2013 Conference Proceedings - University of Nevada, Las Vegas

discussion. The challenge was for the teacher and students to negotiate a shared meaningamong the various expressions of ideas.4. Multiple points of view: Students use multiple methods to solve problems, giving multipleexplanations and rationales. Problems designed to promote different solution strategiesafforded access to a wider range of students. It may have been difficult for some students andthe teacher to express and understand the thought processes used in the multiple approaches.5. Fluid protocol: With student-centered discourse, the direction of the discussion may changeto accommodate students’ needs. Allowing students to introduce new ideas and orchestratinga discussion to address students’ questions and uncertainties gave students moreopportunities to develop understanding. This feature often required the teacher to make ajudgment about when a discussion needed redirecting.6. Learning goal: The over-riding goals are for students to develop deep understanding and tomake sense of the mathematics. Expecting all students to go beyond acquiring skills toproduce correct answers necessitated many teacher decisions regarding managing classdiscourse and program pacing.In both the grade 1 and grade 6 classes, students required teacher support specific to helpingthem develop the skills and processes critical to learning in a student-centered environment. Thisis significant because our professional discussion has so far taken an either-or approach, eitherdirect or open-ended tasks and discussions. This small study has demonstrated that teachers’pedagogical strategies can be explicitly designed to support learning in an environment wherechildren actively construct meaning and build understanding. Moreover, we believe that teachereducation, both pre-service and in-service, should begin to focus on the instructional strategiesteachers need to be prepared to make learning challenging but accessible for all students.ReferencesBoaler, J. (2002). Learning from teaching: Exploring the relationship between reform curriculaand equity. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 33, 239–258.Boyd, B. & Bargerhuff, M. E. (2009). Mathematics education and special education: Searchingfor common ground and the implications for teacher education. Mathematics TeacherEducation and Development, 11, pp. 54–67.Delpit, I. D. (August 1988). The silenced dialogue: Educating other people’s children. HarvardEducational Review, 58(3), pp. 280–298.Gersten, R., Clarke, B., & Mazzocco, M. (2007). Historical and contemporary perspectives onmathematical learning disabilities. In D. B. Berch & M. Mazzocco (Eds.). Why is math soProceedings of the 40 th Annual Meeting of the Research Council on Mathematics Learning 2013 203