regularities.

One initial goal is to make teachers identify possible difficulties pupils might en-
counter and think about instruments and strategies that can be used to solve the task.
By examining the drawing, pupils must find a link between the number of biscuits
and that of cookies. This is not a difficult task if one tries to express the number of
biscuits as a function of that of cookies; much more difficult is to express the rela-
tionship in the inverse way. Other two aspects, that should not be underestimated,
concern the issues of the interval in which each quantity may vary and the generali-
sation of the law (the situation might induce a cyclic view of the law and inhibit its
view in general terms).
The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes as a Key Task in Teacher Training 247

Saturday is problematic because, once identified the law in the formulation ‘the
number of finger biscuits is one more than twice the number of chocolate cookies’,
the solution is that Ann does not eat any chocolate cookie on that day. From a psy-
chological point of view, this brings about a conflict with the implicit hypothesis
that Ann always eats both types of biscuits, since one can infer that she loves both.
From a mathematical point of view, this entails the acceptance of zero as a number
(since zero is an indicator of absence of quantities).
More in general, we aim at verifying the impact of theoretical studies developed
during the course and the use of specific constructs, either of mathematical charac-
ter, such as ‘canonical and non canonical form of a number’, ‘procedural-relational
polarity’, or of educational-methodological character such as ‘didactical mediator’
or ‘didactical contract’.

The Second Scene

Pupils’ sentences are classified by the class teacher and the most representa-
tive ones are written on the blackboard. Then the teacher opens up the discussion
with the purpose of making the class decide what sentence best represents the rule
followed by Ann.

(a) Ann takes from finger biscuits the same number of chocolate cook-
ies, she multiplies it by 2 and adds 1.
(b) She eats an odd number of finger biscuits and from 1 to 5 chocolate
cookies.
(c) Chocolate cookies are always one more.
(d) One day she eats more and one day she eats less

Task for teachers:

4. Comment upon each of the four sentences written on the board concern-
ing their consistency, completeness and efficacy with respect to the for-
mulation of the regularity.
5. Imagine a plot for a discussion: opening, key steps and end.

This scene makes teachers face the task of first analysing prototypes of pupils’
productions, trying to trace back the mental views that produced them and interpret
unexpressed intuitions; and second imagining the development of a possible class
discussion aimed at sharing results and constructing a clear proposition expressing
the law, so that the subsequent task of translating it into algebraic language becomes
easier.
248 N.A. Malara and G. Navarra

The Third Scene

After a collective discussion, pupils agree on the choice of (a).
The class teacher proposes ‘Each of you may try to write (a) in other ways’
After a while some significant expressions written by pupils are reported on the
blackboard:

(a1 ) The number of finger biscuits is 1 more than twice the number of
chocolate cookies.
(a2 ) The number of finger biscuits is twice plus 1 the number of choco-
late cookies.
(a3 ) The number of chocolate cookies multiplied by 2, adding 1 equals
the number of finger biscuits.

Based on these sentences the teacher opens up a new discussion.

Task for teachers:
6. Comment the choice made by the class to propose sentence (a).
7. Analyse the last three sentences, highlighting any possible difference
with reference to the relational-procedural polarity.
8. Figure out a plot for a possible classroom discussion.

The aim is to lead teachers to refine their interpretative skills in the case of ver-
bal expressions produced by pupils in order to guide them to identify differences,
by making them clear: (a) in which sentences the time dimension of the counting
act (procedural view) prevails over those in which the relationship between the two
quantities is objectified; (b) how the interaction of these two views induces a verbal
formulation of the law in which the predicate ‘to be’, typical of relational formula-
tions, is re-formulated in terms of equality (‘to be equal to’).

The Fourth Scene

At the end of the discussion the class chooses sentence (a1 ); the remaining two
are erased.
The teacher gives a second task: Translate Ann’s law for Brioshi in algebraic
language.

Task for teachers:

9. Translate Ann’s law in more than one way.
10. Predict the possible translations by pupils.

The goal of this task is twofold: first it is to evaluate teachers’ abilities in finding
algebraic formulations equivalent to the literal translation of the sentence; second,
The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes as a Key Task in Teacher Training 249

and this is more delicate, to predict pupils’ translations, including the naive or in-
correct ones.

The Fifth Scene

After an individual work, sentences are written on the blackboard (pupils’ legend
in brackets):

1) 1 × 2 2) a + 1 × 2 (a = number of finger biscuits)

3) fb + 1 × 2 4) a × 2 + 1
5) fb + 1 × 2 = a 6) b = c + 1 × 2
7) a × +1 = b (a = number of chocolate cookies)
8) a = b × 2 + 1 9) (a − 1) × 2

A discussion is enacted to choose the sentence that should be sent to Brioshi.

Task for teachers:

11. Comment upon each translation of Ann’s law, underlining their correct-
ness/incorrectness, consistency, possible redundancies etc.
12. Predict what the class will possibly choose and the related argumentation
about the sentence they will send to Brioshi.

A delicate issue in this scene is the comparison between the expressions: ‘a = b×

2 + 1’ and ‘a × 2 + 1 = b (a = number of chocolate cookies)’: the same letters
represent different variables and it would be appropriate to predict pupils’ behaviour
on facing this fact.

The Sixth Scene

At the end of the discussion about the sentence to be sent to Brioshi, the
following rule is chosen: b = a × 2 + 1. The class teacher poses the problem Are
we able to understand what happens on Friday and Saturday even if ice cream
spots hide part of the drawings? Some pupils almost immediately use the formula
correctly, but other pupils are initially puzzled. This difficulty is overcome during
the discussion.

Task for teachers:

13. Is the rule sent out by the class the same you predicted at the end of the
Fifth Scene? Is it different? Write down your comments on this.
14. Identify what the spots hide in the table illustrating the biscuits Ann eats.
15. With relation to the question posed by the teacher, interpret the reasons
underlying the widespread confusion in the class.
250 N.A. Malara and G. Navarra

This scene is a chance to test teachers’ abilities on both the didactical and
the mathematical side: teachers are expected to argue about mental and operative
processes that pupils need to enact and about difficulties brought about by the
Saturday situation, linked to the interpretation of zero as the solution to the equation
‘a × 2 + 1 = 1’.

Concluding Reflections

16. Write down a short reflection on the didactical situation you were asked
to comment upon, also referring to a possibility of reproducing it in a
hypothetical class of yours.
17. Write down a short concluding reflection on the structure of the whole
set of tasks, mainly referring to its significance as model of task that may
help trainee teachers explore what they learned both at mathematical and
pedagogical level.

This is a task where teachers are expected to express themselves about the repro-
ducibility of the didactical situation and, more generally, on the global value of the
task they just carried out, with reference to their culture as to ‘pedagogical content
knowledge’ (Shulman, 1986).

7 Analysis of Teachers’ Protocols

7.1 Study of the First Scene

Question 1. Carry out the task

Eighty percent of the teachers easily identify the correspondence law. Two differ-
ent kinds of behaviour arise: some identify the law by analysing numerical cases fol-
lowing the days’ order; others feel the need to rank data according to the increasing
number of chocolate cookies. In both categories there are some who make com-
ments that highlight their view on the situation:
Day by day Ann eats a number of finger biscuits which is twice the number of chocolate
cookies plus one finger biscuit more. There does not seem to be a ‘defined’ number, expre
ssing a certain ‘rule’ for the choice of chocolate cookies3 (I can only see that choco-
late cookies increase from 0 to 11). The relationship between finger biscuits and chocolate
cookies only links the number of finger biscuits to twice plus 1 the number of chocolate
cookies. Moreover, I observe that the numbers of finger biscuits are all odd.

3 Our underlining.
The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes as a Key Task in Teacher Training 251

The underlined sentence reveals the fact that the author sees the relationship as
limited to the examined cases and not as a general one. In the latter case, in fact, the
set of natural numbers would be seen as the domain in which the number of choco-
late cookies varies (this is highlighted by other protocols). Though an acknowl-
edgment of a realistic limit to the number of cookies that can be eaten might be
reasonable.
Finally, about 20% do not interrelate the two variables but consider them
separately:
On each day Ann eats 1 chocolate cookie more than two days earlier and two finger biscuits
more than two days earlier.

The difficulties met by these teachers show their little familiarity with the identi-
fication of correspondence laws, and, at the same time, how complex it is for inex-
perienced subjects to work in the ‘search for regularities’ environment.
Question 2. Give a short explanation of why it is important to search for regu-
larities in mathematics
Teachers did not always express their ideas relevantly:
Searching for regularities is important because it makes order arise from an apparently
chaotic set, thus giving opportunities to find the relationship between entities of the set
itself.

Many underline the importance of searching for regularities in order to favour the
transition from the particular to the general, or sometimes of determining laws that
can be adapted to other contexts or situations. A minority underlines the predictive
power of laws with relation to the studied phenomenon. Some others highlight the
educational value: through this activity pupils can be led to understand how mathe-
matical laws originate:
Searching for regularities is important because it enables us: to make the process leading
to the formulation of any mathematical law more transparent; to help pupils to develop the
metacognitive thinking which enables them to abstract and generalise.

Question 3. Discuss the instruments and/or strategies you view as the most ef-
fective to identify regularities
Many teachers refer to the rewriting of the table according to increasing values
of the number of chocolate cookies as a helpful strategy for the identification of the
law and its generalisation. Few teachers mention the class discussion as a strategy
that may favour a sharing of the law’s verbal formulation (a step we consider impor-
tant towards its algebraic coding). Often, notions learned during the course emerge,
for instance, the reference to non-canonical representation as a tool to make the cor-
respondence between pairs transparent and to get to the generalisation of the law.
An example:
The situation is suitable to a collective discussion in class. After listening to
pupils’ descriptions in natural language, I would propose them to construct a ta-
ble at the blackboard in order to report numerical values in an organised way:
252 N.A. Malara and G. Navarra

No. of chocolate cookies 2 4 3 5

No. of finger biscuits 5 9 7 11

At this point it would be important to invite pupils (even after they understood
the relationship between the number of finger biscuits and that of chocolate cook-
ies) to “paraphrase” the canonical form of the number of finger biscuits into the
non-canonical form , i.e. to see it in a less opaque form. In fact, the number of
finger biscuits might be seen in this way, n. finger biscuits:

5 = 2 × 2 + 1; 9 = 2 × 4 + 1; 7 = 2 × 3 + 1

So pupils might be able to identify “blocked” numbers (2 and 1). The last step
would be getting to the generalisation: m = 2 × n + 1 with m = number of biscuits
and n = number of cookies.4

8 Study of the Second and Third Scene

The two scenes highlight the educational importance of the verbal formulation of
the observed regularities. Teachers often underestimate it, not grasping its impact
on the algebraic formulation of a law. This often happens because teachers do not
have a linguistic view of the approach to algebra.
Question 4. Comment upon each of the four sentences written on the board as to
their consistency, completeness and efficacy with reference to the formulation of the
regularity.
Question 6. Comment upon the choice made by the class to propose sentence (a).
Question 7. Analyse the last three sentences, highlighting any possible difference
with reference to the relational-procedural polarity.
Some protocols mainly highlight the comparison of ‘relational representations’
and ‘procedural representations’: sentences a1 and a2 are identified as relationships,
whereas a3 is seen as strictly procedural. Some others reveal sensitivity towards
important but barely noticed aspects, possible outcome of what has been done during
the course:
I would say that from a1 to a3 we can notice an increasing ‘unclearness of thinking’ and
a use of natural language that hides a more and more elementary mathematical thinking.
a3 denotes a clear ‘arithmetic5 ’ approach by the pupil; it may be translated into a classical
operation read from left to right with the result on the right, after the equal sign.

In other ones, we find explicitly stated difficulties met by the teacher or his/her
beliefs translated as ‘pupils’ inclinations or difficulties’:

4 The underlined words reflect the study of theory: each of them is a specific item of the Glossary.
5 Several students use the term ‘arithmetic’ with the meaning of procedural.
The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes as a Key Task in Teacher Training 253

I think that I would hardly convince pupils that sentence a1 is better than a3 because a3 is
the most simple to be translated and I think it is more transparent and clear to them because
it carried inside the exact procedure they should apply.

Many analyse sentences referring to the difficulties inherent in their algebraic

formulation:
The source sentence ‘a’, although correct, is not very clear but was helpful for pupils in
order to elaborate more transparent sentences: a1 ) ‘The number of finger biscuits is 1 more
than twice the number of chocolate cookies’ can be translated by following the sequential
nature of the sentence into: m = 1 + 2n; a2 ) ‘The number of finger biscuits is twice plus
1 the number of chocolate cookies’ can be translated into: m = 2n + 1.; a3 ) ‘The number
of chocolate cookies multiplied by 2, adding 1 equals the number of finger biscuits’ is
translated into: 2n + 1 = m.

Question 5 Imagine a plot for a discussion: opening, key steps and end
Question 8 Figure out a plot for a discussion
In these situations teachers have great difficulties; besides those who ignore
the request or simulate scarcely constructive excerpts of discussions, teachers’ be-
haviour can be grouped into four categories. Teachers:
(a) simplify the task restricting it to a generic talk about what needs to be done:6
The discussion starts from the analysis of the four proposed sentences; the goal will be to
identify the most transparent one, the one which better describes the situation by means of
arguments produced by each pupil (each will possibly provide arguments supporting their
own sentence). The outcome should be the choice of the first sentence (a), as the one which
best reflects Ann’s law.

(b) only figure out the opening of the discussion:

the first situation might be analysed asking pupils to represent it and then making them
reflect on the meaning of ‘multiplying by 2’ and ‘adding’

(c) sketch out the discussion’s structure, focusing on themselves as teacher:

I would start from (c) and I would remark that what the pupil says is not true. To get to an
organised analysis I would suggest the construction of a table (key step). I would say the
same in the case of (b) and say that to be sure that finger biscuits are always odd we must
find a rule that enables us to calculate them every time, then I would point out that sentence
(a) generalises what happens every day and it is the only one which enables us to see what
happens on Friday and Saturday.

(d) sketch out the discussion’s structure, focusing on students:

In a hypothetical discussion pupils might be led to reflect starting from sentence (c); they
would notice that not chocolate cookies but finger biscuits are one more. Once this point is
made clear, the reflection might shift on (b), pointing out that it is not sure that on days like
Friday, Saturday and Sunday Ann eats a number of c. cookies between 1 and 5, keeping the
fact that the number of f. biscuits is odd. Next, sentence (d) might be analysed, highlighting
that it is not a rule that clarifies the relationship between the number of sweets (c. cookies
and f. biscuits). Finally I would focus on (a) and analyse it from the point of view of mean-
ing, also using additional strategies (e.g. graphical, like a table) making pupils get, through
an argument-supported progressive reflection, to say that (a) is the one that best expresses
Ann’s law.
6 All protocols in this paragraph refer to the second scene, except where differently specified.
254 N.A. Malara and G. Navarra

9 Study of the Fourth Scene

In this scene the central problem is the formal translation of the relationship ‘the
number of finger biscuits is 1 more than twice the number of chocolate cookies’.
The task for teachers is twofold:
Question 9. Translate Ann’s law in more than one way
Question 10. Predict the possible translations by pupils
Behavioural categories emerged can be classified as follows:

(a) Poor productions: teachers do not distinguish the different levels in the two
tasks and simply produce the translations ‘2 × c + 1 = f’ and ‘f = 1 + 2 × c’ (‘f’
representing the number of finger biscuits and ‘c’ that of chocolate cookies) and
declare for example:
The first one can be the most frequent among pupils because the equal sign is at the end.

(b) Rich productions, centred on teachers only: teachers translate the relationship
also in the implicit form, or taking the number of chocolate cookies as subject (a
translation that pupils can hardly make in this phase); they do not put themselves
in pupils’ shoes and are not able to predict possible translations;
(c) Rich productions, centred on teachers and pupils: teachers provide a wide range
of translations and at the same time analyse them in terms of possible pupils’
translations. As to this, teachers’ hypotheses differ considerably. They maintain
that:

(c1) the most probable translation is the one that represents the calculation pro-
cess to get the number of finger biscuits (2 × c + 1 = b);
(c2 ) the most probable translation is the literal one (b = 2 × c + 1);
(c3 ) both can be chosen, as the following protocol claims:
u = n. chocolate cookies; v = n. finger biscuits: (1) u × 2 + 1 = v; (2) v =
1 + u × 2. . .
I think that among the possible translations the first one would be the most popular
because it puts equal at the end, but also the second one could be very spread
because it follows the literal and sequential translation of the sentence in natural
language.

As to Question 10 in particular, ‘Predict pupils’ possible translations’, almost all

teachers suppose that pupils:

– in translating the term ‘twice’, would make explicit use of the multiplication sign
‘×’ and that weaker pupils would use the additive representation;
– would use writings referring to the semantics of the situation, such as
‘nb = 1 + 2 × nc’
– omit the explanatory key to the meaning attached to each letter used.
The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes as a Key Task in Teacher Training 255

One controversial point concerns the possible making of ‘twin’ representations

such as ‘b = 1 + 2 × c’ and ‘b = 2 × c + 1’; the commutative law is intuitive to some
teachers but not to others. Few teachers reflect on the possible wrong or incomplete
translations.

10 Study of the Fifth Scene

Question 11. Comment upon each translation of Ann’s law, underlying their cor-
rectness/incorrectness, consistency, possible redundancies etc.
Almost all teachers carried out a careful analysis of the sentences, justifying also
the possible reasons that led to them. What comes out is a ‘cultured’ reading, making
reference to theory. Terms like ‘adulterate’ or ‘unfaithful’ translation which were
introduced at a theoretical level during the course, drawing on linguistics7 , were
used.
Question 12. Predict what the class will possibly choose and the related argu-
mentation about the sentence they will send to Brioshi.
As usual, this is the most problematic task. Not all teachers carried it out
successfully; on the basis of the analysis, many of them only indicate the follow-
ing sentences as the one that will be chosen by the class: ‘a = b × 2 + 1’ and
‘a×2 + 1 = b, a = number of chocolate cookies’. In the first translation, more faith-
ful to the text, the meanings of the used letters are not expressed; in the second one
the problem is to lead pupils to reflect upon the symmetrical use of the equal sign.
There are also teachers who express these concepts by making up brilliant excerpts
of possible conversations in the classroom.
The effects of training can be seen in those who tackle the problem of the col-
lective analysis of the various translations: the courses they followed highlighted
the importance of making pupils interpret ‘unclear’ sentences in order to get to a
reasoned choice of the correct ones, appreciating everybody’s contributions. About
this, a teacher writes:
. . . We might also point out that all sentences are not wrong ‘per se’, as they indicate some-
thing anyway, but they do not reflect the presented situation.

Somebody conjectures that initially some pupils may make ‘easy’ choices be-
cause they are semantically more expressive:
Initially some might be ‘attracted’ by sentences that make use of abbreviations because they
are more ‘pleasant’ from the symbolic point of view, and exclude them only later.

Another important emerging aspect concerns teacher’s conception of their own

role in the development of a class discussion:

7 For a deeper discussion about these aspects see Malara and Navarra (2001).
256 N.A. Malara and G. Navarra

(a) some view the management of the activity as giving room to pupils’
interventions:
The class might initially take into consideration sentences between the fifth and the
eighth, because only in them is the number of finger biscuits compared to the number of
chocolate cookies. By substituting numbers in each translation8 the class soon realises
that only the seventh and the eighth translations are valid. Perhaps in the end the class
would choose to send the seventh sentence because it best translates the starting verbal
expression.

(b) some put themselves at the centre and view the class in a listening attitude:
I think that after listening to the various translations, the class needs to decide between
‘a = b × 2 + 1’ and ‘a × 2 + 1 = b. (a = number of chocolate cookies)’. Both are written
in correct mathematical language and represent the situation consistently. Nevertheless,
I believe that a = b × 2 + 1 is more precise, because it respects the sequence and order
in which the law is expressed.

11 Study of the Sixth Scene

In this scene, teachers face the following questions:

Question 13. Is the rule sent out by the class the same you predicted at the end
of the Fifth Scene? Is it different? Write down your comments on this.
Question 14. Identify what the spots hide in the table illustrating the biscuits
Ann eats.

Question 15. With reference to the question posed by the teacher, interpret the
reasons underlying the widespread confusion in the class.

Puzzlement refers to the study of Friday and Saturday cases, in which it is nec-
essary to substitute the known value of the variable in the given law and solve the
resulting equation. In order to do this, teachers must re-examine the initial situation
and highlight that the Saturday case concerns the inverse relationship and that an
equation is needed to solve it. Teachers mainly give correct interpretations:
One common difficulty may be linked to Saturday, because it is difficult to accept that
Ann does not eat any chocolate cookie on that day. Another possible reason may attain
to Saturday from an operational viewpoint: pupils have the number corresponding to ‘b’
available and must find ‘a’, and this is a non trivial task for grade-6 pupils.

Some interpretations are particularly meaningful, as they are conducted in the

line of a co-ordination of cognitive and psychological aspects. For example:
I think the difficulty was . . . also to accept the idea that in the graphical representation the
ice cream spot did not cover anything!

8 The teacher thinks of the number substitution as a suitable strategy to verify the correctness of
formal translations.
The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes as a Key Task in Teacher Training 257

12 Study of the ‘Concluding Reflection’

Question 16. Write down a short reflection on the didactical situation you were
asked to comment upon, also referring to a possibility of reproducing it in a hypo-
thetical class of yours.
Question 17. Write down a short concluding reflection on the structure of the
whole set of tasks, mainly referring to its significance as model of task that may help
trainee teachers explore what they learned both at mathematical and pedagogical
level.
The productive presentation of the activity as a playful challenge is underlined
and the general educational value of the game is analysed. Teachers also point out
how attractive the game can be, due to the arguments solicited and to the mediation
towards algebraic language by means of natural language:
This is certainly a didactical situation that will be fun for the class, also because it leaves
pupils free to express themselves and the “heaviness” of reasoning in algebraic terms does
not come up immediately. Playing games is always helpful.

Generally positive opinions are expressed about the reproducibility of the pro-
posed situation, even though some envisage an unsuccessful management of the
class:
I would certainly propose this kind of situation (I believe this teaching approach is very
good and for sure to be preferred to traditional teaching); my fear, perhaps due to lack of
experience, is to be unable to deal with unexpected situations which come out in the class’
dynamic processes.

Reflections gather around two aspects, often interwoven: (a) value of the task as
guiding instrument for the teacher; (b) complexity of the task, difficulties and fears
this generated. We deal with the two aspects separately.

(a) Value of the task as guiding instrument for the teacher

It is generally acknowledged that the task is a valid instrument to lead teach-

ers, and especially those who do not have class teaching experience, to approach
issues that characterise the teaching activity such as predicting pupils’ behaviour,
interpreting their productions and setting up discussions.
The type of task is very positive. Not knowing what happened next, I was forced to think
more and examine all the possibilities I could think about. The subsequent scenes can be
used to confirm or refute reasoning and permit a meta-analysis of what we developed and
appropriated as ours in the previous scene.

The fact that the task forces the teacher to predict pupils’ behaviour is
highlighted:
This test can be helpful to put ourselves in pupils’ shoes, to consider aspects that are usually
taken for granted and predict ‘unusual’ developments (often pupils react in ways we did not
expect).
258 N.A. Malara and G. Navarra

Several teachers underline that the task is presented in a very stimulating and
attractive form:
I never entered a school as a teacher and my memory as student focused on a traditional
school made of rules and definitions given from above! Anyway, I believe that dialogue and
discussion are the foundations of learning and engaging with this didactical situation was
very instructive and amusing.

Others recommend that this kind of tasks be proposed more often:

I think that in the professional training of teachers, situations of this kind should be proposed
very often during the course in the form of laboratories.

(b) Difficulties met and fears raised

Some teachers underline the complexity of the test, highlight difficulties and most
of all express their fears about their own abilities to carry out constructive teaching
in the future. The difficulties teachers express are grouped as follows:
(1) Difficulties met in carrying out the task (trainee’s point of view about the task)
As you might have observed I found it difficult to find the rule. . . . I must say that I would
probably not have obtained good results after proposing classes in this way, because, as
we said during the lessons, it is up to pupils to propose the various ways of translating a
sentence and moreover they all must be ready to acquire this type of language.

(2) Wrong perception of the situation’s impact on pupils

Teachers coming from background studies in physics or mathematics underesti-
mate the difficulties that students may encounter:
The search for regularities may be used because it enables an easy transition from a concrete
example to its abstraction and because it allows for simple translations in mathematical
language, thus allowing the subject to grasp relationships between elements.

(3) Difficulties in predicting one’s own actions towards students (trainee’s point of
view as to students)
The main difficulty comes up when pupils propose their situations in symbolic terms. If
their answers are partially predictable, it is sometimes difficult to get into their reasoning
and understand which thought led them to elaborate certain pseudo-equations.

(4) Difficulties due to the intersection of the role of teacher and that of trainee
Trainees often are temporary teachers, this double role becomes an object of
reflection:
I start with this self-critical reflection. I admit I misread the expression reported on sheet
1 ‘. . . two ice cream spots hide finger biscuits on Friday and c. cookies on Saturday’ and
therefore I ignored its meaning (I believed that biscuits outside the spot were not relevant).
. . . I suppose at this point I transmitted the original text of the problem in a wrong way to the
class, making pupils puzzled and misleading their understanding. In the case none of them
would have asked for explanations we would have naturally reached the sixth scene with
puzzlement and incapacity of completing the tasks, as it actually happened. . . . Nevertheless
I fell into this trap because today I suffered the ‘test’ almost like a pupil and that probably
would not have happened if I had studied and proposed it as a teacher.
The Analysis of Classroom-Based Processes as a Key Task in Teacher Training 259

(5) The key point for the management of a class discussion

Protocols clearly show that letting pupils discuss is a source of worries for
teachers, especially due to their lack of expertise:
. . . What worries me more (and I scarcely analysed it in this test) is how a collective discus-
sion should be managed and how it is possible to lead the class to share correct meanings.
I feel that the goal of each proposed phase is rather clear to me; what is difficult is to ac-
tually lead the class to that, by guiding the discussion in a constructive way, without harsh
criticisms or forcing.

One problem concerns the impact of the primitive model of teacher in the class-
room as far as the management of the discussion is concerned. Sometimes teachers,
although agreeing to tackle a discussion, figure out a directive way of piloting it:
I would set up the discussion starting from the last sentence back to the first one, trying to
make pupils understand that the last two ones are useless to our aims, that the second one
only expresses a partial truth and that the first one is the only one that expresses a useful
regularity.

13 Concluding Remarks

In this chapter we sketched a synthesis of our theoretical framework aimed at an

early and linguistic approach to algebra, to be carried out constructively. We re-
called some of our theoretical constructs, including ‘algebraic babbling’, which re-
flects our conception of algebraic language learning. We underlined how valuable
for teacher education are the study of theory and the reference to a glossary, instru-
ment which comes to fulfil the constantly increasing intellectual need (Harel, 1998)
felt by teachers.
We tackled the issue of how teachers can be led to acquire conceptions and be-
havioural models that may foster among pupils a view of algebra as a representation
system, and in particular develop in pupils skills related to modelling, interpretation
and production of thinking.
For this reason we proposed here our model of task, specifically designed so
as to give teachers the chance to deal with the practice of constructive teaching
‘theoretically’.
The structure of the task, divided into scenes, is considered an effective class-
room simulation to guide the teacher in a step-by-step involvement with the teaching
sequence. Hypotheses about classroom-based actions are seen as very demanding
tasks, still it is highlighted that the task is a powerful means to force the teacher to
compare predictions with the actual development of the class activity.
Protocols show teachers’ difficulties and fears concerning their own future abil-
ities to implement constructive teaching. Difficulties mainly concern the design of
discussion plots, the interpretation of and comment on formal written expressions,
identification with [Link] fears concern not being able to understand pupils,
confusing them, not being able to make them actually discuss, and implementing
260 N.A. Malara and G. Navarra

a directive way of piloting the class due to an unconscious stereotyped model of

teacher.
The protocols also highlight remarks about teachers’ awareness of how culturally
important it is to make their own development as teachers explicit and open to col-
lective sharing. Processes in which new knowledge and new meanings are shared,
come to be enacted at three different levels:
• with oneself, leading to reflections on the courses and the tasks impact on ones
own professional development and, more generally, on the ‘renewed’ relationship
between theory and practice;
• with colleagues, by means of a peer to peer comparison of things learned during
the course and the explicit statement of underlying beliefs, this leads teachers to
become aware of the features of their own beliefs as well as of their way of living
the classroom activity (the latter is a fundamental step for a review of one’s own
attitudes and a change of unsuitable ones);
• with pupils, maybe the most stimulating and innovative aspect- as it induces
teachers to set up a didactical contract based on constant explicit claims about
the reasons underlying the teaching activities they propose to pupils. This way,
they get used to seeing themselves as active participants in the construction of
knowledge.

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Outdoor Mathematical Experiences:
Constructivism, Connections, and Health

Meg Moss

Outdoor mathematics activities in both preservice teacher education and in

elementary schools can help teachers and children connect with the world we
live in. Children are naturally curious about the world around them, and enjoy using
mathematics to help them understand their world. Through this natural curiosity,
they are able to construct mathematical knowledge using both a psychological and
socio-cultural perspective of constructivism. Outdoor mathematics experiences not
only help learners to see connections between mathematics and other disciplines,
but also can help learners feel more connected to their natural world. This chapter
will define outdoor mathematics, lay a theoretical framework of why it is important,
and then provide specific examples of outdoor mathematics tasks that can be used
in primary teacher education.
If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least
one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the
world we live in. (Carson, 1956, p. 45)

Preservice teachers must rediscover and build on a sense of wonder about the
world we live in during their training if they are to become that one adult that can
share this excitement with children. Outdoor mathematics activities in both teacher
education and primary schools can help teachers and children rediscover the joy,
excitement, and mystery of the world we live in. Children are naturally curious
about the world around them, and enjoy using mathematics to help them understand
their world. From measuring their height, dividing cookies, and games they play;
mathematics is a natural part of their world. This natural curiosity enables them to
construct mathematical knowledge through the perspective of both psychological
and socio-cultural constructivism. Outdoor mathematics experiences not only help
learners to see connections between mathematics and other disciplines, but also can
help learners feel more connected to their natural world. In a society where physical
outside activity is becoming scarce, reconnecting to the natural world and becoming

M. Moss
Associate Professor of Mathematics and Teacher Education Coordinator, Pellissippi State Techni-
cal Community College in Knoxville, TN, USA
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
264 M. Moss

more active is critical. Outdoor mathematics in elementary schools is now required

or at least encouraged in several countries (Bones & Gravanes, 2004). Responsibility
for implementing an outdoor mathematics approach in the elementary mathemat-
ics curriculum lies with the teacher who needs to experience and understand this
approach in teacher education.

