This afternoon, Yvonne Lai will share her research on providing opportunities for prospective secondary teachers to connect advanced undergraduate math course content to teaching practices.
Title: Making Advanced Mathematics work for Secondary Teacher Education
Summary:
This talk will make an argument that it is essential to provide opportunities for prospective secondary teachers to connect advanced undergraduate course content to secondary teaching practice, if these courses are to be useful to them as prospective teachers. The argument will be made from the perspective of advanced mathematics courses. Then, the talk will review curricular materials intended for use in advanced mathematics courses in which prospective teachers may enroll, and which make connections to secondary teaching practice. This review is used to highlight essential questions for the future of advanced mathematics coursework, in view of supporting teachers in integrating experiences in their advanced mathematics courses and methods courses. Then, I invite discussion about generalizing these ideas across STEM disciplines. The review is joint work with Nick Wasserman, Jeremy Strayer, Stephanie Casey, Keith Weber, and Tim Fukawa-Connelly.
Bio:
Yvonne Lai aims to improve instruction of mathematical reasoning at all levels, with a particular passion for identifying and preparing teachers in the mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) necessary for such instruction. Lai is the founding chair of the SIGMAA-MKT - the first Special Interest Group of the MAA focused on mathematics faculty interested in teacher education - as well as current Chair of the MAA Committee on the Mathematical Education of Teachers (COMET). In Lai's work on mathematical knowledge for teaching, she builds on the work of Ball and colleagues (e.g., Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008) as well as Rowland and colleagues (e.g., Rowland, 2013). She is the recipient of a 2018 Top Three Paper award from the SIGMAA-RUME, 2012 Janet Duffin Award for most outstanding contribution to the journal Research in Mathematics Education, and a 2012 Best Paper award from the SIGMAA-RUME. She brings a mathematics background to her work in mathematics education, specializing in hyperbolic geometry and geometric group theory prior to her interest in mathematical knowledge for teaching. She received an S.B. Mathematics from MIT and a PhD in Mathematics from UC Davis.
Date: Thursday, 11/11, from 2-3pm
Location: https://unl.zoom.us/j/212107342