Mentor-Mentees conversations: Making explicit the teaching and learning of Mathematics

This paper describes the design of a short professional development course for prospective mentors of mathematics teachers. A vignette activity sequence approach that promoted the use of topic specific mathematics education research was employed, as a means of supporting the course participants to critically reflect on, and make explicit their own teaching practices. We present and discuss the various components of the course, and account for how such a design served the purpose of encouraging the participants to be introspective of their ability to provide explanations and examples that place the teaching of specific mathematics topics at the heart of mentor-mentees conversations

From a Personal to a Pedagogically Powerful Understanding of School Mathematics

Teachers’ powerful pedagogical knowledge consist of a teacher’s awareness of how school maths topics are instances of more advanced maths ideas; such an awareness would empower teachers in supporting students’ learning in ways that allow for creating a solid foundation for development of more advanced ideas of the discipline of mathematics. In this chapetr we explore how engagement with a body of relevant advanced mathematics knowledge could empower teachers not just conceptually, but also pedagogically, thus situating the study of advanced mathematics in relation not only to school mathematics content, but also its teaching. Through engagement with the formal and abstract aspects of functions, the teachers involved in a professional development workshop became aware of how to better approach the teaching about this and related maths topics at different levels of school education. In particular, a form of knowing that included an explicit awareness about the manifestations of relevant advanced mathematics knowledge in the school mathematics curriculum was found to help the teachers realise the limitations of the various representations of functions that were already part of their teaching repertoire and thus empowered them to appreciate better the challenges their students encounter along the trajectory towards development an understanding of functions. Implications for the mathematical preparation and professional development of teachers are considered. This study indicates that support is needed for teachers to develop their knowledge of advanced mathematics in ways that can become productive for teaching

Making mathematics the focus of mentor-mentee conversations

This presentation describes the design of a short professional development course for prospective mentors of mathematics teachers. A case vignette approach that promoted the use of topic specific mathematics education research was employed, as a means of supporting the course participants critically reflect on, and become explicit about their own teaching practices. We present and discuss the various components of the course, and account for how such a design served the purpose of supporting the participants to become introspective of their ability to provide explanations and examples in future mentor-mentee discussions, that place subject matter teaching and its relation to students at the heart of such conversations

Challenges and opportunities in choosing a research topic and carrying out a dissertation project

Enhancing the postgraduate students' provision is a key objective of the UCL Education Strategy. Our project contributes to meeting this objective through addressing the 6th dimension of the UCL Connected Curriculum, by actively encouraging current students and alumni on three masters programmes to work together in order to enhance the educational provision within the CPA department (Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment, UCL Institute of Education). We will be reporting on our project whose aims are: to identify recommendations for direct improvements of the PGT students’ experiences early on in their studying of the dissertation/reports module; to use the identified recommendations in designing an interview protocol with the alumni; to create opportunities for alumni to share their experiences (through short videos of the interviews and a live mentoring session)

Mathematics

This chapter aims to provide the reader with a brief introduction to the origins of the various branches of mathematics. While tracing back these origins, an insight will be offered into how the mathematics as a discipline developed throughout many thousands of years and the variety of cultures. Key practices of the discipline of mathematics will be highlighted, followed by a discussion which argues in favour of incorporating these practices into the school mathematics

Subject specific mentoring: Making mathematics the focus of mentor-mentees conversations

Mentors are experienced mathematics teachers who draw on their wealth of knowledge about what works and is effective in teaching and learning of mathematics. They reflect upon this knowledge to consider how to best mentor novice mathematics teachers. Research has shown that a focus on the socio-emotional and socialization roles could lead novice teachers themselves to focus (more) on generic rather than subject-specific pedagogy when planning for and teaching their subject. In this session we will consider how mentors could support their mentees by making the subject matter, its teaching and its relation to students explicit in their mentor-mentees conversations What will you take away from this session Take away…...An increased awareness of the importance of mentors being explicit about and able to articulate their own pedagogical reasoning in conversation with mentees