The purpose of this study was to describe the instructional practices of two pre-service secondary mathematics teachers, Paige Morris and Keith Nichols, during their internship experiences. Specifically, the study aimed to examine the cognitive demands of the tasks as selected and enacted by the pre-service teachers, the mathematical representations used during the lesson, and the questions asked by each pre-service teacher. Additionally, the study aimed to describe the ways in which the contextual settings, particularly the curriculum and mentor, appeared to influence the instructional practices of the pre-service teachers as they planned for and enacted mathematics lessons in their field placements.
The analysis of the data indicated that the instructional practices of the pre-service teachers were quite different. Keith planned for and enacted more high-level tasks than did Paige. While both Paige and Keith provided their respective students with opportunities to consider multiple representations of a mathematical idea, the use of the representations differed. Paige focused on procedural aspects of making connections between representations, whereas Keith used the representations as a way for the students to build meaning of the mathematical concepts. Additionally, Keith asked more questions that provided the students with opportunities to think and reason about the mathematics as well as to make meaningful connections between representations.
An analysis of the contextual settings in which Paige and Keith worked point to key differences in the opportunities that Paige and Keith had during their field experience to learn about student-centered instructional practices. Two specific areas that were targeted in this study were the curriculum and the mentor. A review of the data indicated that the curriculum used in field experience and the mentoring that Paige and Keith received from their mentor teachers and university supervisors appeared to affect aspects of their practice. That is, Keith was greatly influenced by his use of a reform-oriented curriculum, whereas Paige did not have access to such a curriculum. Additionally, Keiths mentors consistently used specific instances form the lesson as a means to identify key areas for Keith to focus on improving. In contrast, Paige typically received feedback that was broad and general.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-12082006-114459 |
| Date | 29 January 2007 |
| Creators | Mossgrove, Jennifer L. |
| Contributors | Mary Kay Stein, Ellice Forman, Ellen Ansell, Margaret S. Smith |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-12082006-114459/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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