Promoting productive struggle in middle school math classrooms
| Author(s) | Reitemeyer, Michael | |
| Date Accessioned | 2018-05-17T11:18:13Z | |
| Date Available | 2018-05-17T11:18:13Z | |
| Publication Date | 2017 | |
| SWORD Update | 2018-02-20T20:41:47Z | |
| Abstract | A problem in my district where I am the math specialist is a lack of student productive struggle around the mathematics in middle school math classrooms. By productive struggle I mean students attempting to make sense of something that is not immediately apparent, working towards reconfiguring their understanding of facts, ideas, or procedures (Hiebert & Grouws, 2007). I visited each middle school math teacher at the beginning of this school year (September 2016) observing that 80% of middle level classrooms demonstrated lessons where students were mostly applying memorized or modeled procedures on routine exercises. I observed only 6% of teachers leading lessons where students were meaningfully engaged in making sense of the mathematics (the other 14% were providing problems for students to make sense of the mathematics but were routinizing or over-scaffolding problems to remove important opportunities for students to productively struggle). This lack of productive struggle is important as my district wants its students to understand mathematics conceptually and productive struggle is one of few research-supported ways to support this conceptual growth (Hiebert & Grouws, 2007). ☐ My goal was to understand more about teachers’ growth in creating a culture where students productively struggle with the mathematics. I also wanted to understand more about how teachers’ beliefs about teaching changed as they began to shift some of the mathematical authority to their students. Lastly, I wanted to examine how this transition towards a culture of productive struggle impacted students’ beliefs about mathematics and themselves. ☐ Professional development (PD) was the main avenue I pursued to support my goals—session based PD, continuous on-site support, and having teachers learn from teaching. This PD was designed to help teachers make this shift towards a classroom that promoted productive struggle. Then via anonymous teacher surveys, student interviews, and classroom observations I attempted to discern whether and how this PD affected both teachers and students. ☐ The results were promising, particularly in terms of teachers’ evolution in both practice and beliefs. Overall teacher improvement in terms of productive struggle was positive as the percentage of teachers at the lowest score on the rubric diminished from 80% to 49% over the course of the school year though there is still ample room for growth. A cohort of teachers found two PD interventions—co-planning lessons and discussions about math education—to be especially helpful in their growth in having their students take more ownership in doing the mathematics. Student attitudes were also primarily encouraging as they reflected on their classroom experiences compared to prior years. ☐ As a next step I would recommend interviewing students immediately after the teacher performs an intervention that helps promote student productive struggle. The student interviews led to general feelings of satisfaction but were infrequently tied to specific teacher actions that created these feelings. I would also ask for more specific, immediate feedback from teachers related to the various professional development interventions to target what exactly about the professional development they found helpful. | en_US |
| Advisor | Hiebert, James | |
| Degree | D.Ed. | |
| Department | University of Delaware, School of Education | |
| Unique Identifier | 1035837398 | |
| URL | http://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/23208 | |
| Language | en | |
| Publisher | University of Delaware | en_US |
| URI | https://search.proquest.com/docview/2024291212?accountid=10457 | |
| Keywords | Education | en_US |
| Keywords | Changing teacher beliefs | en_US |
| Keywords | Math education | en_US |
| Keywords | Productive struggle | en_US |
| Keywords | Teacher improvement | en_US |
| Title | Promoting productive struggle in middle school math classrooms | en_US |
| Type | Thesis | en_US |