- Year 2023
- NSF Award #1852944
- Registration Current Noyce Scholar
- First Name Macie
- Last Name Alston
- Discipline Mathematics, STEM Education (general)
- Institution Texas Tech University
Abstract
The Noyce Seminar has been offered weekly as a training to enable future mathematics teachers to develop their mathematics proficiency and classroom skills. College and K-12 instructors provide an interactive learning environment in which students are encouraged to ask deeper questions regarding the reasons underlying specific teaching practices. This includes teacher and student motivation, and how autonomy, competency, and relatedness must all exist for students to have self-determination, leading to greater motivation. Once there is confidence in establishing this within the classroom, then one can consider what it means to have a thinking classroom. A key topic involves the nature of a thinking classroom, inspired by the book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics: 14 Teaching Practices For Enhancing Learning by Peter Liljedahl. Some of the practices under review are thinking tasks, visibly random grouping, and vertical non-permanent surfaces. Thinking tasks require teacher candidates to practice the uncomfortable, visible random grouping allows a mixed approach, and vertical non-permanent surfaces are research based risks. These interactive lectures allow the students to ponder and think “What would it look like for me to establish these methods into the classroom I am currently part of, and the classrooms I will have in the future?” They motivate teacher candidates to not just learn course work, but contemplate the pedagogy and content as a whole as they prepare to enter the classroom.
