AERA 2006 • Using Representations of Practice in Teacher Education

Using Representations of Practice in Teacher Education Megan Franke, UCLA • Pam Grossman, Stanford • Tom Hatch, Teachers College • Anna Richert, Mills College • Kathy Schultz, University of Pennsylvania >>email the presenters<<
Megan Franke Mathematics Methods visit website	An ongoing dilemma for me is how to prepare my students to do the work of teaching mathematics in an urban setting. The focus for me here is "practice". I set out this year to find ways to better support students as they develop the practice of teaching mathematics. In my mathematics methods practice I am working on creating the following opportunities: 1. For preservice teachers' learning to become generative - where teachers learn to learn from their practice, where they learn to experiment systematically 2. For the preservice teachers' to begin to develop specific and detailed knowledge about the trajectories of students' mathematical thinking 3. For the preservice teachers' to challenge (in ongoing ways) the assumptions they bring about students, about culture about diversity and how those play out in their interactions with students to support student understanding and identities 4. For preservice teachers to make sense of the above ideas in relation to their work in urban schools - the reality and other aspects of the work that influence how the above ideas they develop will play out for them.
Pamela Grossman Secondary English Methods visit website	The teaching of literature relies heavily on the use of classroom discussion, yet good discussions don't "just happen." There is a tremendous amount of preparation involved for both teachers and students to create the conditions for engaged discussions of literary texts. For the past few years, my colleagues and I have been experimenting with a variety of ways of helping students learn more about how to create these conditions in their won classrooms. The materials of secondary English teacher Yvonne Divans Hutchinson, "A Friend of Their Minds: Capitalizing on the Oral Tradition of My African American Students," have helped us to provide our students with an image of an experienced practitioner leading a very engaged discussion around text. The website has also provided access to the many materials and tools Hutchinson used (including using an anticipation guide, modeling metacognitive marking, and establishing norms for discussion) to prepare students for the discussion featured on her website. In these ways, the materials make the practice of leading rich discussions much more visible to novices.
Thomas Hatch NCREST visit website	The mission of the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching (NCREST) is to advance education stakeholders’ understanding of the intense, complex, and difficult work of restructuring schools. To carry out this mission, NCREST conducts research, fosters connections, and develops resources that share concrete, detailed knowledge and vivid images to help education practitioners, reformers, researchers, parents and community members to reimagine and create schools that are responsive, equitable and successful. NCREST is also involved in a variety of efforts to use multimedia and the internet to develop and share images of practice that can be used in both professional development and teacher education.
Anna Richert Adolescent Development visit website	I designed the Adolescent Development course to weave together three sources of information about adolescence and teaching adolescents simultaneously. One, we read a collection of articles, books and chapters about adolescent development and learning. Two, we engaged with adolescent students themselves to hear what they said about their own lives. And three, we examined the Quest materials to see how successful veteran teachers used knowledge of the learner to guide their practice. Our investigation of the Quest websites was sequenced by a four-step assignment that asked the students to interact with the practice of the Quest teachers in variety of ways. They observed how the teachers came to know their learners. They examined what knowledge the teachers gleaned from these strategies. They contemplated how the teachers used that knowledge to inform their practice. Finally, they tried in their own student teaching classrooms one of the strategies modeled by their Quest colleagues.
Kathy Schultz Elementary Literacy visit website	In my class for preservice elementary teachers my goal is to give new teachers tools for making decisions for teaching literacy based on knowledge of their students and knowledge of pedagogical strategies for teaching literacy. At the same time that they become teachers of literacy, my hope is that students begin to think of themselves as readers and writers. From the first day we begin with a discussion about how to build our own literacy community where we are known through our reading and writing, at the same time that we discuss how to create a community that includes safety and risk in elementary classrooms. This website illustrates key aspects of this learning across various dimensions including a story of one semester represented by a timeline.