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CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS

Anker 1

From deficits to strengths: Supporting teachers learning to notice students’ mathematical strengths 

 

Research shows that teachers rely heavily on deficit-based framings, i.e. ways of thinking that portray students’ mathematical thinking as deficits, shortcomings or failures. However, deficit-based framing is a barrier to improving students’ mathematical learning and can be detrimental to the development of a positive mathematical identity for students. Therefore, teachers need guided support to productively move away from deficit-based framings and embrace strengths-based framings in order to recognise students’ mathematical strengths. This project investigates how teachers learn to notice students’ mathematical strengths by using practices of critical reflection to support the co-construction of strengths-based framings and noticing practices.

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Featured Publication

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Scheiner, T. (2023). Shifting the ways prospective teachers frame and notice student mathematical thinking: from deficits to strengths. Educational Studies in Mathematics.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-023-10235-y

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Anker 2

Enabling students' critical mathematical thinking  

The capacity to use mathematics critically is essential for making prudent decisions and forming balanced judgements about economic, health, environmental and other challenges facing society. Developing Critical Mathematical Thinking (CMT) in the classroom provides students with the necessary skills to address complex real-world problems. Fostering CMT, however, is difficult and teaching practices around its development are under-researched and under-theorised. This project aims to generate new insight into teaching practices that can promote or inhibit students' CMT development. To address this aim, we use an innovative video-based methodology that integrates researcher and teacher perspectives on students' CMT development. (w/ Prof Vince Geiger, Prof Kim Beswick, Assoc Prof Jill Fielding-Wells, Prof Gabriele Kaiser and Prof Merrilyn Goos)

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Anker 3

Towards an ecological, cultural, and interactional view of teacher noticing 

 

Previous views of teacher noticing often take teacher noticing to be a disembodied, purely mental form of seeing and position the teacher as separate or separable from the observing environment. They rely on intuitive models that adopt the usual division between mind, body, and matter and reinforce the dualism between the individual and the environment. This project works towards an ecological, cultural, and interactional view of teacher noticing. Teacher noticing in this sense includes culturally and historically constituted forms of framing classroom events, embodied forms of accessing and exploring the world of the classroom, and actively shaping and interacting with the social and material structure of the classroom.

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Featured Publication

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Scheiner, T. (2021). Towards a more comprehensive model of teacher noticing. ZDM-Mathematics Education, 53(1), 85-94. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-020-01202-5

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Model of teacher noticing
Anker 4

A systematic literature review of teacher noticing  

Teacher noticing has become a prominent theme in teacher education and teacher professional development; however, the current state of research is quite diverse, with different, unrelated theoretical foundations and a variety of research designs. In this project, systematic reviews of the literature on teacher noticing published in the last two decades are conducted. Based on full-text analyses of journal articles published in major databases, the project explores theoretical conceptualizations of teacher noticing, methodological approaches to the study of teacher noticing, and the professional development of teacher noticing (w/ Prof Gabriele Kaiser, Prof Johannes König, Prof Rossella Santagata and Assoc Prof Xinrong Yang)

 

Featured Publication

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König, J., Santagata, R., Scheiner, T., Adleff, A.-K., Yang, X., & Kaiser, G. (2022). Teacher noticing: A systematic literature review on conceptualizations, research designs, and findings on learning to notice. Educational Research Review, 36, 100453.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev. 2022.100453

 

 

Anker 5

Engaging with conflicts, tensions, and paradoxes between opposing theoretical perspectives, traditions, and paradigms in the learning sciences

This research project explores the possibilities that conflicts, tensions, and paradoxes between accepted but opposing theoretical perspectives, theoretical traditions, and paradigms offer for theory building in the learning sciences. In particular, the project explores how conflicts, tensions, and paradoxes can best be utilized in highly contested areas of research such as conceptual change or the longstanding debate about cognitive versus situational perspectives. 

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Featured Publication

 

Scheiner, T. (2020). Dealing with opposing theoretical perspectives: Knowledge in structures or knowledge in pieces? Educational Studies in Mathematics, 104(1), 127-145.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-020-09950-7

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Anker 6

Examining general trends in discourses on mathematics teacher knowledge and teacher practices

In recent decades, a considerable body of literature has emerged conceptualizing, operationalizing, and measuring teacher knowledge and teacher practices. This research project focuses on general orientations and trends in conceptualizing mathematics teacher knowledge and teacher practices and how the field currently conceptualizes what specializes mathematics teacher work. The purpose of this research project is to identify serious limitations of these orientations and tendencies and to offer alternative views to each of these orientations and tendencies that foreground issues that specialize mathematics teacher knowledge and practices and that have only been partially explored. (w/ Prof Jose Carrillo, Prof Juan Godino, Dr Miguel Montes, Dr Luis Pino-Fan and Dr Nuria Climent)   

 

Featured Publication

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Scheiner, T., Montes, M. A., Godino, J. D., Carrillo, J., & Pino-Fan, L. (2019). What makes mathematics teacher knowledge specialized? Offering alternative views. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education17(1), 153-172. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-017-9859-6 

 

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Anker 7

Investigating complex dynamic processes in mathematical thinking and meaning-making 

The research project investigates the complex dynamic processes that take place when individuals ascribe meaning to the mathematical objects of their thinking. The focus is on three processes involved in mathematical cognition: contextualizing, complementizing, and complexifying. New interpretive possibilities and theoretical hypotheses are generated and explored that inform research on mathematical cognition and shed light on the three processes, recognizing their epistemological, conceptual, and cognitive importance in mathematical learning processes. (w/ Assoc Prof Marcia Pinto)

 

Featured Publication

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Scheiner, T., & Pinto, M. M. F. (2019). Emerging perspectives in mathematical cognition: contextualizing, complementizing, and complexifying. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 101(3), 357-372. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-019-9879-y

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