PROCEEDINGS OF THE 17TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2014
Denver, Colorado
Exploring Differences In Teaching Practice When Two Mathematics Instructors Enact The Same Lesson
Page: 1111
Investigating teacher practice at all educational levels has become an important research arena. We analyze teacher practice by comparing two implementations of the same fragment of a student-centered curriculum by two mathematics professors. We highlight differences in their practices and the consequent classroom results by analyzing their participation in class discussions, and we show how Schoenfeld’s (2011) resources, goals, and orientations framework may be used to explain these differences. Using classroom and interview data, we identify resources that each instructor believed he lacked, we highlight prominent mathematical and social goals that each instructor held, and we infer orientations toward teaching and learning mathematics that guided each instructor’s practices. All of these in combination suggest explanations for the observed differences in the implementations and class outcomes. We believe that this analysis provides an important technique to understand and improve teaching and learning at the undergraduate level in mathematics.