1 What Is Meant by Outdoor Mathematics?

Several types of outdoor mathematics activities can help children and teachers to
experience and connect to the world outside of the classroom walls. Some of these
activities are necessarily done outside to help learners to explore and understand the
world around them, such as a bird inventory of the neighborhood, exploring geomet-
ric figures in both the natural world and the human created world of automobiles and
buildings, or observing the stars in the sky. Some outdoor activities may require a
large space that most indoor facilities do not have. Examples of this type of activity
include creating a full size model of different types of whales and sharks, estimat-
ing and walking a kilometer or graphing on a grid large enough for people to be the
points. Lastly, some mathematics activities can be fun to do outside as a change of
pace and of scenery such as practicing mathematical computations with sidewalk
chalk instead of at a desk with pencil or paper, or having mathematical discussions
outside in the sunshine.

2 Why Outdoor Mathematics?

On that beautiful spring day, many teachers have heard from their students at the
beginning of class, “Can we go outside today?” Besides enjoying a lovely spring
day, there are many reasons to take students outside to explore mathematics and
the natural world. Outdoor mathematics can help students to explore mathemat-
ics consistent with constructivist approaches to teaching. In a world of technology,
shopping malls, and drive through restaurants, people need to be encouraged to get
outside more often both to reconnect with the world as well as to promote better
health. Learning mathematics outside of the classroom can help to make easier con-
nections between mathematics and other subjects. When teachers experience out-
door mathematics in their teacher training, it increases the likelihood that they will
be able to use these methods with their students.

2.1 Constructivist Perspective

Constructivist learning theories have been widely interpreted and analyzed and have
helped mathematics educators to better appreciate how mathematical understanding
Outdoor Mathematical Experiences: Constructivism, Connections, and Health 265

can be developed. Practical methods of implementing constructivism in both teacher

education and elementary schools are important in making the theory applicable to
practice. Outdoor mathematics activities are a practical way to implement construc-
tivist learning through both a psychological learning philosophy and a socio-cultural
perspective.
Psychological learning theory aspects of constructivism include the concept that
learners construct new knowledge based on previous experiences and understand-
ing. Young children are very connected to the world around them since much of
their early learning is based on experiencing their world. Prospective teachers can
also learn mathematics by constructing new knowledge based on their world. By
learning mathematics in connection to the outside world, teachers are better able
to help their students use mathematics to connect and build upon their previous
knowledge.
A socio-cultural perspective of constructivism is that learners construct new
knowledge through engagement in activities and mathematical reasoning within a
community (Ball & Bass, 2000). The outdoor activities suggested in this chapter cre-
ate community outside of the classroom walls and provide opportunities for sharing
and communicating about mathematics. A collaborative activity in a natural setting
helps build a community of learners in a unique way.

2.2 Kids and Adults Need to be Outside More

Mental, physical, and psychological benefits are gained from spending time out-
doors. Unfortunately, people tend to be spending increasing time indoors. With
more television channels, more video games, internet surfing, and controlled cli-
mates, most of us spend more time exploring these than exploring what is in our
back yard. Outdoor mathematics activities in teacher education and in elementary
schools can help people to reconnect and be more active.
Connection to the world around them and gaining a sense of joy, excitement,
and mystery about the environment is important for young students and teachers.
Education should provide both teachers and students the opportunity to discover a
sense of place (Louv, 2005). All of life is interconnected, but it seems that the more
we get connected to the internet and cable television, the less we are connected to
the trees and stars and animals.
The World Health Organization (2006) states that reduced physical activity in
today’s society is a major cause for the global obesity epidemic. More technology
and leisurely hobbies have contributed to less physical activity. It is imperative that
teachers and their students get out of the classroom desks and into a more active
lifestyle. Simply going outside for a mathematics activity is not going to cure the
obesity epidemic, but getting out of a classroom desk for any reason is a start to
becoming more active.
266 M. Moss

2.3 Connections to Other Subjects

Outdoor mathematics is a natural way to connect mathematics to other subjects and

help students see that mathematics is not just something that happens only in the
classroom and textbooks. Science, literature, art and physical fitness are connected
easily to mathematics through outdoor experiences. Children, adults, and especially
teachers need to see mathematics outside, in the woods, on the sports fields, even
in the busy streets. Collaboration between mathematics educators and teachers from
other disciplines can help both teacher and students to make these connections. In
Fig. 1 student teachers are outside combining mathematics and science through an
exploration of the environment.

2.4 Outdoor Mathematics in Teacher Education

Teachers need to experience mathematics in ways that they are expected to teach it.
Some countries are expecting or at least encouraging teachers to implement outdoor
mathematics activities in the classroom (Bones & Gravanes, 2004). Teachers are
encouraged to teach mathematics in a connected way that helps students to construct
mathematical understanding. Outdoor mathematics activities can create these types
of learning opportunities as they provide opportunities to experience mathematics in
the natural world. Teachers are more likely to implement outdoor activities in their
own classes if they have had positive experiences in their own learning with this
type of activity.

Fig. 1 Teacher education students exploring both math and science

Outdoor Mathematical Experiences: Constructivism, Connections, and Health 267

3 Outdoor Mathematics Tasks for Prospective

Elementary Teachers

There are clearly some strong arguments for including outdoor mathematics tasks
in the school curriculum but what tasks might be appropriate in the context of
teacher education and how might they be used? While it is acknowledged that these
activities may take some extra time, the benefits in the potential construction of
knowledge, in the potential connections with other disciplines, and for the health
of students are well worth the time. Implementing even one of these activities can
open up the idea and possibilities of outdoor mathematics to prospective elementary
teachers. Each of the following outdoor mathematical tasks can be done in courses
that focus on either the development of mathematical knowledge or with a mathe-
matics pedagogy focus. Readers are encouraged to look around their own settings
and be creative in adapting these tasks to meet their needs and those of their com-
munities. Following are some examples of tasks that the author has found successful
in elementary teacher training.

3.1 Geometer’s Scavenger Hunt

Seeing the geometry in the world around us can not only help us to connect to
the natural world, but can also help us to understand geometric ideas better (Fig. 2).
Several adaptations can be made to this activity depending on your location and what
technology you have available. Collecting examples of the geometric items can be
done with a digital camera, Polaroid or film camera, drawings, or discussions. This
activity is a good one to do with groups of three or four people working together.
Provide the students with a list of geometric terms a few days before the activity
so that they have time to look up any terms and sketch each one. This can be a great
review of the terms, and it may be beneficial to have the students draw them on the
board to make sure everyone knows what they look like. On the day of the activity,

Fig. 2 Pictures submitted for this project include a leaf showing symmetry and perpendicular line
segments in a sidewalk
268 M. Moss

send them out with either a camera or a sketchpad and have them find the items.
Encourage them to find as many things as possible in the natural world, as well as
the human created world. A point system can also be utilized if the teacher educator
would like to make a game out of it where they get extra points for finding harder
items, and extra points for finding natural objects.
The final product to this activity can take on many forms. If the students have
digital cameras to capture the images, then these can be used to create a power point,
website or other electronic medium to display their findings. Whether sketches or
digital images are used, the prospective teachers can display their findings through
a scrap book, poster board, or other creative mediums. Whatever the display, the
prospective teacher hopefully creates a product that may be useful in future teaching.
Prospective teachers often remark that this is their favorite activity of the
semester. After this activity, they report that they begin to truly see the geome-
try all around them. They also report that it helps them to understand the geometric
terms better. This activity also helps the teacher educator to better assess what un-
derstandings and misunderstandings that prospective teachers possess. Through this
project in one class, it became evident that some of the students had a misconception
that a diameter must touch two opposite sides of the circle, but not necessarily go
through the center. This created an opportunity to become aware of and therefore
immediately clarify this misconception.

3.2 Designing and Creating Models

One of the many places that mathematics is used every day is in designing and creat-
ing models such as a parking lot or playground. Being aware of upcoming projects
on your campus and getting your students involved in the planning can provide
additional relevance to the task. For example, if your college or university has a
particular area to build a parking lot, how should the parking spaces be arranged to
maximize the number of cars that it can hold? Perhaps a park in your community, or
an elementary school, is planning to build a new playground. Visit the area and have
the students create a scale model of how to best design the playground given the
space constraints. Designing a community garden, an obstacle course or labyrinth,
and perhaps even building one of the designs as a community service project, could
be a great community building idea.
At a previous college, the maintenance crew installed large flower pots around
campus. Some of them were rectangular prisms, some were cylindrical, and oth-
ers were cubes. A favorite activity in the prospective teacher mathematics content
courses was to design how these should be planted. Given specifications on gravel
and soil mixtures, they first figured out how much topsoil and gravel was needed
for their chosen planter. They then created a design for arranging the flowers, and
then created a model of it using Geometer’s Sketchpad software. The maintenance
people at the college would choose their favorite designs and actually create some of
the student’s designs in the planters. By engaging in a realistic outdoor mathematics
Outdoor Mathematical Experiences: Constructivism, Connections, and Health 269

task that involved looking around the campus, and working with colleagues, the
prospective teachers not only became more connected to nature and geometry, but
also the college community.

3.3 Measuring Heights with Clinometer, Mirror,

or Similar Triangles

Another task which provides outdoor activities for prospective elementary teachers
as well as giving meaning to mathematics involves using geometry and/or trigonom-
etry to measure heights of trees. First have the students estimate the height of a tree
on campus (or flagpole or telephone pole or building), as experiences in estimating
distances are important in developing this skill. From there several methods exist to
find the height. If given time to communicate in groups and to explore, and if given
a variety of tools, the students can usually come up with a method, or the professor
can guide them to use a particular method if appropriate.
If it is a sunny day, then shadows can help create similar triangles. Experienc-
ing similar triangles this way is much more dynamic than similar triangles drawn
in a textbook. Many mathematics textbooks have problems in the similar triangle
section about shadows and heights, but it is much more meaningful and fun for the
prospective teachers to actually experience this. The students measure their height,
the length of their shadow, and the length of the tree’s shadow and create similar
triangles which then enable them to use proportionality to find the height of the tree.
Another method is using a mirror and similar triangles. Draw a line segment
across the center of a small mirror and lay the mirror on the ground with this line
segment perpendicular to the tree. The student then walks away from the mirror, in
the opposite direction from the tree, until the top of the tree can be seen in the mirror
lined up with the perpendicular line segment. Because the angles of reflections are
congruent, this again creates two similar triangles. The person, the distance from the
person to the mirror along the ground, and the line of sight distance is one triangle
and the second is the tree, the distance from the base of the tree to the mirror, and
the distance from the top of the tree to the mirror. Using proportional reasoning, the
height of the tree can be found.
Two other methods using the angle of elevation can also be explored. A hand-
made clinometer can easily be made with a protractor, a piece of string, and a pa-
perclip by tying the string on at the vertex point, and putting the paperclip on the
other end as a weight. This handmade clinometer can then be used to measure the
angle of elevation to the top of the tree. If the student then carefully draws an angle
of the same size on a piece of paper, and completes the right triangle, then no matter
what size the sides are, this will be a similar triangle to the one created by the tree
and the distance from the base of the tree when measuring the angle of elevation.
Using the angle of elevation and the distance from the base of the tree, trigonometry
ratios can also be used to find the height, although this might not be included in the
curriculum of many content courses for prospective elementary teachers.
270 M. Moss

3.4 Outdoor Graphing

Outdoor graphing, both linear and Cartesian, is a great way to get students outside,
moving, and learning in a very kinesthetic way. A life size number line can be easily
created using sidewalk chalk, or a piece of string taped to the ground, or perhaps a
long seam or line in a sidewalk. People can then serve as the points and easily
illustrate ordering and operations. For example, three times four could be illustrated
by a person starting at zero and moving four spaces 3 times and noting the results.
Representing fractions and operations of fractions with this large number line can
also give a meaningful visual image to prospective teachers. For example, modelling
one half times one third on this large number line by taking one half of the one third
and seeing that the answer is one sixth and why is very powerful and memorable,
perhaps more memorable than seeing it drawn on the board.
A Cartesian grid can easily be made by taping two pieces of string to the ground,
perpendicular to each other, to form the x and y axes. Pieces of tape can be put on
the axes to show the x and y values. For graphing functions, pair up the students so
one person is the point and the other helps them figure out where to be. Give each
“point” person an x value, and then given some rule (e.g., y = 2x + 3). They start
on the x axis, walk to the y position based on the rule, and together form a line.
Concepts such as slope and distance formula can be easily developed at this time.
A quick and fun related activity is to create a variety of statistical graphs using
people and a life size grid rather than the more abstract paper and pencil. For exam-
ple, make a human bar graph of the number of siblings they have, with each person
standing in the correct spot. Other statistical graphs, such as line plots or scatter
plots, can be created similarly in the outdoors on a large interactive scale.

3.5 Orienteering and Angle Understanding

The concept of angles can seem very abstract to students. The rotation and size of
angles often is not evident in the representations of angles that are usually drawn
on paper. Therefore, providing opportunities for prospective teachers to experience
angles can be important for them to construct an understanding. This activity can be
teacher directed or student created. Actual compasses can be used if available, or a
protractor.
The professor can create a set of “directions” to guide the students from the
classroom to a special tree, for example. The students would then take turns, per-
haps working in small groups, to follow these directions to the secret place. The
directions would include things such as, facing the elevator doors, turn 90 degrees
to the left and walk 15 paces, or 15 metres. Then turn 20 degrees to the right and
walk 10 paces, or metres. If they follow these directions, then they all should end
up in the same secret place.
An alternate way to implement this activity is to have the students create a set
of directions for another student. Starting from any place, they pair up and trade
directions and see where they end up. If one student ends up in a different position
Outdoor Mathematical Experiences: Constructivism, Connections, and Health 271

from where the other student was trying to get them, then encourage a dialogue
about where the directions were unclear or misinterpreted. This discussion can help
to clarify their thinking and mathematical communication.

3.6 Large Numbers, Estimation, and Proportionality

Several outdoor tasks can help prospective elementary teachers to better understand
large numbers and relationships. Large distances and sizes can be difficult for people
to comprehend. For example, the distances between the orbits of the planets are so
large that they are difficult if not impossible to visualize. Making a scale model of
these distances, with students holding a string and standing at a point on the string
that represents the position of the planet can help students to grasp and see these
large numbers. Also, understanding the relative size of a whale to other animals can
be constructed by drawing a full scale model of a whale with sidewalk chalk in the
parking lot, and then a full scale model of perhaps a dolphin and land animals to
understand the relative size of these creatures.
Visual images and reference points of measurements are an important skill for
prospective teachers to enable them to understand and estimate size. A prospective
teacher must have a sense of what a kilometre is if they are to understand distances.
In order to develop this, experiences with estimating and measuring distances is im-
portant. Stand outside looking down a straight pathway (perhaps a road, sidewalk or
walking path). Ask the students where they estimate they would be on this pathway
after walking a kilometre. Then, using a measuring wheel, pedometer or even a tape
measure, walk the distance until half a kilometre has been reached. The students can
then adjust their initial estimate of how far the kilometre is. Once the kilometre has
been walked, the students then have a visual and experiential image of a kilometer
and better understand what this unit means. For a twist, on the walk back, make a
game of finding the most numerals (such as on street signs) or look for different
geometric shapes in the buildings and natural objects. A similar but quicker activity
is to do the same thing but with only a decametre or hectometre.
Another activity involving estimation, large numbers, and measurements is in
estimating large quantities such as the blades of grass in the field beside campus,
or the number of gravel rocks in the gravel parking lot, or the number of grains
of sand in the beach near campus. Estimating the number of blades of grass, for
example, can help students to understand this large number, and develop techniques
of estimation. With this, the professor and prospective teachers can design a method
to determine an estimate. First ask the prospective teachers to make an estimate of
this, with no other information. Then have a discussion of methods that can be used
to get a better estimate. The concept of solving a simpler problem can be developed
here as often the method that develops is to count the number of blades of grass in a
square unit (the class can decide whether a square decimetre or a square centimetre
is more appropriate) and then extending this to create an estimate for the entire
field. The concept of square units is easily developed through this as well as a better
understanding of large numbers.
272 M. Moss

3.7 Perimeter, Area, and Volume

Leaves and rocks can help prospective teachers to better understand the concepts of
perimeter, area and volume. As a means of getting the prospective teachers outside
noticing leaves, ask them to bring two or three different types of leaves in to class.
Then working in groups of three or four people, ask the prospective teachers to first
line up the leaves in order of which they think has the greatest area to the least area.
By drawing the leaves on graph paper the prospective teachers can then get an esti-
mate of the areas and test their conjectures of which had the largest area. Secondly,
ask that they arrange them in order by perimeter. This helps develop the concept that
even if the area of one leaf is larger, that does not mean that the perimeter is always
going to be larger. By tracing the perimeter of the leaf with string or a tape measure,
the prospective teachers can gain a measurement to test their conjectures. The uses
and differences of linear and square units are enhanced through this activity.
A similar activity involving rocks can help develop the concepts of surface area
and volume and their relationships and units. Ask the prospective teachers to bring in
two rocks with varying surface areas and volumes. Considering surface area, arrange
the rocks in the estimated order, then measure the surface area by covering the rock
with aluminum foil, laying the foil flat, and then tracing this on graph paper to get
an estimate of the surface area with appropriate units. Then with volume, have them
estimate the order of the rocks according to volume and then measure the volume
by water displacement in a graduated cylinder. This part of the activity can reinforce
the concept that one milliliter is equivalent to one cubic centimetre in size.

