Teaching Amidst Uncertainty
Student groupwork is featured in most lesson models aiming to support math teaching for understanding. Research has shown the importance of collaborative work in students’ making sense of mathematical ideas and taking responsibility for their learning. However, organizing instruction around groupwork presents new challenges for teachers, particularly in maintaining students’ engagement with tasks in a way that is both mathematically meaningful and socially inclusive. We refer to groupwork facilitation as the range of practices that teachers employ while navigating these challenges.
Project TAU is a participatory design research project aiming to answer “How do experienced secondary math teachers learn about groupwork facilitation?” Specifically, we explore:
- How do secondary math teachers make sense of groupwork facilitation?
- How do representations of practice (such as video clips and interactive visualizations) shape teachers’ individual and collective sensemaking about groupwork facilitation?
- How do teachers’ understandings of groupwork facilitation change over time as they work toward ambitious and equitable math teaching?
- How do teachers’ groupwork facilitation moves support or hinder groups’ mathematical talk?
To address these questions, we designed and implemented a professional development program that supports mathematics teachers with various mediating tools, technologies, and activities. This program supports teachers to reflect on and address their own questions from real classroom settings in a collaborative environment as they are learning about groupwork facilitation for ambitious and equitable math teaching. The supports we provide include: