When I have a working rough draft of a paper almost complete, I need to step away from it for a little while. This week I went back and looked at three papers that were nearing completion and started to make the final adjustments on them. The papers looked at different subject matters: pre-service elementary math teaching, academic questioning in pre-service teacher preparation, and the instruction of differentiation in pre-service teacher preparation. This week I worked on making sure the references were all accounted for and were written correctly in APA format—a tedious task, but one that needs to be done. In addition to this I read through all of the papers making sure to link the literature review with discussion points that emerged from the results of each of these studies. Next week, I will do one more read through, make some last-minute tweaks, and then send these papers off to the organization I worked with. They will get to read through them and ask any questions or seek clarity on anything contained within them. From here, publication will happen.
I will share one of the findings from the discussion for teaching elementary math to pre-service teachers here (just so this whole blog post isn’t solely procedural in nature): “All major components of math content and pedagogy need to be focused on. This needs to be done in a way where courses progressively develop knowledge and address all key content areas-numbers and operations, algebra and functions, geometry and measurement, and data analysis and probability. The grounding of this instruction should be in building conceptual knowledge and then procedural fluency should build on this knowledge. Math concepts need to be linked to operational skills, as interconnected units, so that students understand why and how algorithms work (Ambrose, 2004; Reid, 2013). Intertwining conceptual and procedural knowledge is important because it allows students to have a deep understanding of math and perform it fluently (Hiebert, 2013). Without having a strong conceptual understanding of math, the procedural skills are not nimbly of effectively used by used students and therefore learning is “fragile” (Hiebert, Gallimore, Garnier, Givvin, Hollingsworth et al., 2003). Conversely, if there is only emphasis on conceptual knowledge then learners struggle with procedural competency (Kajander, 2010). This method for teaching math is often very different than what pre-service teachers encountered in their own K-12 experiences with math (Darling-Hammond, 2006). This cycle of teaching, focused on procedural knowledge, however needs to be challenged otherwise we will have another decade of stagnant performance in math performance (as measured by the PISA, TIMSS, and NAEP assessments) where students show basic procedural knowledge of math, but fail to advance to conceptually applying math to solve problems.” Once these papers are sent off, then I have more data I can look at from these inspection reports or I may move to prepping for the fall research project—the pandemic’s effect on birth to five. I am a little more motivated by the second project right now because I have two kids under five; one who does not seem to be affected by the pandemic, while the other seems to be slightly impacted in her expressive communication (but her receptive communication is exceptionally strong). It may be nice not to sift through and code report data for a little while—given that these last three papers had me in these documents for the last six months.
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February 2023
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