Time Schedule:
Elham Kazemi
EDC&I 575
Seattle Campus
Investigation of curriculum and instruction in mathematics at the elementary-school level; review of research and preparation of proposals. Prerequisite: graduate standing.
Class description
EDC&I 575: Seminar in Mathematics Education Elham Kazemi
Course description. As the emphasis in mathematics classrooms shifts to activities in which students engage in deeper mathematical inquiries, the question arises, for both teachers and researchers: How do we describe students’ mathematical ideas in ways that both respect how students experience these ideas and retain the connection of these ideas to mathematics as a discipline? Put more directly, as we push beyond a mathematics of procedures and memorization, what does it look like to do genuine mathematics in the classroom? Once it is granted that this mathematics will be different from what teachers have been traditionally taught, other questions also arise, such as: How does a teacher use his/her mathematics in the classroom? What mathematics do teachers need to know to understand children’s mathematics? We will consider these and related questions in this seminar. The work of the seminar will consist of close readings of a small number of critical works in mathematics education, examination of artifacts of practice, such as videos of classroom conversation, and seminar discussions on the above questions built around these materials. In addition to an extended seminar paper, students will be required to submit informal writings each week to a web-based conversation in response to the course reading. Among the works to be studied are landmark papers by authors such as Shulman, Ma, Lampert, Schifter & Fosnot, Carpenter, Fennema, & Franke, Cobb, Lehrer & Chazan, and Ball & Bass.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Seminar Discussion
Recommended preparation
Familiarity with NCTM Standards for Mathematics: www.nctm.org
Class assignments and grading
Short papers responding to weekly papers; final Seminar paper
Participation Writing