3.8 Looking to the Stars

What do people see when they look at the stars? How often do people even look up
at the stars anymore? In a big city where stars are not very visible, perhaps a visit
to the planetarium is in order. Humans have seen the geometric shapes that the stars
create since the beginning of history. Helping prospective teachers to see geometry
in the stars is important. This can be developed through a couple of activities involv-
ing finding geometric figures in general and finding constellations, which is a nice
connection to astronomy. When the prospective teachers are studying quadrilaterals
or triangles, assign them the task that evening of finding stars that are the vertices of
the different types of quadrilaterals or triangles. The prospective teachers can draw
a scale model of the quadrilaterals or triangles by holding a ruler and protractor
at arms length and looking to the stars. Similarly, they can draw scale models of
the constellations which can also help them to identify and better understand the
constellations that they study in science class.
Outdoor Mathematical Experiences: Constructivism, Connections, and Health 273

4 Conclusion

Prospective teachers need experiences to reconnect with the natural world so that
they can help their future students to make similar connections. Primary age chil-
dren have a great opportunity to gain knowledge through their environment through
actively exploring their world (Kellert & Westervelt, 1983). Mathematics tasks out-
side of the classroom can help students to construct mathematical understanding by
connecting to the real world and providing social interactions. Helping people to get
outside, reconnect and be more active is a necessary goal of education, especially in
our current technological society.
Science educators argue that outdoor learning experiences can result in greater
gains in knowledge and understanding than traditional indoor classroom instruc-
tion (Harvey, 1990). There is evidence that outdoor learning experiences can be
attributed to better academic achievement (Louv, 2005). A need exists for research
on how outdoor mathematics experiences affect mathematical understanding specif-
ically.
Prospective teachers and mathematics educators should be encouraged to walk
around their own campus and community with the idea of mathematics in their
minds. This chapter provides examples of outdoor mathematics tasks that the author
has found worthwhile in preparing primary mathematics teachers. Many of these
ideas developed through observing the community. Whether in an urban setting,
rural setting, forests, or desert, these tasks can be adapted to your setting and others
developed using the natural setting as a guide.

References

Ball, D. L., & Bass, H. (2000). Making believe: The collective construction of public mathematical
knowledge in the elementary classroom. In D. C. Phillips (Ed.), Constructivism in education.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Bones, G., & Gravanes, A. (2004). Outdoor mathematics activities–experience–activity–
knowledge! Presentation at the 10th International Congress on Mathematics Education, July
4–11, 2004, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Carson, R. (1956). The sense of wonder. New York: Harper and Row.
Harvey, M. R. (1990). The relationship between children’s experiences with vegetation on school
grounds and their environmental attitudes. Journal of Environmental Education, 21(2), 9–15.
Kellert, S. R., & Westervelt, M. O. (1983). Children’s attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors towards
animals (Report No. #024-010-00641-2). Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.
Louv, R. (2005). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. Chapel
Hill, NC: Algonquin Books.
World Health Organization. (2006). Global strategy on diet, physical activity and health: Obe-
sity and overweight. Retrieved January 18, 2006, from [Link]
publications/facts/obesity/en/.
From Teacher Education to Teacher Practice:
A Gap Affecting the Implementation of Tasks

Pedro Palhares, Alexandra Gomes, Paulo Carvalho, and Valter Cebolo

A new inservice mathematical training programme was launched by the Ministry of

Education in Portugal. It has been developed and implemented in each district by
different educational institutions. In the district of Braga, the programme is being
developed and implemented by our institution, Institute of Child Studies, University
of Minho, with direct involvement as teacher trainers. During the time we were
working with the teachers, we have exchanged and discussed information. We have
found some differences between the way we conceive teacher training and the teach-
ers involved in implementation. We have also found differences in the approach
teachers have towards the implementation of mathematical tasks. These differences
are discussed in this chapter, trying to connect with the possible subsequent effect
on student learning.

1 Introduction

Elementary mathematics represents, both scientifically and pedagogically, a com-

plex structure composed of entangled branches that can hardly be classified as
“easy” or simple to teach. It constitutes the foundation of future mathematical
knowledge containing the rudiments of many important concepts of more advanced
stages of the discipline. In this sense, primary school teachers play a crucial role
in introducing children to basic but fundamental mathematical ideas and initiating
a process of mathematical learning, with every stage highly dependent on the
previous.
P. Palhares
Assistant Professor, Institute of Child Studies, University of Minho, Portugal
A. Gomes
Assistant Professor, Institute of Child Studies, University of Minho, Portugal
P. Carvalho
Institute of Child Studies, University of Minho, Portugal
V. Cebolo
Institute of Child Studies, University of Minho, Portugal
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
276 P. Palhares, A. Gomes, P. Carvalho, and V. Cebolo

2 In-service Mathematical Training: A New Programme

Under Development

The mathematical training of primary school teachers deserves careful attention.

In spite of this, in Portugal, the mathematical training of these teachers has been
neglected for an extensive time by the scientific community. More recently, and
particularly due to the persistently poor results in mathematics achieved by Por-
tuguese students in either international studies (PISA and TIMSS) or national tests,
not only the scientific community but also the government have began to show some
concern about the mathematical training of teachers, especially, primary school
teachers.
In particular, the Ministry of Education decided to promote an in-service mathe-
matical training programme with the following main goals:
• To deepen primary school teachers mathematical, pedagogical and curricular
knowledge;
• To promote experiences of curricular development;
• To develop a positive attitude towards mathematics;
• To create the dynamics of collaborative work in schools.
This is a 2-year programme that involves all public higher education institutions
(universities and polytechnics) responsible for training primary school teachers. The
programme is not compulsory but teachers were encouraged to enrol. A national
commission was set up to develop core guidelines of the “curriculum” for this pro-
gramme and to determine the way it should be structured and organised.

2.1 Curricular Features

The themes that should be approached in the training are organized the same way as
in the primary school curriculum, that is, number and operations; shape and space;
measurement and data analysis.

2.2 Organizational Features

1. Once a week, the trainer team meets to discuss difficulties/progress and to orga-
nize tasks.
2. Once a fortnight, each trainer has a 3 h training session with a group of 8–12
teachers.
3. For each teacher, the trainer goes to his/her classroom to observe/participate, at
least 3 times a year.
4. At the end of each year, each trainer team has to organize a large meeting, meant
for all participants of each institution.
A Gap Affecting the Implementation of Tasks 277

Based on these common features, each institution developed its own programme.
This implies that one might find very different approaches to this same “pro-
gramme”, depending on the institution and on the vision it has of mathematics
education.

3 Visions of Mathematics Education

We can consider two opposing views concerning mathematics education, the tradi-
tional, which is the one prevailing for the teachers at the start of the initial training
(Brown & Borko, 1992), and the constructivist view. We shall present them and state
our own position.

3.1 Concerning the Acquisition of Knowledge

The first distinction within the two visions of mathematics education has to do with
how we consider acquisition of knowledge.
On the one hand, Thorndyke’s connectionism theory, which later was reinforced
by Skinner’s behaviourism, followed the principle of the tabulae rasae, which im-
plies transmission of knowledge from the teacher (Orton, 1992).
On the other hand, constructivism defends a different perspective: Every learner
constructs his/her knowledge. However, it is widely assumed that even in mathe-
matics there is knowledge of a social origin and knowledge of a logical type (Nunes
& Bryant, 1996). Nevertheless, it is possible to consider extreme versions of con-
structivism that take this division as artificial. For them all knowledge is socially
originated leading theoretically to the conclusion that all knowledge can be con-
structed in the classroom (Ernest, 1991).
Hewitt (1999) makes a distinction between those things that are arbitrary (and
therefore students must be informed) and those necessary (and students must con-
struct them, otherwise they will memorize without understanding) and defends the
need for both in the curriculum.
This is also our opinion: mathematics curriculum should be divided between
those things that have to be transmitted by the teacher (e.g. number names or al-
gorithms) and those that have to be constructed by the students.

3.2 Concerning Mathematical Tasks

In the beginning of the twentieth century Thorndyke stipulated that exercises were
the central part of mathematics teaching. For a considerable number of years
278 P. Palhares, A. Gomes, P. Carvalho, and V. Cebolo

exercises and the practice of routines were so valued that even nowadays it is hard
to find classes where they are not present (Kilpatrick, 1992).
It is with Pólya (1957) that problem solving arose. Today it is included in many
curricula around the world. However, as Schoenfeld (1992) warns, it is necessary to
exercise some caution because much intended problem solving is actually exercise
solving. Many people have just changed the name but not the nature of the tasks
they propose.
In a so-called traditional view, exercise solving is the fundamental component,
however, we argue that, even though exercises have a place in mathematics teaching,
it is problem solving that should be the fundamental component.

3.3 Concerning Products/Processes

The traditional view on mathematics education stresses the correctness of solutions,

achieved rapidly and with a unique procedure, the one considered to be the easi-
est and the fastest. In the constructivist view we value the creation of varied and
personal procedures, even if not so fast or easy.

3.4 Concerning Silence/Activity

The main concern teachers have, in a traditional classroom, is to maintain order and
control. For instance the use of manipulative materials is allowed as long as students
do not exceed the usual levels of noise and movement. In a constructivist view the
main priority is that students are active even if they are moving more or making
more noise. We consider that students should be active but, of course, we should
interpret being active as being intellectually active (Ball, 2000).

3.5 Concerning Learning Supports

The traditional view builds on the abstract. But it is Freudenthal that recommends
the modification of teaching from the abstractions to the abstracting (Becker &
Selter, 1996). This is also our position, rejecting both an exclusive work on the
abstract field and on the concrete field. The concrete environment should be a means
and not an end in itself. However, concreteness may refer to a previous mathemat-
ical system. For example, an equation may be abstracted from a series of number
sentences.
280 P. Palhares, A. Gomes, P. Carvalho, and V. Cebolo

5 Differences and Similarities Among Those Involved

During the exploration of the task, we have noted some aspects that induced us to
engage in deeper reflection. They are explored below.

5.1 Teacher Trainers: Professional Experiences

and Scientific Background

The teacher trainers who were involved in this training programme had different pro-
fessional backgrounds and experiences. On one hand there were some teacher train-
ers who teach at a university that offers preservice primary teacher training. These
had a deeper scientific formation in mathematics but no experience in teaching at
primary level. On the other hand there were teacher trainers who were practising
school teachers who had undertaken further professional development. These train-
ers have a higher level of scientific formation than the teachers who were partici-
pating in the programme. Despite the differences previously mentioned, the teacher
trainers have in common the constructivist view on mathematics education.
Thus, we can see in this training programme, a privileged opportunity for intro-
ducing a kind of task that most primary school teachers (and students), in Portugal,
are not used to developing and using. Investigation tasks enable the constructing of
mathematics. They allow exploring, formulating and examining conjectures, gen-
eralizing, problem posing and solving, pattern recognition. Above all, they can
influence the understanding of the nature of mathematics and optimize mathe-
matical development of each student, taking account of their different levels and
limitations.
However, despite their common conceptions, in relation to mathematics educa-
tion and investigation tasks in particular, it has been noticed, in the reflections the
teacher trainers made after the training sessions, that there were different views of
professional development among the primary school teachers which matched, in
some aspects, those two profiles of teacher trainers identified above.
In fact, teacher trainers whose professional experience had been in primary ed-
ucation had the tendency to put more emphasis on the mathematical content of the
curriculum. This emphasis seems to be based on their professional experience. As
referred by Papert (1980), teachers are highly influenced by a culture of curricu-
lum restricted to the development of content. This may come from the pressure
that teachers feel for completing “the programme” which, for most teachers, is a
synonym of “textbook”. This pressure may be the result of several factors, some
external and some internal.
Even though, it was not a purpose of these teacher trainers to give much sig-
nificance to content, but to give meaning to the mathematical activity, they finally
developed this activity task focusing on the exploration of several content areas. This
way, they seemed to be validating, to the teachers, the task as part of the curriculum
A Gap Affecting the Implementation of Tasks 281

they are required to develop for students. Therefore, this activity served mainly as
a context for the exploration of themes as spatial reasoning, symmetry, area, and
perimeter, with the goal of later convincing teachers that it is the mathematical ac-
tivity that should give meaning to content.
As far as the other type of teacher trainers is concerned (university teachers), they
focused above all on the development of cognitive skills such as to structure forms
of reasoning without worrying (too much) about specific (traditional) mathematical
content. Even though it was not a purpose of these teacher trainers to avoid con-
tent, they tried to empower teachers and therefore convince them to empower their
students.
This teaching programme raised the following questions:
• Which of the two approaches will be the most effective way of guiding teachers
away from the traditional vision of mathematics education?
• Will it be the first approach to have better results in changing teachers’ practices?
Or will it risk being transformed in a series of unconnected exercises with the
exploration and reasoning disappearing?
• Will the second approach be the best way of breaking teachers’ restrictive vision
of curriculum? Or will it lead to teachers disregarding investigation tasks due to
not considering them connected to the curriculum?
We do not have complete answers to all these questions yet, but it seems to us,
that this kind of reflection in a team composed by different experiences and profes-
sional formation may bring new and richer perspectives about the theme.

