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The aim of the International Society for Technology, Education, and Science (iHSES) conference is to offer opportunities to share ideas, discuss theoretical and practical issues, and connect with the leaders in the fields of "humanities," "education" and "social sciences." It is organized for: (1) faculty members in all disciplines of humanities, education and social sciences; (2) graduate students; (3) K-12 administrators; (4) teachers; (5) principals; and (6) all interested in education and social sciences. [Individual papers are indexed in ERIC.]

These proceedings are a written record of the research presented at the 44th annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME-NA) held in Nashville, Tennessee, and virtually. This year's conference theme is "Critical Dissonance and Resonant Harmony." The aim of this theme is to reflect not only the time and place that of gathering, but also the time and place in which to conduct academic work. Dissonance can be jarring to experience, whereas harmony can be pleasing. Nashville -- Music City -- which is no stranger to both dissonance and harmony. The papers accepted comprised 101 research reports, 140 brief research reports, 84 Posters, and 16 Working Groups or Research Colloquia. [Individual papers are indexed in ERIC.]

Instructors are a chief input into the higher education production process, yet we know very little about their role in promoting student success. This is in contrast to elementary and secondary schooling, for which ample evidence suggests teacher quality is an important determinant of student achievement. Whether colleges could improve student and institutional performance by reallocating instructors or altering personnel policies hinges on the role of instructors in student success. In this paper we measure variation in postsecondary instructor effectiveness and estimate its relationship to overall and course-specific teaching experience. We explore this issue in the context of the University of Phoenix, a large for-profit university that offers both online and in-person courses in a wide array of fields and degree programs. We focus on instructors in the college algebra course that is required for all BA degree program students. We find substantial variation in student performance across instructors both in the current class and subsequent classes. Variation is larger for in-person classes, but is still substantial for online courses. Effectiveness grows modestly with course-specific teaching experience, but is unrelated to pay. Our results suggest that personnel policies for recruiting, developing, motivating, and retaining effective postsecondary instructors may be a key, yet underdeveloped, tool for improving institutional productivity. [This paper was prepared for the NBER Conference "Productivity in Higher Education" held on June 1, 2016.]

Prisms VR, a secondary math learning application, allows for users to see, manipulate, and engage with mathematical concepts in an embodied way in Virtual Reality (VR) environment. We examine cases in which mathematics teachers and middle school students worked through Prisms and reflected upon their experiences. Findings indicate that VR environments can help teachers find alternative ways of presenting algebraic concepts in a hands-on, interactive, and embodied manner; and these findings were confirmed based on the student experience. VR allows teachers to make connections through scaffolding and personalized experiences, while also aiding students in the exploration and meaning-making. [This paper was published in: "Proceedings of the 18th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2024," edited by R. Lindgren et al., International Society of the Learning Sciences, 2024, pp. 1610-13.]

The study reported in this paper is on the professional development (PD) of primary school mathematics teachers. Teachers from two primary schools participated in the PD for two years. High-stakes mathematics examination tasks were used to kick start awareness and thinking about teaching for big ideas. Teachers did the tasks and discussed their solutions focusing on how their instruction could facilitate the acquisition of mathematical ideas as a body of connected knowledge. Data presented in this paper show that the tasks teachers worked with at the start of the PD did impact their understanding and instructional practice specific to big ideas in mathematics. Some challenges the teachers faced during the PD are also noted.

In this paper we report on an aspect of the findings of a larger three-phase study exploring the factors that influence teachers implementing pedagogies that cultivate students' STEM capabilities and 21st century skills. Data were collected through an online questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, focus groups and case studies. This paper will focus on the findings from the first phase of this study and initial analysis of focus groups and semi-structured interviews data. Preliminary findings show that participants hold mixed beliefs concerning student proficiency in mathematics and there are common factors that influence decisions concerning the use of pedagogical practices that support students' mathematical proficiency and the development of students' 21st century skills. These factors include teachers' personal beliefs and attitudes, perceived time and curriculum constraints, student behaviour and students' academic ability.

There has been a lot of media attention about 'out-of-field' teaching, but much of it does not capture the complexities of the term or account for the range of knowledge, experience, and attitudes relevant for teaching mathematics in the middle years. In this paper we report on a survey conducted to better understand the diversity of the profession teaching middle school mathematics (Years 7-10) in South Australia. A preliminary analysis indicates that self-identification as a teacher of mathematics is a key contributing factor to confidence in teaching mathematics. We suggest that looking through an identity lens will better inform planning and support for out-of-field teaching in mathematics.

