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1 – 10 of over 17000
Article
Publication date: 9 April 2018

Krystal Barber

The purpose of this paper is to examine how lesson study can lead to teacher learning and improvement of instruction by developing teachers’ mathematical-task knowledge and by…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how lesson study can lead to teacher learning and improvement of instruction by developing teachers’ mathematical-task knowledge and by supporting teachers’ selection, modification, and implementation of mathematical tasks. Mathematical-task knowledge includes knowledge needed to use tasks that require a high level of thinking and reasoning.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative case study design was used to explore the learning and instruction of three teachers as they went through the process of lesson study, developed knowledge around mathematics tasks, and made changes to their instruction. Methods included direct observation of lessons, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation.

Findings

This lesson study project supported teachers in developing mathematical-task knowledge and in making change to instructional practice. The teachers discussed in this paper added to their understanding of mathematical tasks and changed how they implemented tasks after lesson study. The teachers began to challenge students to go beyond memorizing or executing procedures to deepen the students’ understanding of mathematical concepts. Teachers developed key insights and understandings of mathematical tasks, triggering shifts in their thinking, and changes to instruction. Collaboration and reflection altered the selection, modification, and implementation of mathematical tasks.

Research limitations/implications

This study reveals the connections between features of lesson study and the pathways that lead to learning and improvements to instruction. Limitations included the demands of the school district’s pacing guide and curriculum, and a limited number of interviews and observations were conducted after lesson study.

Originality/value

There are many different ways lesson study has been implemented in the USA, yet the effectiveness of many lesson study projects is still unclear. This study reveals more about the lesson study process, what features are important, and how these features lead to development of knowledge and practice. This study examines how teachers within the same lesson study group added to their knowledge and practice and how different features of lesson study prompt them to make changes.

Details

International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, vol. 7 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-8253

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 March 2018

Sihua Hu, Kaitlin T. Torphy, Amanda Opperman, Kimberly Jansen and Yun-Jia Lo

The purpose of this paper is to examine early career teachers’ Socialized Knowledge Communities (SKCs) as they relate to the pursuit of mathematics knowledge and teaching. The…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine early career teachers’ Socialized Knowledge Communities (SKCs) as they relate to the pursuit of mathematics knowledge and teaching. The authors investigate Pinterest, a living data archive, as an opportunity to view teachers’ sense-making and construction of instructional resources. Through this lens, the authors examine how teachers form and share mathematical meaning individually and collectively through professional collaboration.

Design/methodology/approach

This work characterizes teachers’ curation of mathematical resources both in the kinds of mathematics teachers are choosing and the quality therein. Finally, the authors examine through epistemic network analysis how teachers are sense-making through a statistical approach to identifying their organization of mathematics curation by typology and cognitive process demand.

Findings

Results show that sampled teachers predominantly curate instructional resources that require students to perform standard algorithm and represent mathematics relationships in visualization within Pinterest. Additionally, the authors find the resources curated by teachers have lower cognitive demand. Finally, epistemic networks show teachers make connections among instructional resources with particular types as well as with different levels of cognitive demand as they sense-make their curated curriculum. In particular, difference in teachers’ internal consideration of the quality of tasks is associated with their years of experience.

Originality/value

Twenty-first century classrooms and teachers engage frequently in curation of instructional resources online. The work contributes to an emergent understanding of teachers’ professional engagement in virtual spaces by characterizing the instructional resources being accessed, shared, and diffused. Understanding the nature of the content permeating teachers’ SKCs is essential to increase teachers’ professional capital in the digital age.

Details

Journal of Professional Capital and Community, vol. 3 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2056-9548

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 17 June 2008

Abdykappar Ashimov, Kenzhegaly Sagadiyev, Yuriy Borovskiy, Nurlan Iskakov and Askar Ashimov

The purpose of this paper is to offer the theory of a parametrical regulation of market economy development, and the results of the theory development and usage.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to offer the theory of a parametrical regulation of market economy development, and the results of the theory development and usage.

Design/methodology/approach

Theoretical results of the abstract have been obtained by way of applying the theory of ordinary differential equations, geometrical methods in variation tasks and the theory of dynamic systems. These results have been used for solving a number of practical tasks.

