Category: Colloquia

Understanding and Promoting Reversibility in the Context of Learning Through Activity

Integrating Knowledge: A Model of Secondary Mathematics Teacher Preparation

For our second colloquium talk, we will have Dr. Keith Weber from Rutgers University.

Proof Comprehension in Advanced Mathematics
Thursday, October 17th; 3:00-4:00 PM, Aderhold _____

In advanced mathematics courses, students spend a substantial amount of time reading propositions and their proofs. Yet research suggests that students often learn little from reading these proofs. In this presentation, I address four questions about students’ reading of mathematical proof: (1) Why do students have so much difficulty understanding a proof? (2) What does it mean to understand a proof and how can this understanding be assessed? (3) What strategies should students use when reading a proof to facilitate comprehension? (4) What beliefs do students hold about their responsibilities in proof reading? These questions are addressed using qualitative and quantitative data. Initially task-based interviews with students and interviews with mathematicians were used to generate hypotheses about what students should do, but do not do, when reading a proof. A survey was then used to demonstrate statistically reliable differences in mathematics majors’ approaches to proof reading and the approaches that mathematicians would like them to take.

We are excited to have Dr. Peg Smith for our first colloquium of the year! She will be giving two talks for us.

Engaging Students in the Standards for Mathematics Practice: The Role of Cognitively Demanding Tasks
Thursday, September 26th; 4:15-5:15 PM
Athens Career Academy

Research on mathematical tasks over the last two decades has made salient that student learning is greatest in classrooms where the tasks consistently encourage high-level student thinking and reasoning (Hiebert & Wearne 1993; Stein & Lane 1996; Boaler & Staples 2008). This talk will focus on how high-level or cognitively challenging tasks can provide opportunities for students to engage in the Standards for Mathematical Practice (CCSSM, 2010).

Orchestrating Productive Discussions in Math and Science
Friday, September 27th; 11:30-12:30 PM
Aderhold 119

Orchestrating discussions that use student-developed work as the launching point places significant pedagogical demands on the teacher (e.g., Ball, 2001; Chazen & Ball, 2001; Lampert, 2001). Teachers must make rapid online diagnoses of students’ understandings, compare them with desired outcomes, and then fashion a response that will help move both the responding student and the rest of the class towards a more sophisticated understanding of the content in question. This talk will focus on a pedagogical model that specifies key practices that teachers can learn in order to use student responses more effectively and on initial efforts to study the impact of the model on instruction.

We hope to see you there!

Minding the discursive gap: Learning mathematics as overcoming communicational conflict.