5.2 From the Trainer to the Teacher

As we have already said, teachers are not familiar with the concept of polyminoes,
and they are not used to implementing investigations. Therefore, it was very exciting
for them to try to find all the possible shapes even though some difficulties arose in
finding the pentaminoes and especially the hexaminoes. On the one hand, they had
problems in identifying symmetrical shapes and most of them did not follow any
structured path or systematic process that enabled them to see if all the shapes had
been found.
During the activity, the trainers gave different suggestions like cutting off the
shapes, making several squares to construct the polyminoes, or rotating the sheet of
paper.
Some differences were found when we compared the task implementation in the
training sessions by the trainer with the subsequent implementation in the classroom
by the teachers. First of all it is important to note that teachers’ low expectations
relating to their students’ performance on this task were strongly countered during
the classroom implementation.
Despite the broad nature of the training session approach, we found a narrowing
of the task in the classroom. Desired goals and instructions (by the teachers) were
282 P. Palhares, A. Gomes, P. Carvalho, and V. Cebolo

Fig. 1 Pentominoes

too explicit, either at the beginning or along the way to find the solution. For ex-
ample, giving the students the number of shapes of each polymino type that they
required to find rather than this being part of the challenge.
Other important finding is a loss of mathematical power from the training ses-
sion to the classroom. We conceived the polymino task as requiring relevant spa-
tial reasoning. Many of the polyminoes, when displayed on different positions, or
on different angle orientations, tend to stir up the wrong expectation that they are
different shapes. For example: shapes without symmetry allow eight possibilities of
representation, using horizontal and vertical lines only, as we can observe about this
pentomino (Fig. 1).
In the classroom, the tendency to repeat shapes in this way was common probably
due to the absence of a spatial reasoning focus by the teacher.
In the training sessions the trainers focused on aspects like symmetry, reasoning
strategies, perimeter and folding into a cube. However, in the classroom the task
often involved free exploration of shapes, without (in many cases) self regulation
concerns. In part, the explanation of this fact may be related to the following: the
training sessions had been developed without manipulative materials. This support
could have helped teachers understand symmetries embodied in the task. We pre-
sume that this absence indicated some lack of knowledge about spatial reasoning,
because in many cases teachers did not offer manipulatives to children, who had ma-
jor difficulties especially when they were faced with the need to perform reflections.
Hewitt’s (1999) perspective of mathematical knowledge, lead us to another kind
of analysis: on the training sessions the cognitive focus was directed to the neces-
sary knowledge, but in the classroom we found some cases in which the teacher
contemplated essentially the arbitrary knowledge. Despite the fact that this task can
be presented and developed without any references to the correct terminology, this
aspect became the main source of the student’s labour due to the significance their
teacher attributed to it. In some cases a large part of the time was ocused on the
naming of the polyminoes, and children got involved in transcribing that informa-
tion from the blackboard to their notebooks.
Finally we report some tendency for management aspects to impact the use of
the task in the classroom: some teachers imposed time limits and restricted the pos-
sibilities of searching, raised by the students. We think that those teachers ascribe
greater importance to strictly following the plan, despite the low concern related to
this aspect in the training sessions.
A Gap Affecting the Implementation of Tasks 283

5.3 Differences Among Teachers

Several differences or contrasts were observed among teachers when they were
teaching their classes using this particular task. Some of these differences, we think,
are explained by our analytic framework:
— One difference observed concerns the use of group work in the classroom.
• Some teachers organized their students in groups. Each group would have
a group speaker, but all children were encouraged to participate within the
group, giving opinions and offering paths to the solution.
• Other teachers organized their students for individual work. This could happen
either by students being placed isolated from the others or being physically
placed as groups but with clear instructions to work alone.
— A second difference, which is clearly connected with the previous one, concerns
the representation teachers have of mathematical activity.
• For some teachers, students must be engaged and motivated, even if they are
noisy;
• For other teachers, students must be in silence in order to be concentrated and
be able to learn. Sharing disturbs concentration and so students are better left
working alone.
— A third difference that has a slight connection with the previous one, concerns
the use of manipulative.
• For some teachers, students must be allowed the use of manipulative (usually
for this task, cardboard squares) in order to try shapes and explore the task.
• For other teachers, manipulative would constitute a distraction; they would
give their students a pencil and squared paper and that was considered enough
support. In some cases, teachers would use manipulative just to show students,
that is, it was the teacher who would manipulate the cardboard squares.
— A fourth difference involved the amount of information teachers would give.
• Some teachers would refrain from giving information on how many pentomi-
noes there are or on any method to discover them all and check if all were
constructed. Students would have to devise methods and find solutions.
• Some other teachers would give immediately the number of pentominoes and
a method to discover them all. This means that students would not require
much reasoning to find solutions.
Another difference that we have found concerns the care teachers showed on the
planning of the lesson. Some would show ample preparation, some would show
scarce preparation. We do not have an explanation from our framework and besides,
regardless of the way of teaching, we could find teachers preparing extensively the
task and teachers preparing it insufficiently.
284 P. Palhares, A. Gomes, P. Carvalho, and V. Cebolo

6 Conclusion

As general conclusions of our reflection, we think that even when teachers share the
same vision of mathematics education, other factors and particularly mathematical
knowledge and professional experience play a major role in approaching a task.
This task proved to be effective in changing some teachers’ practices from their
traditional view to a more constructivist one. However, in general terms, it is clear
that there was a diminishing of the mathematical power of this activity when passing
from the training sessions to the primary school class.

References

Ball, D. L. (2000). Bridging practices: Intertwining content and pedagogy in teaching and learning
to teach. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 241–247.
Becker, J., & Selter, C. (1996). Elementary school practices. In: A. Bishop, K. Clements, C. Keitel,
K. Kilpatrick, & Collette Laborde (Eds.), International Handbook of Mathematics Education
(Vol. 1, pp. 511–564). Netherlands: Kluwer.
Brown, C., & Borko, H. (1992). Becoming a mathematics teacher. In D. A. Grouws (Ed.), Hand-
book of research in mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 209–239). New York: Macmillan.
Ernest, P. (1991). Philosophy of mathematics education. London: Falmer.
Hewitt, D. (1999). Arbitrary and necessary. Part 1: A way of viewing the Mathematics Curriculum.
For the Learning of Mathematics, 19(3), 2–9.
Kilpatrick, J. (1992). A history of research in mathematics education. In D. A. Grouws (Ed.),
Handbook of research in mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 3–38). New York: MacMillan.
Nunes, T., & Bryant, P. (1996). Children doing mathematics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Orton, A. (1992). Learning mathematics: Issues, theory and classroom practice. London: Cassell.
Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideas. New York: Basic Books,
Inc.
Pólya, G. (1957). How to Solve It. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Schoenfeld, A. (1992). Learning to think mathematically: Problem solving, metacognition, and
sensemaking in mathematics. In D. A. Grouws. (Ed), Handbook of research on mathematics
teaching and learning. New York: MacMillan.
Concluding Remarks

Barbara Clarke, Barbro Grevholm, and Richard Millman

1 Introduction

Watson and Sullivan (2008) suggest that tasks for teachers have multiple purposes
in teacher education and that teachers’ engagement in such tasks can
• inform them about the range and purpose of possible classroom tasks;
• provide opportunities to learn more about mathematics;
• provide insight into the nature of mathematical activity; and
• stimulate and inform teachers’ theorizing about students’ learning. (p. 110)
This reminds us of some of the multiple agendas for teacher educators involved
in mathematics teacher preparation and development. In the introductory chapter a
model was presented illustrating this further (see page 2). What we have read in this
volume is a selection of tasks that have been developed, used, improved and in most
cases evaluated. They mirror the creative and imaginative work of many devoted
teacher educators, who have spent time searching for good ideas, finding supporting
artefacts, developing them and trying them out with students. There has been a clear
purpose for the development and introduction of these tasks. The aim is to help and
support the learning of some important aspects of teachers’ professional knowledge
and practice and remind future teachers of the importance of mathematical knowl-
edge for teachers.

B. Clarke
Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Staff, Faculty of Education, Monash University,
Australia
B. Grevholm
Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Agder, Norway
R. Millman
Director, Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing, and Professor of
the Practice of Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman (eds.), Tasks in Primary Mathematics Teacher Education:
Purpose, Use and Exemplars, Mathematics Teacher Education 4,


c Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2009
286 B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman

One of the strengths of the volume is the range of contexts and perspectives of the
authors. It is an international volume, not intended to be an international compari-
son but instead representing a collective wisdom based on varied experiences. The
authors were encouraged to tell the story of the task purpose, design and implemen-
tation. As editors, we were reluctant to over prescribe to the authors the nature of
the chapters and potentially reducing the richness of the experiences. We acknowl-
edge that the danger in this strategy was less coherence across the stories. In this
chapter we have attempted to highlight some of the overall themes, return briefly to
the introductory chapter and build on the section overviews.

2 Form, Function and Focus of Tasks

What can we learn from these chapters about the form, function and focus of pro-
ductive tasks? This is not an easy question to answer. As can be seen from the
contents, the form varied across a wide range of pedagogical approaches using a va-
riety of tools. This included modelling classroom games, using video, the study of
lessons through to the development of teaching portfolios. As previously mentioned
the function and purpose of tasks in teacher education are varied and the authors
provide some insights into their individual decision making processes. Amato in
Chap. 11 used children’s mathematical activities in the context of initial teacher
education and looked for tasks which
1. have the potential to help trainees develop a strong relational understanding of
the mathematics they are supposed to teach in the future (SMK),
2. improve their liking for the subject,
3. help trainees to acquire a repertoire of representations (PCK); and
4. can be adopted and sustained with large classes.
The mathematical foci of the tasks include many different content areas both
within the traditional curriculum of primary schools as well as some higher level
content. There was a focus in many tasks on reasoning and argument in mathemat-
ics and a range of representations and tools for supporting learning were provided.
There is some evidence of the cultural and social variation in teacher education in
different countries though the themes that are discussed in the next section seem to
cross the boundaries.

3 Themes Emerging from the Task Analyses and Implementation

While clearly a range of issues have emerged from the rich discussion of the tasks,
three themes are highlighted: the role of reflection, the value of links between theory
and practice and the role of mathematical content knowledge. The first two of these
will be discussed briefly but the third was clearly the most powerful theme that
emerged.
Concluding Remarks 287

The first is linked closely to the focus of Section A but is evidenced across many
tasks. The use of action research and lesson study cycles provide teachers with
opportunities for supported reflection. The co-reflection between the teacher and
the teacher educator, provided opportunity for critique but then, importantly, fur-
ther trial or practice to enable improvement. Such practices enable both prospective
and practising teachers to develop as reflective practitioner (Schon, 1983) a clear
purpose for many authors. José Carillo and Nuria Climent write of reflection as a
means of entering theoretical loops – theoretical reasoning about practice.
Many prospective teachers enter teacher education with a view that there is a
recipe for teaching that they will be told how to teach. This makes reflection and
critiquing problematic (Loughran, Berry, & Tudball, 2005). The productive tasks
involving a cyclic approach to reflection provide an opportunity to challenge these
perceptions as well as to develop revised perspectives.
It might be argued that the whole purpose of a task in teacher education is to link
theory with practice, the practice of teacher education, and the purpose of the book
is to share the implementation of such tasks. However there was clearly a strong
focus on the link of both theory and practice in teacher education to practice in
the school classroom. This is highlighted explicitly in Section C but also a feature
across many chapters and tasks. Watson and Sullivan (2008) argue for the value of
reflective engagement with classroom tasks in the context of mathematics teacher
education and a similar explicit argument is made by Solange Amato and Meg Moss
in their chapters.

4 Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching

There is ambiguous evidence on the relationship between knowledge and teach-

ing. On one hand, Darling-Hammond (1997) summarized research on data from
900 school districts in Texas that found that 40% of the measured variance in stu-
dent achievement across grades 1 to 11 was due to teacher expertise. Her main
measures include students’ scores on numeracy and literacy assessments. She ar-
gued that, even after controlling for socio-economic status, the large differences in
achievement between “black and white were almost entirely accounted for by dif-
ferences in the qualifications of their teachers” (p. 8). On the other hand, Kilpatrick,
Swafford, and Findell (2001) claim that “there seems to be no association, however,
between how many advanced mathematics courses a teacher takes and how well
that teachers’ students achieve overall in mathematics” (p. 324). They go on to sug-
gest that “crude measures of teacher knowledge, such as the number of mathematics
courses taken, do not correlate positively with student performance data, supports
the need to study more closely the nature of the mathematical knowledge needed to
teach and to measure it more sensitively” (p. 375).
It is more productive to focus on forms of knowledge more closely related to
teaching, in particular pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986). There is
increasing agreement that the mathematical content knowledge required for teaching
288 B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman

is connected to the teaching of particular content, for example, fractions, and that
how teachers hold knowledge may matter more than how much knowledge they
hold (Hill & Ball, 2004). They argued that teachers need to be able to deconstruct
their own mathematics knowledge into less polished and final form, where elemental
components are accessible and visible.
Because teachers must be able to work with content for students in its growing, not finished
state, they must be able to do something perverse: work backward from mature and com-
pressed understanding of the content to unpack its constituent elements (Ball & Bass, 2000,
p. 98).

A focus on mathematical knowledge for teaching is a feature of the tasks high-

lighted in Section B but also the key theme of the book.
There is still much debate about the extent and form of the mathematical knowl-
edge used and needed for teaching. The Mathematical Education of Teachers
(CBMS, 2000) from the USA provides recommendations on the mathematics con-
tent requirements for teachers according to the levels at which they are teaching.
However, the point is clearly made that:
This is not to say that prospective teachers will be learning the mathematics as if they
were nine-year-olds. The understanding required of them includes acquiring a rich network
of concepts extending in to the content of higher grades; a strong facility in making, fol-
lowing, and assessing mathematical argument; and a wide array of mathematical strategies
(Chapter 5, p. 3).

Similar arguments are made in preceding chapters as well as evidence of tasks

that support development of such knowledge. George Ashline and Regina Quinn
found that teachers began to recognize that improving their understanding of math-
ematics and of curricula across grade levels could positively impact their own
instruction.
In discussing teachers’ mathematical knowledge it is important to acknowledge
the link between knowledge and attitudinal views of teachers and their impacts on
students. There is considerable evidence (e.g. Baturo et al., 2004) that the confi-
dence and competence of primary school teachers with mathematics are a cause for
concern which is shared in many of the countries and contexts in which the authors
are working. Effective strategies again tend to be cyclical in nature. If we can sup-
port the mathematical knowledge development that can build the confidence – if we
can build the confidence, then they are more likely to take the risk to learn the math-
ematics. The challenge in teacher education is to know where and when to start the
cycle.
The demands on teacher understanding have increased as educational practices
change to emphasize the concepts behind content, rather than the earlier focus on
procedural knowledge. Brophy (1991) argued in relation to content knowledge that:
Where teachers’ knowledge is more explicit, better connected, and more integrated, they
will tend to teach the subject more dynamically, represent it in more varied ways and en-
courage and respond fully to students’ comments and questions. Where their knowledge is
limited, they will tend to depend on the text for content, de-emphasize interactive discourse
in favor of seatwork assignments, and in general, portray the subject as a collection of static,
factual knowledge (p. 352).
Concluding Remarks 289

5 Implementation of Tasks

Is there a fundamental difference between tasks for teacher education and tasks for
teacher professional development? Is the focus of the phase of learning to teach
different from those where the process is more a “refining”? It would seem that
some tasks are successful across both groups but that we need to acknowledge the
differences both in the background and knowledge they have.
Stein, Grover, and Henningsen (1996) argue that the implementation of class-
room tasks by teachers proceeds in a sequence of four steps:

1. mathematical task as presented in instructional materials, to

2. mathematical task as set up by the teacher in the classroom, to
3. mathematical task as experienced by students, which creates the potential for
4. student learning.

This clearly links to notions of the intended, implemented and achieved curricu-
lum. It might be argued that the same steps exist in teacher education. While all
chapters provide the task there are varying degrees of implementation and evalua-
tion. These provide readers with useful insights but it must also be acknowledged
that the context plays an important part in the final achieved task. There is consid-
erable evidence that prospective and practicing teachers have different needs and
expectations. However the different beliefs of both teachers and teacher educators
can influence strongly the form and focus of the implementation. Nicolina Malara
and Giancarlo Navarra provide evidence of these differences and highlight the con-
trasts in observed practice.
Effective mathematics teaching involves a range of complex factors, and educa-
tion of the mathematics teacher should ideally prepare teachers for the challenge of
managing this complexity (Watson & Sullivan, 2008). The limited time available in
most teacher education courses makes the selection of appropriate tasks a challenge.
Readers are encouraged to identify tasks that enable connected and integrated learn-
ing, stressing the importance of the mathematics content knowledge for teaching
and its connection to pedagogical content knowledge.
The intent was not a text book or any comprehensive attempt to map the appro-
priate area of mathematics teacher education. That role is elsewhere but hopefully
this provides some promising and productive practices that can be adapted and used
in a range of contexts and the insights provided by the authors help build a picture
of effective mathematics teacher education practices.

References

Ball, D. L., & Bass, H. (2000). Interweaving content and pedagogy in teaching and learning to
teach: Knowing and using mathematics. In J. Boaler (Ed.), Multiple perspective on the teaching
and learning of mathematics (pp. 83–103). Greenwich, CT: JAI/Albex.
Baturo, A., Cooper, T., Dietzmann, C., Heirdsfield, A., Kidman, G., Shield, P., Warren, E.,
Nisbet, S., Klein, M., & Putt, I. (2004). Teachers enhancing numeracy. Canberra: Common-
290 B. Clarke, B. Grevholm, and R. Millman

wealth of Australia. ([Link] education/publications resources/

profiles/teachers enhancing [Link])
Brophy, J. E. (1991). Conclusion to advances in research on teaching, Vol 11: Teachers’ knowledge
of subject matter as it relates to teaching practice. In J. E. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in research on
teaching: Teachers’ subject-matter knowledge and classroom instruction (Vol. 2, pp. 347–362).
Greenwich CT: JAI Press.
CBMS (Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences) (2000). The mathematical education of
teachers: Issues in mathematics education (Vol. 2). Washington, DC: Mathematical Association
of America.
Darling-Hammond, L. (1997). Doing what matters most: Investing in quality teaching. New York:
National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. Hill, H., & Ball, D. L. (2004). Learn-
ing mathematics for teaching: Results from California’s mathematics profession. Journal for
Research in Mathematics Education, 35(5), 330–351.
Kilpatrick, J., Swafford, J., & Findell, B. (2001). Adding it up: Helping children learn mathematics.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Loughran, J. J., Berry, A. K., & Tudball, E. J. (2005). Developing a culture of critique in teacher
education classes. In Garry F. Hoban (Ed.), The missing links in teacher education design.
Developing a multi-linked conceptual framework (pp. 193–208). Dordrecht, the Netherlands:
Springer.
Schon, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic
Books.
Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the reform. Harvard Educational
Review, 57(1), 1–22.
Stein, M. K., Grover, B., & Henningsen, M. (1996). Building students’ capacity for mathematical
thinking and reasoning: An analysis of mathematical tasks used in reform classrooms. Ameri-
can Educational Research Journal, 33(2), 455–488.
Watson, A., & Sullivan, P. (2008). Teachers learning about tasks and lessons. In D. Tirosh, &
T. Wood (Eds.), Tools and resources in mathematics teacher education (pp. 109–135). Rotter-
dam: Sense Publishers.
Author Notes

Amato, Solange, a mathematics teacher and a teacher educator since 1983 teaching
11–17-year-olds, has been a teacher educator at the Faculty of Education, University
of Brası́lia, Brazil, where she teaches mainly course components about methods for
teaching mathematics to 7–10-year-olds. She also teaches several in-service courses
and workshops about mathematics teaching for primary and secondary school teach-
ers. She has a mathematics degree from University of Brası́lia (1982), and a mas-
ter’s (1989) and a doctorate (2001) degree in Education from Oxford University,
England. Email: sraamato@[Link]
Ashline, George, received his BS from Saint Lawrence University, his MS from the
University of Notre Dame and his PhD from the University of Notre Dame in 1994
in complex analysis. He has taught at Saint Michael’s College for many years. He is
a participant in Project NExT, a programme created for new or recent PhDs in the
mathematical sciences who are interested in improving the teaching and learning
of undergraduate mathematics. He is also actively involved in professional devel-
opment programmes in mathematics for elementary and middle school teachers.
Email: gashline@[Link]
Canada, Dan, a mathematics teacher for over 20 years, has worked with the elemen-
tary levels all the way up through college levels. His educational experiences have
included substantial time in Africa, Asia and America, and currently he is a math-
ematics educator at Eastern Washington University. He particularly enjoys finding
new ways of helping elementary preservice teachers connect their own understand-
ing of data analysis and probability to the conceptions that children often have.
Email: dcanada@[Link]
Carrillo, José, is Assistant Professor at the University of Huelva (Spain), re-
ceiving a PhD in Mathematics Education in 1996. His fields of expertise are
mathematics teacher development (mainly teacher’s development in collaborative
environments) and mathematical problem solving. University of Huelva (Spain).
Email: carrillo@[Link]

291
292 Author Notes

Carvalho, Paulo, is a primary teacher, master in teaching and learning mathematics,

instructor in continuing training in mathematics for primary teachers at the Institute
of Child Studies of the University of Minho, Portugal, Email: paulojfrcarvalho@net.
[Link]
Cebolo, Valter, is a mathematics teacher of fifth and sixth grades, master in teach-
ing and learning mathematics, instructor in continuing training in mathematics for
teachers at the Institute of Child Studies of the University of Minho, Portugal,
Email: valterretlav@[Link]
Clarke, Barbara, is an associate professor in Mathematics Education and As-
sociate Dean (Staff) in the Faculty of Education, Monash University. The major
focus of her writing and research has been concerned with mathematics teach-
ers, their practice and their professional development. Her PhD research related
to the challenges for teachers as they implemented an innovative mathematics
curriculum and the impact on their practice. Dr Clarke has a research interest
in teachers and professional development, and makes regular presentations at
professional conferences and teacher professional development sessions. Email:
[Link]@[Link]
Climent, Nuria, gained her PhD in Mathematics Education in 2002. She works at
the University of Huelva (Spain) and her field of expertise is mathematics teacher
development, mainly teacher’s development in collaborative environments. Email:
climent@[Link]
Figueras, Olimpia, is currently focused on two main areas: Children learning
mathematics, particularly, natural and rational numbers, and measurement, and
Classroom practices and teacher’s professional development. Olimpia earned her
doctorate, in 1989, in the Mathematics Education Department of the Center for Re-
search and Advanced Studies of the National Poly-technique Institute (Cinvestav),
where she also works as a researcher. She coordinated the national mathematics
curriculum change of 1993 for pre-school, primary and secondary education and
the set up of a [Link] study programme for in-service teachers in Cinvestav. She
has several contributions published in textbooks, books and proceedings. Email:
figuerao@[Link]
Gadanidis, George, is an associate professor at the Faculty of Education at
the University of Western Ontario. His research interests include: the design of
mathematics experiences for teachers, students as performance mathematicians
(as in the arts) and technology as an co-actor in the learning, teaching and doing of
mathematics. Email: ggadanid@[Link]. Website: [Link]
gadanidis
Garcı́a, Mercedes, is a professor at the Department of Didactic of Mathematics
at the University of Seville, Spain. In that University, she is developing her work
as teacher and researcher. She has taught mathematics teacher education courses
and mathematics courses for elementary teachers. She also has taught graduate
level courses on research in mathematics education. Her research in mathematics
Author Notes 293

education spreads over several areas: mathematics teacher education, the relation-
ship between research and practice in mathematics teacher education, mathemat-
ics teacher’s knowledge and practice and advanced mathematics thinking. Email:
mgblanco@[Link]
Gomes, Alexandra, PhD in Child Studies – Elementary Mathematics, assistant pro-
fessor in the area of Elementary Mathematics at the Institute of Child Studies of the
University of Minho, Portugal. Email: magomes@[Link]
Grant, Theresa, is professor in the Department of Mathematics at Western
Michigan University. She is interested in the knowledge teachers need in order
to base mathematics instruction on student thinking, and the processes by which
they come to know and utilize, this information. Her work in this area has three
main components: designing professional development for practicing teachers and
courses for prospective teachers; researching the impact of these experiences; and
studying the impact of implementing standards-based curricula on teachers’ efforts
to focus on student thinking. Email: [Link]@[Link]
Grevholm, Barbro is professor of mathematics education at University of Agder
in Norway. She is the leader of the doctoral programme in didactics of mathematics
there and also director of the Nordic Graduate School in Mathematics Education.
Her research interests are related to teacher education and mathematical concept
development, problem solving, use of ICT, research education and gender aspects.
Lately she has been involved in several research projects within communities of
didacticians and mathematics teachers. Barbro Grevholm is also professor at Luleå
University of Technology, Narvik University College and Kristianstad University
College, where she supervises doctoral students. Email: [Link]@[Link]
Lieberman, Joanne is an assistant professor in the Mathematics and Statistics De-
partment at California State University, Monterey Bay. Her major research interests
include mathematics education and teacher professional development. Her most re-
cent work has been concerned with the relationship between professional learning
communities and the lesson study process in mathematics teachers’ professional
development. Email: Joanne Lieberman@[Link]
Lo, Jane-Jane, is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics at
Western Michigan University. The focus of her research interest is on mathematics
learning which encompasses three complementary areas: the development of ratio
and proportion concepts, classroom discourse and social norms and mathematics
teacher education. She has conducted studies in a variety of settings including k-14
classrooms as well as textbook analysis both within United States and across several
Asian regions. Email: [Link]@[Link]
Malara, Nicolina is a professor, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science,
University of Modena & Reggio Emilia, Italy, where he teaches Didactics of Math-
ematics, Foundations of Mathematics for the degree in Mathematics, and Didactics
of Mathematics in the post degree schools for education of secondary school teach-
ers, He is leader of the Project on Early Algebra (ArAI) in GREM, and author of
over 100 papers. Italy. Email: malara@[Link]
294 Author Notes

Millman, Richard, received his BS from MIT and PhD in mathematics from
Cornell University. He has written extensively in differential geometry and math-
ematics education. His four co-authored books are Elements of Differential Ge-
ometry, Geometry: A Metric Approach with Models, and Calculus: A Practical
Approach (all with G. Parker), and Mathematical Reasoning for Future Teach-
ers (fifth edition with C. Long and D. DeTemple). He has been Provost of
Whittier College and California State University, San Marcos and President of
Knox College in Galesburg, IL. He has taught most recently at the University
of Kentucky and is presently Director of the Center for Education Integrating
Science, Mathematics and Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. Email:
[Link]@[Link]
Moss, Meg earned her PhD in Mathematics Education from the University of
Tennessee – Knoxville, her MA degree in Mathematics Education at Appalachian
State University in Boone, NC, and BA in Mathematics Education from the
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. She has been an associate professor
of Mathematics and Teacher Education Coordinator at Pellissippi State Technical
Community College in Knoxville, TN, and before that was a mathematics professor
at Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario, OR, for eight years. She has
taught mathematics courses for preservice elementary teachers for 16 years, has
taught Geometry in secondary schools, and done numerous mathematics activities
in her son’s primary classrooms. She has been gathering and exploring outdoor
mathematics activities for many years. Email: mvmoss@[Link]
Movshovitz-Hadar, Nitsa is professor of mathematics education at Technion –
Israel Institute of Technology. Emeritus since 2004. In 2003: Laureate in Residence
at La Villa Media, Grenoble France. 1998-2002: Director, Israel National Museum
of Science. Since 1975 on the faculty at Technion, sharing her research and de-
velopment interests combined with 12 years of high school mathematics teaching
experiences, with prospective mathematics teachers. She headed major curriculum
development projects; Founded in 1986 and since is the head of Kesher-Cham -
R&D centre for improving and reviving mathematics education. Published one book
(with J. Webb) and many papers (one of which received in 1995 the MAA Lester
Ford award with I. Kleiner). Email: nitsa@[Link]
Namukasa, Immaculate Kizito, is an assistant professor at the University of
Western Ontario. Her current research interests are students’ mathematical thinking,
problem solving and mathematics teacher education. Email: inamukas@[Link].
Website: [Link] [Link]/
Navarra, Giancarlo is engaged in the Project on Early Algebra (ArAl) in GREM,
Department of Mathematics, University of Modena & Reggio E, Italy. Email:
ginavar@[Link]
Palhares, Pedro, PhD in Child Studies – Elementary Mathematics, assistant
professor in the area of Elementary Mathematics at the Institute of Child Stud-
ies of the University of Minho, Portugal. Email: palhares@[Link]
Author Notes 295

Peter-Koop, Andrea, is a professor of Mathematics Education at the University

of Oldenburg where she is responsible for the preparation and professional
development of future primary mathematics teachers. Her research interests include
(future) mathematics teachers professional learning processes, the investigation of
primary children’s modelling strategies, and the development of early mathematical
skills and understanding of children in the transition from kindergarten to junior
primary school. She is currently one of the editors of the national German jour-
nal of mathematics education (Journal für Mathematikdidaktik) and also engages
in mathematics lectures for primary children during the world mathematics year.
Email: [Link]@[Link]
Quinn, Regina, is the Project Director and co-PI of the Vermont Mathemat-
ics Partnership, an NSF and US DOE-funded initiative aimed at helping schools
help all students succeed in mathematics. She received her BA from Trinity Col-
lege, and her Masters in Curriculum & Instruction with a focus on mathematics
professional development from the University of Vermont. Ms. Quinn previously
served as Executive Director and instructor for the Vermont Mathematics Initia-
tive, a 3-year graduate programme for elementary mathematics teachers. She has
taught mathematics and technology for first- through eighth-grade students. Email:
rquinn@[Link]
Sáiz, Mariana is currently focused on the conceptions of primary and secondary
school teachers in several topics of mathematics, especially geometry and measure-
ment. Mariana has served as a professor of Statistics and Mathematics Education at
the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional in México City. She earned her doctorate de-
gree in Mathematics Education from the Departamento de Matemática Educativa of
Cinvestav in 2002. She has several contributions published in the PME and PMENA
proceedings and has participated in other mathematics education meetings. She has
written mathematics textbooks for secondary pupils with other co-workers. She has
also published in Mexican and Spanish journals. Email: saizmar@[Link]
Sánchez, Victoria, is a professor at the Department of Didactic of Mathematics at
the University of Seville, Spain. In that university, she has developed her work as
teacher and researcher in the last two decades. She has taught mathematics teacher
education courses and mathematics courses for elementary teachers. She also has
taught graduate level courses on research in mathematics education. Her research in
mathematics education spreads over several areas: mathematics teacher education,
the relationship between research and practice in mathematics teacher education and
mathematics teacher’s knowledge and practice. Email: vsanchez@[Link]
Shriki, Atara is a member of the academic staff at Oranim – Academic College of
Education since 2002. Her teaching specialities are mathematics, logic and methods
courses. Dr. Shriki is an active member of Kesher-Cham – R&D centre for improv-
ing and reviving mathematics education at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
where she studied mathematics and mathematics education and received her [Link]. in
1996. Her Doctoral dissertation (E. Bar-On supervisor) is a study of the mechanism
associated with the ability to retrieve mathematical information from human long-
term memory. Her research interest is mainly in the area of mathematics teachers’
296 Author Notes

beliefs and self image and their ability to change their perceptions about learning,
as well as their practice of teaching. In addition she is interested in developing cre-
ativity of prospective teachers through their engagement in Project-Based-Learning.
Email: shriki@[Link]
Spanneberg, Rose, is a Director of the Rhodes University Mathematics Educa-
tion Project (RUMEP) in South Africa where she works with in-service teachers of
mathematics at the undergraduate and graduate levels, respectively. RUMEP strives
to find ways of improving mathematics teaching and learning in previously disad-
vantaged schools in the Eastern Cape. Her research interest is in the professional de-
velopment of mathematics teachers especially the impact of in-service programmes
on teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices. She received doctorate degree from
Curtin University in Australia. Email: [Link]@[Link]
Svec, Kelly received her BS in Forestry from the University of Kentucky. She is
presently working on her certification to teach elementary education from University
of Kentucky. She presented at AAMTE (Appalachian Association for Mathematics
Teacher Educators) in 2005 where she presented Assessment of IMAP Video Clips
of Children for a Content Math Course for Preservice Elementary School Teachers
with Dana Williams and Richard Millman. Email: kabone30@[Link]
Anne, Teppo, while an Adjunct Instructor at Montana State University, developed
and supervised a two-semester mathematics content course for future elementary
teachers. She has contributed numerous book chapters and journal articles, including
the JRME Monograph Qualitative Research Methods in Mathematics Education.
She participated in the 12th ICMI Study on the Future of the Teaching and Learn-
ing and co-authored the chapter on “Symbols and Language”. Although no longer
teaching, she remains active in the international mathematics education research
community. Email: arteppo@[Link]
Williams, Dana graduated from the University of Kentucky in May of 2008. She
majored in elementary education and specialized in mathematics. She resides in
Austin, Texas with her husband and three children. Dana enjoys teaching and loves
to travel around the U.S. with her family. Email: danasw@[Link]
Author Index