Findings

The market economy development parametrical regulation theory structure has been offered. The approach to parametrical regulation of a nonlinear dynamic system's development has been suggested. An assumption about the existence of solution to the task of calculus of variations on the choice of the optimum laws of parametrical regulation within the given finite set of algorithms has been set forward. An assumption about the conditions sufficient for the existence of an extremal's bifurcation point of the task of calculus of variations on the choice of the optimum laws of parametrical regulation within the given finite set of algorithms is presented, formulated and proved. Theory application samples have been provided.

Research limitations/implications

Future papers would be focused on studies of rigidness of other mathematic models of economic systems.

Practical implications

The research findings could be applied to the choice and realization of an effective budget and tax as well as monetary and loan state policy.

Originality/value

The market economy development parametrical regulation theory has been offered for consideration for the first time.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 37 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 13 April 2015

Mohammad Reza Sarkar Arani

The purpose of this paper is to examine an Iranian mathematics lesson through the eyes of Japanese educators, and the critiques of Iranian teachers for raising the quality of…

2315

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine an Iranian mathematics lesson through the eyes of Japanese educators, and the critiques of Iranian teachers for raising the quality of teaching. In this paper, the Japanese lesson study process is considered as an approach to raising the quality of teaching.

Design/methodology/approach

Qualitative methods including pre-lesson planning, peer observation of the lesson, post-lesson discussion, and semi-structured interviews with the participants of the post-lesson discussion meetings in Iran and Japan were employed for data collection. A detailed description and analysis of the lesson is provided for deep understanding of students’ mathematical communication in the class and teachers’ points of view in the post-lesson discussions about raising the quality of teaching.

Findings

The findings are intended to clarify the significant influence that cross-cultural analysis has exerted on raising the quality of teaching and developing a culture of transnational learning that supports teachers to design appropriate learning tasks, to conceptualize mathematical phenomena, and to provide mathematical communication which encourage students to participate more in classroom activities.

Research limitations/implications

This study provides a transnational learning opportunity for Iranian teachers to learn from Japanese educators how to deliver evidence-based analysis of a lesson for raising the quality of teaching in practice, look culturally and differently at what actually goes on in the classroom, and localize lesson study as a global approach to the “science of improvement.” However, issues to be considered in future studies include how such “small changes” can be linked together in local communities to expand the improvement from bottom up, and how to facilitate collaboration with the global community to expand transnational learning.

Practical implications

Traditionally in Iran, there are a variety of teacher training programs but there are no examples of lesson study like those that take place in Japan as a model of practitioner inquiry for raising quality of teaching. Hence, it can be said that Japanese lesson study may provide a new approach of transnational learning in the Iranian education context for building a “science of improvement.”

Social implications

In the case of Iran, especially at the elementary school level, teachers do not have enough preparation or experience. Therefore, raising the quality of teaching through lesson study that has an actual impact on teacher and teaching quality and developing a “science of improvement” has become a pressing concern in national and international contexts.

Originality/value

The case study shows that the transfer of the Japanese model of lesson study plays a significant role in harnessing the potential of students and teachers as well as teachers themselves by improving teaching. Efforts by teachers to communicate and learn from each other’s strengths, in fact lead to the realizing of the students potential and thinking process. In particular, it helps supply more open-end and in-depth task learning, which anticipates student thinking, understanding, recognizing and questioning.

Details

International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, vol. 4 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-8253

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 October 2017

Rongjin Huang, Angela T. Barlow and Melanie E. Haupt

The purpose of this paper is to examine how teachers improve core instructional practices in teaching mathematics for problem solving through lesson study (LS). The core practices…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how teachers improve core instructional practices in teaching mathematics for problem solving through lesson study (LS). The core practices included launching a task, implementing a task, and orchestrating students’ solutions.

Design/methodology/approach

This study adopted multiple case study and survey methodologies. Each of three LS groups developed a research lesson on problem solving in algebra through Chinese LS, which includes collaborative planning and repeated teachings/debriefings of the research lesson with support from experts. The data collected included lesson plans, videotaped research lessons and debriefing meetings, and an end-of-project survey. Case studies supported by survey data were utilized to describe how research lessons were improved and what teachers learned from LS.

Findings

A fine-grained analysis of the data revealed that the participants improved their strategies for teaching for problem solving, which included effectively launching tasks, strategically implementing tasks, and productively orchestrating students’ solutions to the tasks. Further, analyses revealed that the feedback from experts during debriefing meetings played crucial roles in making these changes. Moreover, participants learned how to implement these core instructional practices and changed their views about students’ learning.

