Driving Instructions to the Colloquia
and Seminars
| September 19, 2002 (Thursday)
The Role of Teacher, Text, and Experience:
Mediating Young Children's Engagement and Learning in Inquiry-based
Science Instruction
Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar
University of Michigan
2:30 - 4:00pm
2087 SEL
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National standards call for science
instruction in the U.S. to be inquiry-based. One of the challenges
of inquiry-based instruction is teaching - what Schwab referred to
as - the syntactical structures (the ways in which a discipline verifies
its knowledge) in the service of advancing its conceptual structures
(received knowledge). This challenge is particularly keen at the primary
grade level where a number of assumptions about prior knowledge and
development constrain thinking about what is possible for young children.
This presentation focuses on research examining teacher and student
discourse and activity for the purpose of investigating the question:
How do primary grade students, engaged in inquiry experiences, respond
to various mediational means (materials, texts, and teacher support)
designed to advance the development of conceptual understanding
and scientific reasoning? Interpretive case study is used to explore
children's understandings about data and the role of evidence to
support knowledge claims, and children's sense making of multiple
representations.
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| September 26, 2002(Thursday)
Pedagogic Discourse and the Learning of Mathematics Among Latinos
Lena Licón Khisty
University of Chicago
3:00-4:30 p.m. Room 2087 SEL
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There is growing national concern about the
persistent academic underachievement of Latinos in mathematics and
areas related to this subject. However, the education of a sizable
number of Latinos is closely linked to issues of learning in two languages.
Latinos, in general, have a strong affiliation to Spanish regardless
of their proficiency in the language, and their experiences, culture,
and background knowledge may be rooted in two languages. Issues that
arise given that Latinos may be learning mathematics and simultaneously
developing English as a second language have not been fully understood
and/or explored in relation to mathematics education.
This presentation focuses on the nature of pedagogic discourse,
or simply, a teacher's talk as instructional tool, and how this
discourse influences Latinos' learning of both mathematics and English
as a second language. Research on understanding the nature of discourse
used in instruction will be presented. The presentation draws on
qualitative and case study work of pedagogic discourse and the findings
of its role in the development of content understanding, mathematical
writing, and English language skills. This research suggests learning
content and developing academic second language proficiency can
go hand-in-hand, and has critical implications for future directions
of research in mathematics education and for equity.
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| October 3, 2002(Thursday)
Cognitive Tutors: Bringing Learning Research to the Classroom
Ken Koedinger
Carnegie Mellon University
3:00-4:30 p.m. Room 2087 SEL
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There is a significant gap between theories
of general psychological functions on one hand (e.g., memory) and
theories of mathematical content knowledge on the other (e.g., content
of algebra). To better guide the design of ground breaking and demonstrably
better mathematics instruction, we need instructional principles and
associated design methods to fill this gap in a way that is not only
consistent with psychological and content theories but prompts and
guides us beyond what those theories can do. Toward this goal, I reflect
on lessons from past and current Cognitive Tutor mathematics projects.
From this experience, I have abstracted four instructional bridging
principles, Situation-Abstraction, Action-Generalization, Visual-Verbal,
and Conceptual-Procedural, and associated methods for applying them.
I illustrate these in the context of the design of the successful
Cognitive Tutor Algebra course (now in more than 900 schools) and
the on-going research and development of a Cognitive Tutor course
for 6th grade mathematics. |
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| October 24, 2002(Thursday)
Inquiry-based instruction across the sciences for future elementary
teachers
Gail Luera
University of Michigan-Dearborn
1:00-2:30 p.m. Room 2087 SEL |
A working group of three science educators
from the School of Education and a chemist, biologist, and physicist
from the Department of Natural Sciences have planned and implemented
a set of three content courses and a capstone course for science education
students. There is one content course in each of physical, life, and
earth/space sciences, while the capstone course integrates a "big
idea" across the sciences and introduces students to action research.
The inquiry method of instruction is used in all of the courses. We
have also conducted training sessions to export the courses to local
two-year colleges. In the first two offerings the capstone was team
taught by a science educator and a physical scientist. The "big
idea" was energy. This fall term the course is team taught by
a biologist and a science educator with the "big idea" being
scale and structure as it relates to function. |
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| November 7, 2002(Thursday)
Teaching mathematics in multilingual classrooms: Research in
South Africa
Zalman Usiskin
University of Chicago
3:00-4:30 p.m.
Room 2087 SEL
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In the presentation I will draw from my own
early research in this field,
together with related research that was part of the teacher development
project and then work done by graduate students and colleagues (related
to
language practices on the one hand and teacher development research
on the
other). I will describe central teaching dilemmas in multilingual
contexts,
and argue that these are likely to manifest in some form in all mathematics
classrooms, but that forms and functions will shift across diverse
contexts
of practice. |
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