Dawn Teuscher along with her colleague Shannon Dingman and three former BYU students, Porter Nielsen, Kate Webster, and Erika Miller published an article titled “Unpacking Teachers’ Curricular Reasoning” in the Journal Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching. Dawn has answered a few questions about this article below:
Who were your co-authors on this article?
Shannon Dingman, University of Arkansas
Former BYU graduate students Porter Nielsen, Kate Webster, & Erika Miller
Who would you say is the target audience for this article?
Middle School teachers, but all K-12 teachers
What is the big problem you hoped to address with this article?
We share the Instructional Pyramid to assist teachers in thinking about how they reason when they are making mathematical decisions. Most teachers are not aware of how they reason, they just do what seems natural or what they have done in the past. We share how teachers can think about their reasoning as they make many mathematical decisions while they plan and teach their lessons.
What are some of the key ideas in the article?
The main point is the introduction of the Instructional Pyramid and the six different curricular reasoning aspects that align with each edge of the pyramid. We want teachers to think about all six edges of the pyramid as they make mathematical decisions during the planning, instruction, and reflection of a lesson.
What are some of the main ideas you hope your audience will take from this article?
We hope that teachers will start to reason with one curricular reasoning aspect that they are not using. This will help them continue to improve their practice.