Originality/value

The study uncovers the mechanisms about how teachers improve teaching and their expertise in teaching through Chinese LS. The importance of the dynamic between repeated teaching and immediate feedback from knowledgeable others is highlighted.

Details

International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, vol. 6 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-8253

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 September 2008

B. Soltanmohammad and S.M. Malaek

The purpose of this paper is to present research into reducing the aircraft design cycle period, by reducing the necessary number of design cycle iterations. The design cycle…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present research into reducing the aircraft design cycle period, by reducing the necessary number of design cycle iterations. The design cycle period is one of the main characteristics of the design process and design cycle iterations play a major role in the design cycle period.

Design/methodology/approach

To achieve the above‐mentioned goal, the paper presents a mathematical model of iterations for the aircraft design process. This model describes the design coupled tasks as a discrete‐linear time invariant dynamic system. This model also helps identify tasks which are the most important for generating iterations. This new method basically helps break information cycles that create iterations among important tasks.

Findings

Studies conducted on a general aviation (GA) airplane (FAJR‐3) design process show the success of the suggested approach. This procedure eventually leads to an expedited convergence rate for the design iterations. That is, through proper breaking of information cycles, the convergence rate of the most dominant design mode could be increased by up to 31 percent. The process also leads to decoupling of the so‐called “coupled parts of design process,” which in turn leads to a more modular design with relatively easier management.

Practical implications

This method offers a new way of managing aircraft design processes while having to deal with constraints such as time and resources. The approach could be easily implemented as it manages any complex design‐process based on its resemblance to a dynamic system. The method can also be used as a component of an Integrated Airframe Design (IAD), as a tool for “Cycle time reduction”.

Originality/value

The advantage of this new approach, over other existing ones, lies in its ability to distinguish the important information cycles in a systematic manner. This helps to break the design process in a way that guarantees the increase in convergence speed of the whole design process.

Details

Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, vol. 80 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0002-2667

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 June 2019

Camille Desrochers, Pierre-Majorique Léger, Marc Fredette, Seyedmohammadmahdi Mirhoseini and Sylvain Sénécal

Online grocery shopping possesses characteristics that can make it more difficult than regular online shopping. There are numerous buying decisions to make each shopping session…

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Abstract

Purpose

Online grocery shopping possesses characteristics that can make it more difficult than regular online shopping. There are numerous buying decisions to make each shopping session, there are large ranges of product types to choose from and there is varied arithmetical complexity. The purpose of this paper is to examine how such characteristics influence the attitude of consumers toward online grocery shopping websites.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors hypothesized that the product type (search or experience product), the task arithmetic complexity, and the attention and cognitive load associated with browsing through product pictures have an effect on the attitude of online shoppers toward these websites. To test the hypotheses, 31 subjects participated in a within-subject laboratory experiment.

Findings

The results suggest that visual attention to product pictures has a positive effect on the attitude of online shoppers toward a website when they are shopping for experience goods, but that it has a negative effect on their attitude toward a website when the task arithmetic complexity is greater. They also suggest that the cognitive load associated with browsing through product pictures has a negative effect on the attitude of online shoppers toward a website when they are shopping for experience goods, and that greater cognitive load variation has a positive effect on their attitude toward a website when arithmetic task complexity is greater.

Practical implications

When designing online grocery websites, providing clear single unit quantities with pictures corresponding to the sales unit could help establish a clear baseline on which consumers can work out their quantity requirements. For decisions involving experience goods, product pictures may act as an important complementary information source and may even be more diagnostic than text description.

Originality/value

Results reinforce the relevance of enriching the study of self-reported measures of the user experience on e-commerce sites with automatic measures.

Article
Publication date: 3 January 2017

Lucian Olteanu

The purpose of this paper is to report how the use of a direct and an inverse task gave students an opportunity to discern the structure of a distributive law that they could…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to report how the use of a direct and an inverse task gave students an opportunity to discern the structure of a distributive law that they could apply to expand or to factorise algebraic expressions. The paper discusses a teaching sequence (of about 40 minutes) in a Grade 8 (14-15 year-olds) algebra class and it focusses on how the use of inverse tasks opens the dimension of variation. For instance, if the distributive law has always been used as a(b+c), factorising the expressions ab+ac means opening up the dimension of distributive law. The analysis showed that two central processes, transformation and variation, improved communication in the classroom.