A Brizuela, B., 237

Alibert, R., 87 Bromme, R., 178–180, 188, 192
Amato, S.A., 177, 181, 183, 186–191 Brophy, J., 178–180, 188, 192, 288
Ames, C., 1 Brousseau, G., 1, 241
Anderson, R.S., 58 Brown, A., 197, 200
Arcidiacono, M., 72, 78 Brown, C., 277
Askew, M., 179 Brown, J., 38, 46
Ausubel, D.P., 12, 186 Brown, L., 237
Brown, M., 46, 148, 179
B Bryant, P., 277
Balbuena, H., 153 Burger, W., 46
Ball, D.L., 27, 106, 107, 161, 162, 164, 170, Burton, L., 114
178, 179, 180, 217, 223, 265, 278 Buzeika, A., 128
Barber, P., 178
Barnes, M., 115 C
Barton, J., 58 Cabral, C., 107
Bass, H., 26, 106, 107, 180, 265 Callingham, R., 71, 83
Batanero, C., 71 Canada, D., 72, 80, 83
Battista, M.T., 46, 148 Cannon, J., 11, 13, 22
Baturo, A., 288 Carillo, J., 1
Bauersfeld, H., 132, 137 Carpenter, T.P., 12, 18, 19, 43, 163, 237
Becker, J.P., 162, 278 Carraher, D., 237
Bell, M., 142 Carrillo, J., 216, 217, 222, 223
Berg, B.L., 126 Carroll, L., 85, 86, 88–90, 116, 119
Bergsten, C., 4 Carson, R., 263
Berry, A.K., 287 Cemen, P.B., 43
Bezuk, N., 179 Cerdán, F., 43
Blanton, L.M., 121 Cheng, P.W., 87
Blanton, M., 237 Chiang, C., 12, 18, 19
Blume, G.W., 34 Chokshi, S., 11, 13, 22
Bones, G., 264, 266 Christiansen, B., 1
Borba, M.C., 123, 124 Christou, C., 178, 179
Borko, H., 38, 163, 277 Ciancetta, M., 80
Bowers, J., 163 Clarke, B.A., 2
Bransford, J., 197, 200 Clarke, D., 59
Brar, T., 35 Clarke, D.J., 135
Brenner, M.E., 35 Clements, D., 148

297
298 Author Index

Clements, M.A., 46 Epp, S.S., 87, 88

Climent, N., 216, 217, 222, 223 Ernest, P., 178, 181, 277
Cobb, P., 12, 38, 59, 72, 163 Escudero, I., 38–40, 46
Cocking, R., 197, 200 Even, R., 1
Coles, A., 237
Collins, A., 38, 46, 58 F
Conaway, B., 87 Fendel, D., 202
Confrey, J., 123, 124 Fennema, E., 12, 18, 19, 43, 163
Connell, M., 179 Fernandez, C., 162, 163
Cooney, T.J., 216, 218 Fernandez, C., 11, 13, 22
Cooper, T., 288 Fernsten, J., 60
Coriat, M., 216, 217, 222, 223 Fernsten, L., 60
Corrigan, D., 52, 56, 57 Figueras, O., 148, 149, 157
Cotti, R., 87, 88 Findell, B., 198, 287
Cramer, M.M., 87
Fisher, C.W., 179
Fleming, V., 201, 211
D Flowers, J., 28
Da Rocha Falcão, J.T., 237 Foote, C.J., 59
Dana, T., 54 Fosnot, C.T., 114
Darling-Hammond, L., 14, 198, 287 Franke, M.L., 12, 18, 19, 163, 237
Davey, N., 114
Freese, A.R., 52
Davis, G.E., 114
Freudenthal, H., 132, 148, 149, 153,
Davis, P.J., 115
159, 164
Davis, R.B., 237
Frobisher, L., 184
De Corte, E., 131, 132
Fuson, K.C., 12, 18, 19
de Lange, J., 131
De Rijdt, C., 53, 59, 60
Del Olmo, M.A., 158 G
DeMeulle, L., 58 Gabel, L.D., 149, 151, 157, 158
DeTemple, D.W., 106 Gadanidis, G., 114–116, 119, 124
Devolder, M., 53, 59, 60 Garcı́a, M., 38–40, 46
Dewey, J., 52 Garfield, J., 71, 72
Dickson, L., 46 Gary, C.C., 87
Dietz, M., 58, 59 Gawronski, J., 179
Diezmann, C.M., 35, 288 Gibson, O., 46
Dissanakye, E., 114 Gil, F., 158
Dochy, F., 53, 59, 60 Gilbert, J., 52
Doerr, H., 142, 143 Ginsburg, H.G., 116
Dolk, M., 114 Godino, J., 71
Domoney, B., 181 Goffree, F., 218
Dougherty, B., 237 Goldsmith, L.T., 53
Doyle, W., 1 Goulding, M., 178
Dreyfus, T., 87 Gramsci, A., 192
Dubinsky, E., 86, 87 Grant, T.J., 28
Duguid, P., 38, 46 Gravanes, A., 264, 266
Duran, R., 35 Gravemeijer, K., 12, 164
Green, J., 55, 71
E Greeno, J. G., 163
Egan, K., 116 Greer, B., 43, 71, 72, 131
Ellsworth, J.Z., 55, 62 Gregory, J.W., 86
Empson, S.B., 12, 18, 19, 43 Grenier. M., 237
English, L.D., 35, 183 Grevholm, B., 1
Enochs, L.G., 149, 151, 157, 158 Grover, B., 289
Ensor, P., 1, 128 Gutiérrez, A., 46
Author Index 299

H King, K., 39
Hadamard, J., 115 Knapp, N.F., 163
Halford, G.S., 183 Knight, P., 59
Hannula, M. S., 178 Knuth, E., 163
Harel, G., 259 Koedinger, K.R., 123
Harper, E., 179 Krainer, K., 216–218
Hart, K., 148, 149, 154, 193 Krummheuer, G., 137
Hart, L.C., 52, 58 Küchemann, D., 148
Harvey, M.R., 273
Hatton, N., 53, 54 L
Haylock, D., 179 Laine, A., 178
Heck, D.J., 198 Lampert, M., 217
Heidegger, M., 122 Lasure, S., 132
Heirdsfield, A., 288 Lave, J., 38, 40
Hendrickson, H., 43 Leblanc, J.F., 43
Henningsen, M., 289 Leikin, R., 216
Hersh, R., 115 LeRoy, M., 201, 211
Hershkowitz, R., 46 Lesh, R., 142, 143, 217
Hewitt, D., 277, 282 Levi, L., 12, 18, 19, 43
Heymann, H.W., 133 Lewis, C., 12
Hiebert, J., 1, 11, 12, 18, 19 Liljedahl, P., 115
Hill, H.C., 27 Linchevski, L., 237
Hoffman, K., 58 Llinares, S., 8, 38–40, 46, 217
Hollingsworth, H., 59 Lo, J., 28
Holmes, P., 71 Loef, M., 12, 18, 19, 43
Holyoak, K.J., 87 Long, C.T., 106
Hoogland, C., 114, 115 Loughran, J., 52, 56, 57, 287
Huckstep, P., 180 Louv, R., 265, 273
Lovitts, B., 217
I
Inhelder, B., 148, 158 M
Ma, L., 106, 109, 200, 213
J Ma, X., 106, 108
Jaime, A., 46 Makar, K., 72, 80, 83
Janvier, C., 149, 153, 158 Malara, N.A., 236, 237, 241, 244
Jaworski, B., 12, 216–218, 236 Marsden, E., 200
Jay, J.K., 52 Mason, J., 161, 236
Johnson, D., 179 Mayer, R.E., 35
Johnson, K.L., 52 McDiarmid, G.W., 178
Jonassen, D.H., 116 McDonough, A., 135
McGowen, M.A., 114
K McNeal, E., 59
Kaasila, R., 178 McTaggart, R., 181
Kaput, J., 121, 167, 170, 237 Meira, L., 237
Keijzer, R., 164 Menon, R., 159
Kelchtermans, G., 59 Menzel, B., 237
Kellert, S.R., 273 Merkel, G., 59
Kelly, B., 71, 83 Merseth, K., 151, 152
Kemmis, S., 181 Midkiff, R.B., 87
Kepner, H.S., 19 Millman, R., 106, 108
Kerslake, D., 148 Moje, E.B., 218
Kidman, G., 288 Moore, D., 72
Kieran, C., 123, 124 Moore, R.C., 86
Kilpatrick, J., 198, 278, 287 Moreno, M.F., 158
300 Author Index

Moritz, J., 71, 83 R

Moseley, B., 35 Radford, L., 237
Mousley, J., 229 Rasmussen, C., 39
Murata, A., 12 Reed, B.S., 35
Murray, H., 12, 18, 19 Reed, S.K., 131
Reinke, K., 159
N Renkl, A., 132
Nathan, M.J., 123 Resek, D., 202
Navarra, G., 236, 237, 241, 244 Rhodes, V., 179
Nesher, P., 43 Ricco, G., 148, 149, 151–153, 158
Ni, Y., 181 Richert, A.E., 58, 178
Nisbett, R.E., 87 Romagnano, L., 163
Noddings, N., 59 Rowland, T., 178, 180
Novak, J.D., 12 Ruddock, G., 148
Nunes, T., 277 Russell, S.J., 25, 26

O S
Oliveira, H., 216, 217, 222, 223 Sáiz, M., 148, 149, 157, 159
Oliver, L.M., 87 Sánchez, V., 38–40, 46
Oonk, W., 218 Sawada, T., 163
Orton, A., 181, 184, 277 Schiro, M., 87, 88
Schliemann, A., 237
Osborne, A.R., 86
Schoenfeld, A., 86, 236, 278
Outhred, L., 155
Schon, D., 52, 287
Owens, K., 155
Sekiguchi, Y., 163
Selden, A., 86
P Selden, J., 86
Papert, S., 280 Selter, C., 278
Pasley, J.D., 198 Sernadini, Z., 180, 188
Peacock, M., 116 Sfard, A., 123, 124
Peck, D., 179 Shaughnessy, J., 71, 72, 80, 83
Pehkonen, E., 133, 178 Shaughnessy, M., 46, 72, 78
Penglase, M., 178 Shealy, B.E., 216
Peressini, D., 163 Shield, P., 288
Perry, R., 12, 23 Shifter, D., 53
Peschel, F., 138 Shimada, S., 162, 163
Peter-Koop, A., 137, 236 Shimizu, Y., 162
Peterson, B.E., 162, 163 Shriki, A., 91
Peterson, P.L., 12, 18, 19, 162, 163 Shulman, L.S., 58, 106, 178, 180, 218,
Pfannkuch, M., 72 250, 287
Philipp, R., 107 Silver, E.A., 58, 133
Philippou, G.N., 178, 179 Simmt, E., 119
Piaget, J., 148, 158 Simon, M.A., 34, 59, 179, 229
Pólya, G., 133, 142, 180, 188, 278 Simonsen, L., 170
Ponte, J.P., 236 Simonsen, L.M., 170
Potari, D., 148, 149 Skemp, R.R., 177
Proudfit, L., 43 Skott, J., 128, 218
Puig, L., 43 Smith, D., 53, 54
Putnam, R.T., 38 Smith, K., 59
Putt, J., 43 Smith, M.S., 58
Smith, P.S., 198
Q Smyser, S., 55
Quilter, D., 179 Sotto, E., 180
Quintero, A., 43 Southwell, B., 178
Author Index 301

Sowder, J.T., 179, 180 Vosniadou, S., 181

Sowder, L.K., 179, 180 Vygotsky, L.S., 58
Spiliotopoulou, V., 148, 149
Stafylidou, S., 181 W
Stein, M.K., 289 Wade, S.E., 218
Sterenberg, G., 119 Waldegg, G., 148
Stern, E., 132 Walle, J.V., 184, 186, 188
Stigler, J., 11, 19, 162, 163 Walther, G., 1
Stoddart, T., 179 Wang-Iverson, P., 11, 13
Stofflett, R., 179 Watson, J., 71, 83
Stones, E., 180 Wearne, D., 1
Sullivan, P., 192, 229 Weiss, I. R., 198
Sumara, D., 115 Weissglass, J., 179
Svec, K., 108, 110 Weisstein, E., 210
Swafford, J., 198, 287 Wenger, E., 38, 40
Sykes, G., 198 West, M.M., 167, 170
Szeminska, A., 148, 158 Westervelt, M.O., 273
Szendrei, J., 1 Wheatly, G., 59
Whitin, D.J., 87
T Wild, C., 72
Talbert, J.E., 23 William, D., 179
Tann, S., 58 Williams, D., 108, 110
Teppo, A.R., 39, 162, 165, 166, 170 Willis, C., 163
Thomas, M., 87 Wilson, S. M., 178
Thompson, C.S., 43, 184, 186, 188 Winter, H., 132
Thwaites, A., 180 Wolf, K., 52, 53, 57–59
Tillema, H.H., 57, 59 Wollring, B., 137
Tippins, D., 54 Wood, T., 59, 218
Tiquet, E., 53, 59, 60 Wray, S., 52, 58
Torok, R., 83
Tudball, E.J., 287 Y
Tumanov, V., 119 Yackel, E., 59
Yee, S., 13
V Yiparaki, O., 86, 87
Valecillos, A., 71 Yoshida, M., 11, 13, 162, 163
van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, M., 164
van Galen, F., 164 Z
Vergnaud, G., 43, 148, 149, 151–153, 158 Zan, R., 236, 237, 241, 244
Vermette, P.J., 59 Zandieh, M., 39
Verschaffel, L., 131, 132 Zaslavsky, O., 216
Villasenor, A., 19 Zeichner, K., 52, 58
Vinner, S., 46 Zhou, K.Y., 181
Voigt, J., 137 Zwicky, J., 116
Subject Index

