Author Archives: Bavoshia

One mother’s engagement in her daughter’s self-initiated mathematical activity at home: A case study

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Presenter/Guest Speaker: Sukhwinder Kaur Masters Student, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, UBC
Date: June 8th, 2022
Host: Dr Cynthia Nicol

Sukhwinder presented her capstone project titled “One mother’s engagement in her daughter’s self-initiated mathematical activity at home: A case study” which is a two-part study on how children interact with mathematics in an informal setting like the home and what role parents play in that interaction. Sukhwinder takes on two roles in this study, a mother, and a researcher.

In the first part of the study, Sukhwinder observed and recorded her daughter’s self-initiated math-related tasks. She presented some observations of her daughter’s activities and the analysis of the mathematical content in those activities. For the second part, her focus moves from the child to the mother. Sukhwinder will be reanalysing the data to focus on herself as a mother, researcher, and mathematics educator. She will analyse how her beliefs could have influenced the way she engaged with her daughter and how her input could have changed her daughter’s activities.

Below are a few slides from the presentation

Find the complete presentation here.

Research in STEM Teacher Education: Examining Teachers’ Knowledge

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Presenter/Guest Speaker: Prof Marina Milner-Bolotin, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, UBC
Date: April 28th, 2022
Host: Dr Cynthia Nicol

Marina shared her recently published study on preservice physics teachers’ understanding of sound. In her presentation she discussed three questions:

  1. Why do we study teachers’ knowledge?
  2.  How do we study it?
  3. What do we do with the results?

A few slides from the presentation are below. The full presentation can be found here.

Abstract of the study

This study examines the knowledge for teaching of prospective secondary physics teachers as related to the subject of sound waves, specifically the topics of sound level and sound intensity. The data is comprised from future teachers’ responses to the task in which they had to compose a script for an imaginary dialogue between a teacher and a group of students and provide a commentary elaborating on their instructional choices. The topics selected for the task were chosen intentionally as they provide authentic and rich opportunities to bridge mathematics and science concepts while challenging future teachers to consider logarithmic measurement scale and its role in science. The task provided the beginning of the dialogue, that featured a student’s confusion related to the measurement of the sound level using a decibel scale. Future physics teachers were asked to extend this dialogue through describing envisioned instructional interactions that could have ensued. The instructional interchange related to the relationship between sound intensity and sound level, and particular teachers’ responses to the student ideas related to the meaning of a decibel sound level scale were categorized as featuring superficial or deep, conceptual or procedural knowledge for teaching. We describe each category using illustrative excerpts from the participants’ scripts. We conclude with highlighting the affordances of scriptwriting for teachers, teacher educators, and researchers.

Milner-Bolotin, M., & Zazkis, R. (2021). A study of future physics teachers’ knowledge for teaching: A case of a decibel sound level scale. LUMAT: International Journal on Math, Science and Technology Education, 9(1), 336-365. https://doi.org/10.31129/LUMAT.9.1.1519

Restorying Mathematics: Mathematical Labyrinths

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Presenter/Guest Speaker: Dr Susan Gerofsky & Dr Cynthia Nicol, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, UBC
Date: April 14th, 2022
Host: Dr Cynthia Nicol

Susan and Cynthia shared about their mathematics community project where they design and build labyrinths with the Indigenous community of Horby island. The labyrinths are the first in a larger project with the goal of “restorying intergenerational community relationships with mathematics and art”. They shared the history of labyrinths and how the project brings together the community, mathematics, and the arts (art, music, dance etc).

Below are a few slides from their presentation.

The full presentation can be found here.

