Encouraging Teacher Candidates to Utilize Cognitively Guided Instruction: An Action Research Study
Abstract
This session will present an action research project completed in mathematics methods courses for prospective elementary and secondary school teachers. The goal was to determine if instructional practices were effective at preparing teachers to anticipate and to use students’ thinking to inform instructional decisions. The prospective teachers’ ability to predict students’ strategies and the teachers’ considerations during the planning process were investigated. More specifically, during the planning process, the teachers were asked to selected a task, anticipate students’ strategies for completing the task, and explain their rationale. Qualitative analysis of the data from the first cycle of this study revealed that all of the prospective teachers effectively predicted students’ strategies; however, those student strategies were not a consideration during the task selection process for the majority. As a result of the findings from the first cycle, instructional methods were modified for the second cycle of this action research study and the preliminary analysis of the new data will be shared.
Goals of the presentation:
- Share effective instructional methods for encouraging prospective teachers to take student thinking into consideration when planning lessons
- Raise awareness of action research methods that can be utilized to study one’s own instruction
Location
Room 2010
Recommended Citation
de la Cruz, Jessica, "Encouraging Teacher Candidates to Utilize Cognitively Guided Instruction: An Action Research Study" (2015). SoTL Commons Conference. 61.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/sotlcommons/SoTL/2015/61
Encouraging Teacher Candidates to Utilize Cognitively Guided Instruction: An Action Research Study
Room 2010
This session will present an action research project completed in mathematics methods courses for prospective elementary and secondary school teachers. The goal was to determine if instructional practices were effective at preparing teachers to anticipate and to use students’ thinking to inform instructional decisions. The prospective teachers’ ability to predict students’ strategies and the teachers’ considerations during the planning process were investigated. More specifically, during the planning process, the teachers were asked to selected a task, anticipate students’ strategies for completing the task, and explain their rationale. Qualitative analysis of the data from the first cycle of this study revealed that all of the prospective teachers effectively predicted students’ strategies; however, those student strategies were not a consideration during the task selection process for the majority. As a result of the findings from the first cycle, instructional methods were modified for the second cycle of this action research study and the preliminary analysis of the new data will be shared.
Goals of the presentation:
- Share effective instructional methods for encouraging prospective teachers to take student thinking into consideration when planning lessons
- Raise awareness of action research methods that can be utilized to study one’s own instruction
