RUME 28
2026
Alexandria, Virginia
Designing Activities About Definition Values Through Collaboration and Attention to Professional Obligations
Page: 260
Because many mathematics instructors rely on lectures as their primary mode of instruction, change efforts should engage with and build on instructors’ existing values and practices rather than attempt to replace them. We report on the first year of our project, where we take a collaborative approach to improve instruction surrounding definitions through activity design and implementation. Constructing narrative cases, we explored how our collaboration aided participants in navigating alignments and tensions between their professional obligations and their activity. We found our collaboration succeeded in guiding our participants, but it required careful examination of reasons as to why instructors may not institute instructional change.