Intervention-based research in (mathematics) teacher education

Teacher education research in mathematics and other subject areas has focused more on documenting important and persistent problems of prospective teachers’ subject knowledge (including subject-related beliefs) and less on designing interventions to generate promising solutions to some of these problems. In addition, virtually all available interventions have long duration, thus appearing to imply that these problems can only be addressed by lengthy instructional treatment. While any promising solutions to important and persistent problems of prospective teachers’ subject knowledge are welcome, I ask whether “quicker solutions” might also be possible. Indeed, if effective instructional interventions of short duration were possible, it would be easier for researchers to tease out their theoretically essentially components and more practicable for teacher educators to use them in their courses. In this talk (1) I will argue the need for more research on the design of interventions of short duration that can help alleviate important and persistent problems of prospective teachers’ subject knowledge and (2) I will draw on findings from a 4-year design experiment in a mathematics course for prospective elementary teachers to present suggestive evidence for the possibility of designing such interventions.

Biography

Andreas J. Stylianides is a University of Cambridge Lecturer in Mathematics Education. Previously he held an academic fellowship at the University of Oxford and, before that, a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California-Berkeley. His current research aims to understand and act upon important problems of classroom practice at both the school and teacher education levels; a major strand of this research focuses on mathematics teachers’ subject knowledge and beliefs about mathematics. His research has informed, and has been informed by, his own involvement in different mathematics teacher education and professional development programmes at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley, and Michigan, working with both primary and secondary school teachers. He has published broadly and has received research grants from the Spencer Foundation and the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council. He has co-chaired or co-organized Topic Study Groups for different conferences, including the International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME) and the Congress of European Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). He has served as the Deputy Editor of the International Journal of Educational Research (IJER) and as a member of the Editorial Boards of Research in Mathematics Education (RME) and Science and Education (S&E). He has also been a Guest co-Editor of special issues on intervention-based research in ZDM – The International Journal of Mathematics Education and Educational Studies in Mathematics (ESM). He received an American Educational Research Association publication award for his 2007 article “Proof and Proving in School Mathematics.”