Design/methodology/approach

The data used come from a longitudinal study conducted in Sweden. The methodology is grounded in educational design research. Two secondary school teachers conducted a lesson with variation theory as a guiding principle, supervised by a researcher. The relationship between teaching and learning was analysed in the enacted object of learning. The critical aspect for students’ learning was identified by asking questions to probe the students’ understanding.

Findings

The use of a direct and an inverse task gave the students an understanding of the structure of the distributive law that they could apply to expand or to factorise algebraic expressions. The teacher opened up a dimension of variation by similarity that gave the students the opportunity to discern the commonality in direct and inverse tasks as well as to relate the direct and inverse tasks to each other. Without an identification of similarity that might help students to compare underlying meanings, or to match one representation to another, students may not experience variations because there is not concordance among the relationships between the representations.

Research limitations/implications

Teachers can produce new knowledge as well as communicate successfully in the classroom when creating teaching activities that promote the discernment of similarity and difference that might help students to compare underlying meanings, or to match one representation to another.

Practical implications

The study represents an example of research which has the aim of improving teachers’ practices by using research results from mathematics education whilst keeping in mind that learning must be improved.

Social implications

The central educational problem is to have students make sense of sophisticated ways of reflecting on the general laws used in mathematics in relation to the algebraic ways of acting and reflecting. Variation theory sees learning as the ability to discern different features or aspects of what is being learned. It postulates that the conception one forms about the object of learning is related to the aspects of the object one notices and focusses upon.

Originality/value

The commutative law for algebraic generalisations is not characterised by the use of notations but, rather, by the way the general is dealt with. Algebraic generalisations entail: the grasping of a commonality related to the discernment of whole-parts relationships, the generalisation of this commonality to two types of transformations: treatments and conversions, and the formation of direct and inverse tasks that allows one to discern the relationship between the whole, the parts, the relations between the parts, the transformation between the parts and the relationship between the parts and the whole.

Details

International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, vol. 6 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-8253

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 April 2017

João Pedro da Ponte

The purpose of this paper is to review the research concerning the use of lesson studies in the education of secondary school prospective mathematics teachers. It discusses the…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review the research concerning the use of lesson studies in the education of secondary school prospective mathematics teachers. It discusses the adaptations made on the designs, the aims and outcomes established, the processes used, and the needed improvements in the experiences reported so far.

Design/methodology/approach

The scientific studies reviewed were identified in a Google search, using the key words “lesson study”, “mathematics”, and “secondary.” The identified material was recorded in a database and the themes for the analysis cover the planning, execution, and reflection phases of a formative process.

Findings

The paper identifies the several pending issues regarding the use of lesson studies in prospective teacher education such as defining the aims, establishing the relationships among participants, scaling, and adapting lesson studies for the particular purpose of educating future teachers.

Research limitations/implications

At a practical level, this review suggests that lesson studies in pre-service teacher education must have a clear formative aim. It also shows that many formats are possible and must be chosen according to the specific conditions. In addition, it suggests the need for research regarding the definition of the aims, the working relationships established among participants, the problem of scale, and the problem of adaptation or simplification.

Originality/value

The paper identifies the key issues in the design of lesson studies in initial teacher education. It argues that besides signaling the positive outcomes, more critical (or self-critical) investigations are needed, e.g. using external researchers as “critical friends”, which address their difficulties, limitations, and drawbacks in a more thorough way.

Details

International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, vol. 6 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-8253

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 May 2021

Spartak Sakibayev

This work is devoted to increasing the effectiveness of a mathematical modelling lesson with the help of mobile devices. It verifies the authors' hypothesis which states that…

Abstract

Purpose

This work is devoted to increasing the effectiveness of a mathematical modelling lesson with the help of mobile devices. It verifies the authors' hypothesis which states that enabling students to solve mathematical models on mobile devices improves their academic results in the discipline.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper describes an experiment conducted among 38 college students in an extracurricular mathematical club where they solved mathematical models with the help of their own smartphones. The authors describe the mathematical models assigned to students, analyse their academic performance and gather their opinions.

Findings

The usage of mobile devices in the mathematical modelling class positively affects students' scores and interest in the subject. The percentage of positive grades among students working on mobile devices is higher than among students working on desktop computers.

Originality/value

The authors discover that in the context of the college-level mathematical modelling course, mobile devices can be successfully used as an alternative replacement for traditional desktop computers.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 51 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

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