A Microgenetic Approach to Novice Teachers’ Learning Through Teaching
Abstract: What and how teachers learn through teaching has long been of interest to researchers. Given that teaching is a major component of teachers’ daily activities, exploring this compelling idea has important implications for teacher education. However, systematic investigations of what and how teachers learn through teaching have been scarce. By using the microgenetic approach, a method that has been useful in identifying the process of student learning, this study investigates how five novice teachers learned through teaching. In this talk, Dr. Atabas will share the findings of this investigation, suggesting that teachers developed both content-specific and generic pedagogical knowledge through teaching, but with a substantial variation among teachers. Teachers with a robust understanding of the mathematical concepts being taught, who used cognitively high-demanding tasks, or who let students tackle the concept on their own (i.e., a student-centered approach) developed more content-specific knowledge, whereas teachers with a partial understanding of the content, who used cognitively low-demanding tasks, and who showed students a particular method before letting them explore concepts (i.e., a teacher-centered approach) developed generic pedagogical knowledge through teaching. In addition to presenting this work, in this talk, she will briefly share how this work helped her to re-organize her previous research experiences and articulate a research agenda for her future work.
Brief Bio: Dr. Sebnem Atabas is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Southern California. She had her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a major in Mathematics Education at Florida State University in August 2021. In her dissertation, supervised by Dr. Ian Whitacre, she explored the potential of interactive simulations and accompanying supplementary curricular materials to be a catalyst for change in mathematics classrooms. Given the demands that ambitious teaching imposes on teachers, she is interested in creating safe and supportive environments (e.g., the use of well-designed supplementary curricular materials) for teachers to experiment with ambitious teaching so they can rethink their teaching and assumptions about what it means to teach and learn mathematics and use these instances as building blocks for teachers’ future efforts to improve their instruction (e.g., engage in professional development programs that are meaningful and purposeful for them).
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