The development of elementary teachers’ personal meanings of problem-solving through engaging in open-ended tasks

Date

2024-01-01

Author

Sevinç, Şerife
Cross Francis, Dionne
Hudson, Rick
Liu, Jinqing

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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In this study, we explored elementary school teachers’ experiences working on open-ended mathematics tasks during a 10-day professional development (PD) workshop. Teachers engaged with the tasks daily in a session call Morning Math (MM). Thirty-two elementary teachers from three school districts in the USA participated in a 2-year professional development (PD) program. Analysis of videos of teacher engagement in the tasks and interviews shows that the use of open-ended mathematics tasks embedded within problem-solving focused PD could shape elementary school teachers’ personal meanings about learning mathematics through problem-solving. The findings indicate that the teachers’ take-aways from the PD were not limited to the mathematical content of the MM problems (i.e., mathematical residue), instead teachers’ experiences with open-ended mathematics tasks engendered personal meanings reflecting pedagogical residue with cognitive, affective, and social components. This result shows the crucial role of PD in shaping teachers’ mathematics-related personal meanings which research suggests that it will subsequently influence their beliefs and instruction.

Subject Keywords

Open-ended mathematics tasks, Problem solving, Professional development for teachers, Teacher as learner, Teachers’ personal meanings

URI

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85197651562&origin=inward
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/110257

Collections

Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Article