A Core Challenge

of Teaching Mathematics

Judith Flowers
Roger Verhey
University of Michigan-Dearborn

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

 Overview of Session 1
• Challenge and Goals
• Resources: Tasks and Cases
• Task Analysis
• Research That Informs Our Work
• Mathematical Task Framework
• A Cognitively Complex Activity

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

 Core Challenge
Teachers must decide “what aspects
of a task to highlight, how to organize
and orchestrate the work of the
students, what questions to ask to
challenge those with varied levels of
expertise, and how to support
students without taking over the
process of thinking for them and thus
eliminating the challenge.”
NCTM, 2000, p.19

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

 Goals for Teacher Leaders
• To provide opportunities for teacher leaders to
deepen the mathematical knowledge used in
teaching mathematics in the middle grades

• To build a collective vision of meaningful

interactions between teachers, students, and
mathematical tasks that positively influence
student learning

• To develop teacher leaders who will have the

skills and knowledge to support fellow teachers
in their efforts to create more effective
mathematics learning environments for their
students
- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -
 Central Resources

• Tasks - complex mathematical tasks that

provoke examination of underlying
mathematical concepts

• Cases - accounts of mathematics

instructional episodes that depict
interactions that occur when a teacher
uses a complex mathematical task in the
classroom

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

 Why Focus on Tasks?
• Classroom instruction is generally organized and
orchestrated around mathematical tasks.

• The tasks with which students engage determine

what mathematics they learn.

• Teachers’ facilitation of tasks determine how

students learn it.

• The inability to enact challenging tasks well is what

distinguished teaching in the U. S. from teaching in
other countries that had better student performance
on TIMSS.
- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -
 Tasks & Cases
• Emerge from the activity of classrooms

• Provide opportunities for teachers to

become involved in critical discussions of
actual teaching situations (Loucks-Horsley, 1998)

• Promote reexamining our assumptions

about what “understanding mathematics”
really means (Schifter, Russell, & Bastable, in press)

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

 Mathematical Tasks

“Not all tasks are created equal, and

different tasks will provoke different
levels and kinds of student thinking.”

(Stein, Smith, Henningsen, & Silver, 2000)

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

 Comparing Tasks
Task 1 - Shade 6 small squares in a 4 x 10 grid.
Using the grid, explain how to determine each of the
following: a) the percent area that is shaded, b) the
decimal part that is shaded, and c) the fractional part
that is shaded.

Task 2 - Convert the fraction 3/8 to a decimal and

percent.

What similarities and differences do

you notice about the two tasks?
- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -
 Levels of Cognitive Demand

Low level
– Procedures without connections
• Algorithmic and use of procedure is specifically called for
• Have no connection to the concepts or meaning that
underlie the procedure being used

– Memorization
• Reproducing previously learned facts
• Committing facts, rules, formulae to memory

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

 Levels of Cognitive Demand
High level
– ‘Doing’ mathematics
• Requires complex and nonalgorithmic thinking
• Requires students to explore and understand the nature of
mathematical concepts, processes, or relationships
• May involve some level of anxiety

– Procedures with connections

• Focuses student’s attention to the use of procedures for the
purposes of developing deeper levels of understanding
• Suggest pathways that have close connections to underlying
mathematical ideas
• Usually represented in multiple ways (e.g. visual diagrams)

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

 QUASAR
Quantitative Understanding:
Amplifying Student Achievement
and Reasoning

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

 The Mathematics Task Framework

TASKS
TASKS TASKS
as they
appear in as set up by as
curricular/ the teachers implemented
instructional by students
materials Student
Learning

(Stein, Smith, Henningsen, & Silver, 2000)

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -
 Teacher Actions Affect Task
Enactment & Student Learning

• Build on students’ prior knowledge

• Scaffold students’ thinking
• Provide appropriate amount of time
• Model high-level performance
• Sustain pressure for explanation and
meaning
(Henningsen & Stein, 1997)

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

 MTF - The Bottom Line

• Tasks are important, but teachers also

matter!
• Teacher actions and reactions …
– influence the nature and extent of student
engagement with challenging tasks,
and
– affect students’ opportunities to learn from
and through task engagement.

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

Some MTF-related Challenges Facing
All Teachers of Mathematics

• Resisting the persistent urge to tell and to

direct; allowing time for student thinking

• Knowing when/how to ask questions and to

provide information to support rather than
replace student thinking

• Helping students accept the challenge of

solving worthwhile problems and sustaining
their engagement at a high level

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

 Overarching Goal of the Project

To focus attention on a core

challenge in mathematics
classroom instruction:
maintaining high-level cognitive
demand when using complex
mathematics tasks.

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

 A Mathematics Task
Shade 6 of the small squares shown below.

Determine the percent of the area that is shaded and

use the diagram to explain/justify your solution.

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -

 Assignment

Read
The Case of Ron Castleman in Implementing
Standards-based Mathematics Instruction,
chapter 5, pp. 47-56.

Focus Question
How did Ron Castleman’s enactment of the
task effect students’ opportunities for
learning?

- Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative -