A socio-cultural perspective on the first year of teaching secondary mathematics

The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of a group of four beginning secondary mathematics teachers in their first year of teaching. Each teacher was interviewed individually for approximately 30 minutes in the middle of the school year. The interview responses were analysed in terms of the participants’ views of themselves as teachers and the factors which they identified as influencing their classroom practices. The study indicates that the culture of the school and the practices of more experienced teachers were important factors in the beginning teachers’ perception of themselves as effective teachers.8 page(s

Investigating Prospective Teachers as Learning Design Authors

This chapter reports on findings from a recent project situated in the area of preservice teacher education. The project investigated prospective teachers authoring and using their own contextualised learning designs. The chapter describes how 17 secondary and primary preservice teachers adapted existing, well-researched learning strategies to inform the design of their own specific online learning tasks and how they implemented these tasks in the context of their teaching practicum. The prospective teachers used an online learning design authoring system as a tool and flexible `test-bed for their learning designs and implementation. An account of the ways in which the prospective teachers developed sophisticated understandings of their chosen learning strategy and developed fresh insights into online and face-toface teaching issues is present

Taking a closer look at students visual imagery

Explores the use of pattern imagery in enhancing the spatial skills of students. Discussion on the concept of spatial structuring; Relationship between numerical and spatial patterns; Tasks that may be provided by teachers to which may help students to become more attuned to the importance of pattern and structure

First graders' use of structure in visual memory and unitising area tasks

A cross-sectional descriptive study of 103 Grade I students from ten Sydney schools investigated the use of mathematical and spatial structure across 30 numeracy tasks. This report describes students' levels of structural development across two key tasks on visual memory and area as emergent, partial or identifiable structure. Lower-achieving students who lacked structure in their responses did not appear to be located on the same developmental path as other students. Qualitative analysis supported the findings of Gray, Pitta and Tall (2000) and Thomas, Mulligan and Goldin (2002) - that in the abstraction of mathematical concepts these students may concentrate on idiosyncratic non-mathematical aspects of their experience

How do early career teachers value different types of support? A scale-adjusted latent class choice model

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. Using a discrete choice experimental approach and associated Scale-Adjusted Latent Class Model (SALCM), we quantify the relative value early career teachers (ECTs) place on various types of support in the form of affirmation, resources, collegial opportunities, mentoring, and professional development. ECTs with intentions to depart the profession, place greater relative value on the sharing of resources, cooperative teaching and planning, offsite discussions about classroom management and programming with mentors, and having a greater professional voice. In contrast, those with intentions to remain, place greater value on observation from and conversations about teaching with more experienced teachers at their school

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): stellar mass functions by Hubble type

We present an estimate of the galaxy stellar mass function and its division by morphological type in the local (0.025 < z < 0.06) Universe. Adopting robust morphological classifications as previously presented (Kelvin et al.) for a sample of 3, 727 galaxies taken from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey, we define a local volume and stellar mass limited sub-sample of 2, 711 galaxies to a lower stellar mass limit of M = 109.0M_. We confirm that the galaxy stellar mass function is well described by a double Schechter function given by M_ = 1010.64M_, _1 = −0.43, __1 = 4.18 dex−1Mpc−3, _2 = −1.50 and __2 = 0.74 dex−1Mpc−3. The constituent morphological-type stellar mass functions are well sampled above our lower stellar mass limit, excepting the faint little blue spheroid population of galaxies. We find approximately 71+3−4% of the stellar mass in the local Universe is found within spheroid dominated galaxies; ellipticals and S0-Sas. The remaining 29+4−3% falls predominantly within late type disk dominated systems, Sab-Scds and Sd-Irrs. Adopting reasonable bulge-to-total ratios implies that approximately half the stellar mass today resides in spheroidal structures, and half in disk structures. Within this local sample, we find approximate stellar mass proportions for E : S0 Sa : Sab-Scd : Sd-Irr of 34 : 37 : 24 : 5

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): stellar mass functions by Hubble type

We present an estimate of the galaxy stellar mass function and its division by morphological type in the local (0.025 < z < 0.06) Universe. Adopting robust morphological classifications as previously presented (Kelvin et al.) for a sample of 3, 727 galaxies taken from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey, we define a local volume and stellar mass limited sub-sample of 2, 711 galaxies to a lower stellar mass limit of M = 109.0M_. We confirm that the galaxy stellar mass function is well described by a double Schechter function given by M_ = 1010.64M_, _1 = −0.43, __1 = 4.18 dex−1Mpc−3, _2 = −1.50 and __2 = 0.74 dex−1Mpc−3. The constituent morphological-type stellar mass functions are well sampled above our lower stellar mass limit, excepting the faint little blue spheroid population of galaxies. We find approximately 71+3−4% of the stellar mass in the local Universe is found within spheroid dominated galaxies; ellipticals and S0-Sas. The remaining 29+4−3% falls predominantly within late type disk dominated systems, Sab-Scds and Sd-Irrs. Adopting reasonable bulge-to-total ratios implies that approximately half the stellar mass today resides in spheroidal structures, and half in disk structures. Within this local sample, we find approximate stellar mass proportions for E : S0 Sa : Sab-Scd : Sd-Irr of 34 : 37 : 24 : 5

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): galaxy close pairs, mergers and the future fate of stellar mass

We use a highly complete subset of the Galaxy And Mass Assembly II (GAMA-II) redshift sample to fully describe the stellar mass dependence of close pairs and mergers between 10(8) and 10(12)M(circle dot). Using the analytic form of this fit we investigate the total stellar mass accreting on to more massive galaxies across all mass ratios. Depending on how conservatively we select our robust merging systems, the fraction of mass merging on to more massive companions is 2.0-5.6 per cent. Using the GAMA-II data we see no significant evidence for a change in the close pair fraction between redshift z = 0.05 and 0.2. However, we find a systematically higher fraction of galaxies in similar mass close pairs compared to published results over a similar redshift baseline. Using a compendium of data and the function gamma(M) = A(1 + z)(m) to predict the major close pair fraction, we find fitting parameters of A = 0.021 +/- 0.001 and m = 1.53 +/- 0.08, which represents a higher low-redshift normalization and shallower power-law slope than recent literature values. We find that the relative importance of in situ star formation versus galaxy merging is inversely correlated, with star formation dominating the addition of stellar material below M* and merger accretion events dominating beyond M*. We find mergers have a measurable impact on the whole extent of the galaxy stellar mass function (GSMF), manifest as a deepening of the &#39;dip&#39; in the GSMF over the next similar to Gyr and an increase in M* by as much as 0.01-0.05 dex.</p