The phenomenon of teachers designing their own instructional materials is gaining more attention in research. Different aspects of this enterprise have been examined--its potential to reveal the complexity of teachers' instructional planning considerations, the design principles employed by teachers to realise instructional goals, among others. In the study reported in this paper, the focus was on its utility as a form of teacher professional development. In particular, evidence was sought for this claim: not only is teacher-designed instructional materials a useful tool for professional development, it can capture usable knowledge teachers appropriate from professional development.

Teaching towards big ideas provide opportunities for teachers to think deeply about content and pedagogy in order to support their students to see connections in mathematics. However, teachers may not always activate or mobilise their knowledge in classroom situations. This paper looks into how a teacher, Peter, think about the tasks in his instructional materials he crafted to uncover what he may notice about the affordances of the tasks for teaching proportionality.

It is well accepted and understood amongst the mathematics education community that numeracy is the responsibility of all teachers, across all levels of schooling. However, the way numeracy is understood and actioned across the Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary contexts is different. This paper reports on a case study of secondary school teachers seeking to be more intentional in embedding numeracy across the curriculum. The findings indicate that dialogue and support to see, and make, numeracy connections result in greater cohesion in terms of understanding numeracy and making numeracy more visible for students.

Climate change is a complex issue that requires collective actions from various disciplines, including educating future generations about sustainability. Some countries such as Indonesia and Australia have included sustainability into their school curricula, which require teachers to design and implement tasks related to a sustainability issue. However, teachers may not have the capability and understanding to do so. The challenges are difficult for mathematics teachers because designing a mathematics task pertaining to sustainability is rarely explored. Therefore, this paper draws from mathematics education literature to provide and discuss a new framework for designing sustainability-related, mathematics tasks (green mathematic tasks).

Comfort and preparedness are dispositions that along with teacher knowledge, comprise teacher quality (cf. Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002). Professional development programs that help teachers understand and respond to individual students' strengths and needs can support equity in the classroom by building teachers' preparedness and comfort, which enhances the likelihood of teachers' engaging in differentiated instruction to support all students. This paper draws from two randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of "Math for All," which show consistent, positive results of the professional development (PD) program on elementary school teachers' reports of comfort and preparedness to teach mathematics to diverse students. We found comfort and preparedness to be modestly but consistently related to self-reported mathematical instructional practices across both studies. The fact that the results were similar across the two RCTs even though the modes of delivery differed (PD led by developers in RCT #1; by local staff developers and teacher leaders in RCT #2) also speaks to the scalability of the "Math for All" program.

This paper reports on one aspect of a bigger project: teachers' design of instructional materials. We found a number of design moves used by the teachers in our study. In this paper, we report three of them: Making things explicit, making connections, and resequencing practice examples. [This paper is the fourth in a symposium of four papers. For the first paper "Models of Mathematics Teaching Practice in Singapore Secondary Schools," see ED616186. For the second paper "An Experienced and Competent Teacher's Instructional Practice for Normal Technical Students: A Case Study," see ED616178. For the third paper "Imbuement of Desired Attitudes by Experienced and Competent Singapore Secondary Mathematics Teachers," see ED616187.]

This paper reports how 30 experienced and competent Singapore secondary mathematics teachers attempted to imbue desired attitudes in their students and some possible factors that might have influenced the teachers' choice of instructional approaches. It was found from the analysis of lesson observations of these teachers that most of those teaching lower-ability students tended to build their students' confidence and perseverance, while those teaching higher-ability students were more inclined to help their students appreciate the relevance of mathematics. Only a minority of the teachers tried to make lessons fun by using mathematics-related resources or telling non-mathematics-related jokes. It was also discovered from the teacher interviews that two factors appeared to influence the teachers' choice of the types of positive attitudes to develop in their students: the abilities of their students and the beliefs of the teachers on what mathematics is. [This paper is the third in a symposium of four papers. For the first paper "Models of Mathematics Teaching Practice in Singapore Secondary Schools," see ED616186. For the second paper "An Experienced and Competent Teacher's Instructional Practice for Normal Technical Students: A Case Study," see ED616178. For the fourth paper "Singapore Mathematics Teachers' Design of Instructional Materials," see ED616188.]

