Learning Mathematics for Teaching: Lessons in/from the Domain of Fractions

By Deborah Schifter

It is widely recognized that developing a successful teaching practice, one that is grounded in the principles that guide the current effort to reform mathematics education, requires a qualitatively different and significantly richer understanding of mathematics than most teachers in the 1990s possess. However, it is not as clear how teachers' mathematical understandings develop and how those understandings affect instruction. This paper explores two avenues for K--6 teachers' mathematical investigations--inquiry into mathematics itself, and inquiry into children's mathematical thinking--and illustrates how they arise in elementary teaching situations and how they can be explored in a professional development setting.

Contact Info: Glenn Natali (1-800-225-4276 x2525)

Project Website: Teaching to the Big Ideas (TBI)

Published by: Center for the Development of Teaching

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(24 pp.) Print