Reconsidering the Incorporation of Computational Thinking and Coding in Mathematics Education

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Presenter/Guest Speaker: Erica Huang, UBC Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy Doctoral Student
Date: March 31st, 2022
Host: Dr Cynthia Nicol

In this SyMETRI session, Erica first shared highlights from her master’s thesis research. By surveying, observing, and interviewing BC secondary mathematics teachers, the study focused on teachers’ perspectives on incorporating computational thinking (CT) and involving coding in mathematics classrooms. Results showed that most teachers understand CT as being about problem-solving skills. Teachers found that CT and coding activities elicit a high-level engagement, provide different contexts to discuss mathematics concepts, and are accessible to a wide range of students. Erica then presented some questions for possible future research directions as starting points for the group discussion.

Erica’s full master’s thesis can be found here.

Please find below some excerpts from Erica’s presentation

All of Erica’s presentation is available here.

Chinese Immigrant Parent and the BC Math School System

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Presenter/Guest Speaker: Qiaochu (Joy) Xu, UBC Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy Masters Student
Date: March 10th, 2022
Host: Dr Cynthia Nicol

How Chinese Immigrant Parents’ Expectations and Aspirations for their Children’s Math Learning Interact with British Columbia’s School Systems and Curricula

In this SyMETRI session, Qiaochu (Joy) presented her M.Ed. Capstone project about the Chinese immigrant parents’ expectations and aspirations for their children’s math learning interacting with British Columbia’s School Systems and Curricula. She shared the voices from the Chinese immigrant community, exploring what they feel is working well and what seems to be lacking, and where they place their children in the two education and value systems of China and Canada. Chinese parents in this study have a relatively high level of engagement in their children’s math education, devoting themselves to helping their children succeed inside and outside the school domain.

The Chinese parents in this study suggested that their children would benefit from faster-paced math classes and increased challenge to the current level. The four families that participated in this study hope to learn better ways for understanding the curriculum and to find effective ways to communicate with their child’s math teacher.

During the presentation, other issues faced by immigrant parents were also raised. Some of these were lacking language proficiency to provide homework support and peer pressure from members of their Chinese immigrant community and the broader Canadian community.

This interactive presentation offered an opportunity for participating educators to share their thoughts and experiences when working with students from immigrant families.

Poster used when recruiting participants

Sense-making in Learning Mathematics across Languages and Countries

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Presenter/Guest Speaker: Tsubasa Saito, UBC Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy Doctoral Candidate
Date: February 24th, 2022
Host: Dr Cynthia Nicol

During the session, Tsubasa shared some of his findings from his doctoral dissertation that explores how multilingual students learn/do mathematics and how they interpret word problems in different languages. The study focuses on multilingual students who simultaneously learn at two different schools in two different languages.

The interviews with 14 multilingual students learning in a Canadian school and a weekend Japanese school, show that some students believe there is no difference, other than languages, in learning mathematics between the two schools, whereas others describe learning mathematics as “deep” in the Japanese school, contrasting to “wide” in Canadian schools. While Japanese mathematics classrooms often explore mathematical concepts in the class that is characterized by a problem-centered approach (Takahashi, 2021), according to the students, Canadian mathematics is more applicable to real life.

These contrasting perspectives can be explained by different features of curricula and pedagogies between the two countries. Additionally, their discourses in the mathematical tasks support the idea of suspension of sense-making (Schoenfeld, 1991), and the students irregularly suspend their sense-making when creating the word problems. Lastly, this study also confirmed that students utilized their fluid and flexible language repertoire to learn/do mathematics.

 

Discussion: Japanese math is "deep & narrow"

Discussion: Possible reasons why Japanese mathematics is “deep & narrow” for students

Discussion: Japanese math "shallow & wide"

Discussion: Possible reasons why Japanese mathematics is NOT “shallow & wide” for the students

 

Reference
Schoenfeld, A. H. (1991). On mathematics as sense-making: An informal attack on the unfortunate divorce of formal and informal mathematics. In J. F. Voss, D. N. Perkins, & J. W. Segal (Eds.), Informal reasoning and education (pp. 311–343). New York: Routledge.
Takahashi, A. (2021). Teaching mathematics through problem-solving: A pedagogical approach from Japan. New York: Routledge.