A science, 89
Adaptive reasoning, 26 tasks design, 90
Algebra training
classroom scene analysis C
task implementation, 246–250 Classroom tasks
teacher-trainees, 245 mathematics teacher educators
hypotheses and theoretical elements course content, 39
algebraic code, 240–241 learning levels and characteristics, 47
algebraic thinking, 238 systems of activity, 38–39
canonical representation, 239–240 task A design, 41–43
equal sign, 240 task B design, 44–46
process and product, 238–239 teaching procedure, 40
methodological aspects teachers’ training
classroom episodes, 244–245 algebraic learning, 246–250
didactical contract, 241–242 constructive teaching, 245
mathematical discussion, 242–243 correspondence law, 250–252
polycentric themes, 243–244 formal relationship translation, 254–255
psychological aspects, 256
protocols interpretation, 242
reflection, 257–259
socio-constructive models, 236–237
theoretical levels, 255–256
teachers’ protocols analysis
verbal formulation, 252–253
correspondence law, 250–252
teaching portfolios
formal relationship translation, 254–255
collegiality and social interaction, 58
psychological aspects, 256 constructivist paradigm, 58–59
reflection, 257–259 definition and description, 59–60
theoretical levels, 255–256 design suggestions, 60–62
verbal formulation, 252–253 disadvantages, 62–63
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland language and reflective writing, 53–54
benefits, 93 learning supports, 56–57
disadvantages, 94 professional development and growth,
education issues, 89 54–55
fourteen 90-min lesson plans, 90 reflective tool, 52–53
learning environment, 93 teaching aspects integration, 56
lesson-plan sequencing options, 90 Cognitively guided instruction (CGI) project,
logic, 88–89 18–19
mathematics, 89 Collegiality and social interaction, 58
school teaching implication, 93–94 Common knowledge, 27

303
304 Subject Index

Commonwealth Accountability Testing difficulties of students

System (CATS), 108 formal arguments and symbols
Computational starters. See Numerical starters manipulation, 86
Conceptual understanding, 26 logical thinking and reasoning, 86
Content knowledge improvement mathematical statements, 86
geometry, 201–202 KCCT and CATS, 108
mathematical principles, 200–201 math therapy
tri-square rug activity, 202–204 ample class time, 127
Correspondence law, 250–252 attention and insight, 127
Critical reflection, 53 beliefs and practice, 128
collaboration, 127
D complexity, 127–128
Descriptive reflection, 53 frustration, 126
Diagram literacy, 35 teaching, 128
Dialogic reflection, 53 mathematical habit of the mind, 110
mathematical insight pleasure, 114–115
E Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching
Elementary mathematics (MKT), 107
angle concepts, 270–271 mathematical myths, 115–116
designing and creating models, 268–269 mathematics-for-teachers tasks
estimation, 271 algebra concepts, 121–126
geometer’s sketchpad software, 267–268 geometry concepts, 117–121
geometric shapes, 272 National Council of Teachers
large numbers, 271 of Mathematics (NCTM), 107
measuring heights, 269 student attitudinal issues, 106
outdoor graphing, 270 task-based lesson
perimeter, area and volume, 272 characteristics, 165–166
proportionality, 271 didactical phenomenological analysis, 164
Elementary mathematics teachers functional rule, 169
activities and tasks development Japanese-style, 163–164
constructivists approach, 90 multiplicative relationships, 169
individual activity and small-group/whole proportion word problems, 166–167
class activity, 91 proportional reasoning, 166
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland responsibilities, 165
benefits, 93 scalar multiplier, 169
disadvantages, 94 situated learning perspective, 162–163
education issues, 89 student solutions explanation, 167–169
fourteen 90-min lesson plans, 90 video tapes of children
learning environment, 93 effect, 107
lesson-plan sequencing options, 90 evaluation form, 108
logic, 88–89 key role, 111
mathematics, 89 Elementary schools, outdoor activities
school teaching implication, 93–94 constructivist learning theories, 264–265
science, 89 meaning, 264
tasks design, 90 physical activity, 265
children’s literature, 87–88 subjects, 266
classroom presentations, 108, 109 teacher education, 266
conjecture, 109, 110
data collecting instruments F
informal 5–7 min individual conversational Fermi problems
interviews, 91–92 classroom-based study
student’s response and work, 91–92 aspects, 141
student’s progress and attitude analysis, 92 data collection and analysis, 136–137
written lesson reports, 91–92 depth and quality, 141
Subject Index 305

mathematical validation, 140 Lesson planning, 15, 16, 61

problem presentation, 136 Lesson study cycle
solution process, 140, 141 designing critical tasks
strategy conferences and assessment, 138 course design, 40–46
traffic problem, 138, 140, 141, 143 lesson study cycle design, 13–18
work sheet, 138, 139 model and professional identity, 2
modelling skills development probability and statistics, 71–83
criteria, 135 professional knowledge, 3–4
mathematical thinking, 136 relational games, 177–193
traffic problem, 136 selection process, 4
Formal relationship translation, 254–255 systems of activity, 38–39
teacher competencies, 2–3
I illustrative examples
Initial teacher education design of key prompts, 18–22
action steps justifying reasoning, 17–18
relational understanding, 189–190 sum of angles of triangle, 17
trading games, 190–192 surface area of cylinders, 16
background literature lesson analysis and planning, 15, 16
attitudes and beliefs, 178–179 privileged repetoire, 1
confident teaching, 180 process description
contingent actions, 180 critical design, 15–16
courses, 181 lesson analysis and planning, 15
mathematics re-learning, 179 student thinking, 14
relational games, 181 unit and lesson outlines, 13–14
subject understanding, 179 starter problems
time allocation, 179 broadening thinking, 29–34
methodology initial adaptations, 27–29
data collection instruments, 183–184 interpretation focus, 30–32
forward and backward trading games, pictorial representations, 32–34
186–188 teaching lesson, 14
MTCC, 182
teaching portfolios
pair work, 184
collegiality and social interaction, 58
students’ place value board, 184
constructivist paradigm, 58–59
teacher’s spinner, 187
definition and description, 59–60
teachers’ place value board, 185
design suggestions, 60–62
teaching program, 182–183
disadvantages, 62–63
teaching time, 183
language and reflective writing, 53–54
versatile representations, 183
learning supports, 56–57
reconnaissance stage, 181–182, 188–189
professional development and growth,
Initial teacher training, mathematics
54–55
classroom performance, 227–228
reflective tool, 52–53
fraction representations, 225–226
teaching aspects integration, 56
group work issues, 226
trainees
methodological issues, 226–227
data collection instruments, 183–184
open-ended problems, 225
forward and backward trading games,
pedagogical content knowledge, 227
186–188
Interpretation-specific numerical starters, 30
mathematics teaching course component
Investigations, curriculum, 28
(MTCC), 182
K pair work, 184
Kentucky Core Content Test (KCCT), 108 reconnaissance stage, 181–182,
188–189
L relational understanding, 189–190
Language and reflective writing, 53–54 students’ place value board, 184
Learning levels and characteristics, 47 teacher’s spinner, 187
306 Subject Index

Lesson study cycle (continued) mathematical practices, 39

teachers’ place value board, 185 systems of activty, 38–39
teaching program, 182–183 task A design, 41–43
teaching time, 183 task B design, 44–46
trading games, 190–192 teaching procedure, 40
versatile representations, 183 teaching–learning trajectory, 40
unit and lesson outlines, 13–14 fundamental component, 277–278
goals and features, 276
M initial teacher training
Math therapy classroom performance, 227–228
ample class time, 127 fraction representations, 225–226
attention and insight, 127 group work issues, 226
belief and practice, 128 methodological issues, 226–227
collaboration, 127 open-ended problems, 225
complexity, 127–128 pedagogical content knowledge, 227
frustration, 126 knowledge acquisition, 277
teaching, 128 learning activity/silence, 278
Mathematical Habit of the Mind, 110 organizational features, 276–277
Mathematical knowledge PIC inservice training context
strategies, 288 classroom analysis, 220–222
teaching, 287 division of circles, 222–223
Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching Miguel’s conjecture, 223–224
(MKT), 106, 107 polyminoes tasks, 279
Mathematical modelling process
primary fractions, 230–233
addition process, 134
products/processes, 278
analysis, 142, 143
professional task, 219
concept, 133
Spanish primary education, 215–216
Fermi problems
theoretical principles
classroom-based study, 136–142
educational triangle, 216–217
modelling skills development, 135–136
professional development, 217, 219
graphical representation, 143
theoretical reflection, 218
group work data, 142
real-world situation, 134 training
systematic three-step-approach, 133 differences, 283
teacher education, 143 polyminoes concept, 281–282
transcripts, 142 professional backgrounds and experiences,
visualisation/illustration process, 134 280–281
Mathematical proficiency, 35 Mathematics teaching course component
Mathematics methods course (MTCC), 182
conceptual tools, 40 Mathematics-for-teachers tasks
learning levels and characteristics, 47 algebra concepts, 121–126
practices, 39, 41, 44 graphs, 125
task A design growing pattern, 121–124
MSAP, 42–43 missing numbers location, 124–126
problematic spaces, 41–42 geometry concepts
teachers’ domains of knowledge, 43 curve and triangle, 118
task B design imaginary sphere, 118, 119
problematic spaces, 44 serpent with corners, 119, 120
teachers’ domains of knowledge, 45–46 skating movement, 118
teaching–learning trajectory, 40 swing movement, 118
Mathematics teacher education Meaningful mathematical task design
educators key prompts
course content, 38 CGI project, 18–19
learning levels and characteristics, 47 comparing relative size of fractions, 21–22
Subject Index 307

discovering formula for sum of interior content understanding improvement

angles, 20–21 geometry, 201–202
student proof and perfect lesson, 19 mathematical principles, 200–201
students’ visible thinking, 18–22 tri-square rug activity, 202–204
lesson study cycle mathematically rich tasks
description of process, 13–16 features, 197
examples, 16–18 Vermont Mathematics Partnership (VMP),
Multiplicative structure’ arithmetic problems 198–199
(MSAP), 42–43 mathematics education
fundamental component, 277–278
N goals and features, 276
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics knowledge acquisition, 277
(NCTM), 107 learning activity/silence, 278
Number-line model, 33–34 organizational features, 276–277
Numerical starters polyminoes tasks, 279
initial task adaptations, 27–29 products/processes, 278
problem, 27 training, 281–283
task broadening mathematics methods course, 39–40
interpretations, 30–32 pedagogical content knowledge, 210–211
pictorial representations, 32–34 planning, 199–200
Pythagorean theorem
O algebraic equations, 207, 209–210
Outdoor mathematics activities, elementary large frame model, 208
schools small frame model, 207
constructivist learning theories, 264–265 triangles, 206
meaning, 264 research-based workshop design
physical activity, 265 clay figures, 156–159
subjects, 266 cylinders, 150–153
teacher education, 266 Eiffel tower, 153–156
general aspects, 149–150
P systems of activity, 38–39
Pedagogical content knowledge, 210–211 task A design
Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), 178 MSAP, 42–43
Peer reflective report, 61–62 problematic spaces, 44–45
PIC inservice training context teachers’ domains of knowledge, 43
classroom analysis, 220–222 task B design
division of circles, 222–223 problematic spaces, 44
Miguel’s conjecture, 223–224 teachers’ domains of knowledge, 45–46
Polycentric themes, 243–244 teaching–learning trajectory, 40
Primary fractions Primary Teacher Education program, 38
Miguel’s conjecture, 232–233 Probability and statistics tasks
teacher education, 230–232 cereal box stickers
Primary Mathematics Teacher Education class aggregate data, 79–80
system, 37–38 dotplot, 79
Primary school teachers initial predictions, 78
algebraic concepts real-or-fake extension task, 82–83
classroom scene analysis, 245–250 known and unknown mixtures
hypotheses and theoretical elements, activity description, 75
238–241 confidence idea introduction, 78
methodological aspects, 241–245 margin of error, 77
socio-constructivist models, 236–237 predicted and actual results, 76–77
teachers’ protocols analysis, 250–259 real-or-fake extension task, 81–82
teaching, 235 river crossing game
area model for multiplication, 204–206 cumulative frequency chart, 73
308 Subject Index

Probability and statistics tasks (continued) functional rule, 169

experienced strategies, 75 Japanese-style, 163–164
initial strategies, 73 multiplicative relationships, 169
theoretical distribution, 74 proportion word problems, 166–167
variability, 71–72, 83 proportional reasoning, 166
Procedural fluency, 26 responsibilities, 165
Productive disposition, 26, 29 scalar multiplier, 169
Professional development and growth, 54–55 student solutions explanation, 167–169
Project of collaborative research (PIC), 215 theoretical framework
Pythagorean theorem didactical phenomenological analysis, 164
algebraic equations, 207, 209–210 Japanese-style, 163–164
large frame model, 208 situated learning perspective, 162–163
small frame model, 207 Teacher education
triangles, 206 mathematical knowledge, 287–288
productive tasks, form, function and focus,
R 286
Relational games task implementation, 289
action steps themes, 286–287
relational understanding, 189–190 Teacher reflection, 52–53
trading games, 190–192 Teacher training
methodology differences, 283
data collection instruments, 183–184 polyminoes concept, 281–282
forward and backward trading games, professional backgrounds and experiences,
186–188 280–281
mathematics teaching course component Teaching and learning environments
(MTCC), 182 classroom episodes, 244–245
pair work, 184 didactical contract, 241–242
students’ place value board, 184 mathematical discussion, 242–243
teacher’s spinner, 187 polycentric themes, 243–244
teachers’ place value board, 185 protocols interpretation, 242
teaching program, 182–183 Teaching aspects integration, 56
teaching time, 183 Teaching portfolios
disadvantages, 62–63
versatile representations, 183
mathematics teacher education
reconnaissance stage, 181–182, 188–189
definition and description, 59–60
Research-based workshop design
design suggestions, 60–62
general aspects, 149–150
outcomes
volume tasks
collegiality and social interaction, 58
clay figures, 156–159
constructivist paradigm, 58–59
cylinders, 150–153
language and reflective writing, 53–54
Eiffel tower, 153–156
learning supports, 56–57
professional development and growth,
S 54–55
Specialized knowledge, 27 reflective tool, 52–53
Strategic competence, 26 teaching aspects integration, 56
Students’ visible thinking, 18–22 Teaching–learning trajectory, 40
Subject matter knowledge (SMK), 178 Themes, teacher education
Substration for starters, 28–29 task analysis, 286
Switching interpretations, 31 teacher education and implementation, 287
Theoretical levels, 255–256
T Theoretical principles
Task-based lesson for mathematics teacher education
characteristics, 165–166 educational triangle, 216–217
didactical phenomenological analysis, 164 professional development, 217, 219
Subject Index 309

theoretical reflection, 218 liquid level difference, 157

project of collaborative research ( PIC), 217 objectives and goals, 157
Trading games, 186–188 for problem solving, 156
teacher’s experience, 157–158
V cylinders
Variability analysis, 152–153
cereal box stickers confusion and common belief, 151
class aggregate data, 79–80 objectives, 151
dotplot, 79 problem solving methods, 150
initial predictions, 78 teacher’s experience, 151–152
real-or-fake extension task, 82–83 Eiffel tower
known and unknown mixtures analysis, 155–156
activity description, 75 homothecy, 153–154
confidence idea introduction, 78 objectives and goals, 154
error margin, 77 problem, 153
predicted and actual results, 76–77 teacher’s experience, 154–155
real-or-fake extension task, 81–82
river crossing game W
cumulative frequency chart, 73 Whole number computation unit
experienced strategies, 75 curriculum development project, 26
initial strategies, 73 goals, 27
theoretical distribution, 74 interdependent strands, 26
Vermont Mathematics Partnership (VMP), 197 knowledge types, 27
Volume tasks numerical starters
clay figures initial task adaptations, 27–29
analysis, 158–159 task broadening, 29–34