A model of instruction is a set of strategies that guide teachers in their instructional practice. The purpose of this paper is to dispel the myth that mathematics teaching in Singapore schools is all about drill and practice, as perceived of many Asian systems. This paper draws on data of a large project that examined the enactment of school mathematics curriculum in Singapore secondary schools. Based on the teaching practices of 30 experienced and competent teachers, a survey was constructed and administered to 677 teachers. The data from the survey showed that teachers go well beyond traditional forms of instruction in their teaching practices in Singapore secondary schools. [This paper is the first in a symposium of four papers. For the second paper, "An Experienced and Competent Teacher's Instructional Practice for Normal Technical Students: A Case Study," see ED616178. For the third paper, "Imbuement of Desired Attitudes by Experienced and Competent Singapore Secondary Mathematics Teachers," see ED616187. For the fourth paper, "Singapore Mathematics Teachers' Design of Instructional Materials," see ED616188.]

This paper presents a case study of an experienced and competent mathematics teacher's classroom instructional practice in a Normal Technical Mathematics course. The topic that was observed was Volume and Surface Area of a Pyramid, a subtopic within the mensuration topic in Secondary Two syllabus. The teacher used a video clip on the Egyptian Pyramids to integrate students' prior knowledge on pyramids, which raised their attention on the topic. This was followed by engaging the students in hands-on activity to understand the formulae. [This paper is the second in a symposium of four papers. For the first paper, "Models of Mathematics Teaching Practice in Singapore Secondary Schools," see ED616186. For the third paper, "Imbuement of Desired Attitudes by Experienced and Competent Singapore Secondary Mathematics Teachers," see ED616187. For the fourth paper, "Singapore Mathematics Teachers' Design of Instructional Materials," see ED616188.]

In this methodology paper, we present a methodology for characterizing how teachers use coaches' suggestions. We identified suggestions from planning conversations and explored the extent to which the teachers implemented the suggestions in enacted lessons. The planning conversations took place within online content-focused coaching cycles. A primary challenge confronting content-focused coaches when working one-on-one with teachers is finding a productive balance between giving suggestions and inquiring into teachers' practices through reflective questioning. This paper articulates a process for identifying suggestions made by a coach during a planning conversation and an analytic process for examining how a teacher takes up the suggestion during lesson implementation. We discuss the methodological challenges we encountered and tradeoffs in our decisions related to low- and high-inference claims. [For the complete proceedings, see ED629884.]

Action research is a means for teachers and researchers to develop evidence-based practices. This paper reports the process and outcomes of "teaching sprints," an approach to action research, conducted by secondary school mathematics leaders as part of a professional learning program. Mathematics leaders consistently reported the value of developing collaborative practices throughout the planning, enacting and reflection of the teaching sprint.

As teachers begin to construct an understanding of 'inquiry', and incorporate IBL into their classroom practice, they are challenged to be sensitive to the 'constructivist' nature of the CLD. This paper presents a reflection model structured to trigger thinking about beliefs in teaching and learning in order for teachers to re-examine their practice and adopt new pedagogies. The reflections by two secondary school mathematics teachers are presented as they experiment with inquiry-based learning in the CLD. The teachers showed awareness, monitoring and regulation of their teaching practices including new and existing beliefs.

The description "primary mathematics specialist" has become more frequently used in Australia in the past 10 years, suggesting sustained interest in deepening teacher expertise. Despite this, there is limited contextual research about how to prepare in-service teachers for such roles, and the organising structures needed to facilitate their progress. This paper describes background and emerging insights from a project offering sustained and supported learning experiences for in-service teachers to become primary mathematics specialist teachers in and across their school. Curriculum and contextual experiences designed around a theoretical framework of leadership development implemented over 2 years are described. Early insights include the "priming" influence of an extended focus on mathematical content and pedagogical knowledge on participants' confidence to lead others, and the benefits of being explicit about enabling structures that promote sustainable growth and change.

Primary mathematics leadership has become a focus for improving the teaching of mathematics within Australian primary schools. Much of the training and support for those in the role have concentrated on content knowledge, rather than leadership training. There are currently no guidelines or standards in place to support the complex and multi-faceted roles and responsibilities of primary mathematics leaders. This paper reports on the initial stage of a research project examining how primary mathematics leadership is conceptualised and experienced. It reports on survey findings regarding teachers and leaders' understanding of primary mathematics leadership.

Listening is involved in daily school activities, but its importance is often overlooked and underestimated. Good teaching practices evolve from telling to listening in order to understand the needs of the student. In this paper, lesson study, a form of teacher professional development, is used as a contextual platform for developing the practice of listening pedagogy. The findings suggest that lesson study provided a conducive and favourable context for the learning of listening pedagogy. At the same time, it also allowed for rich teacher learning to take place which had an impact on teacher beliefs that contributed to the thinking of listening pedagogy.