2013 Conference Proceedings - University of Nevada, Las Vegas

etter teacher now because I am able to offer more variety to my students now.” Sheincorporated technology such as calculators, her interactive white board, and video camerainto her lessons. “I would say that I have grown the most in my ability to use technology.Using technology in various ways keeps students engaged and wanting to learn. Without thatinterest, how can they learn anything? I used the flip camera to video students. I would thenplay the clips for students to defend or constructively criticize. This improved the students’ability to communicate mathematically and support their thinking.” Classroom observationsshowed that she had seamlessly integrated the use of the interactive whiteboard into herclassroom practices.On the final teacher self-efficacy scale, Mrs. A had a mean of 7.2, up from 3.1initially. She showed growth in the ability to craft good questions for her students, use avariety of assessment strategies, and provide alternative explanations when students areconfused. She also felt more secure in her ability to manage her classroom, stating that shefelt more comfortable in her ability to control disruptive behavior in the classroom, establishroutines to keep activities running smoothly, and calm a disruptive student.Classroom observations showed that Mrs. A’s lessons were trending toward morestudent centered lessons, effectively using group work, facilitating the learning throughscaffolding questions while the students were solving novel problems. Her lessons promotedcoherent conceptual understanding, multiple representations and mathematicalcommunication of strategies and solutions. Her students showed great respect for classmatesas they were sharing their thinking.Mrs. A reflected on the action research portion of the project with the followingstatement.“I was anxious and nervous about the action research project when I first learned aboutit last fall. I didn’t know how to display the information, what information I needed tocollect or even my ‘burning question?’ In fact, I did not know what a burning questionwas at that time. I brainstormed several things that I have always wondered about.Would this help in my classroom? Would that be advantageous for my students? Someof my ideas were suitable for research and some were not. I finally decided to trysinging math songs that relate to the lesson in my classroom.Proceedings of the 40 th Annual Meeting of the Research Council on Mathematics Learning 2013 113