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This paper elaborates on the teacher change process described in the Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth by providing empirical evidence from a study that investigated the knowledge construction process of three mathematics teachers in Melbourne, Australia. Through a research design that aimed to facilitate teacher reflection regarding their learning processes during the design and teaching of lessons, two mechanisms of teacher learning were identified: consolidation in terms of reinforcement of existing knowledge and beliefs, and realisation of new knowledge and beliefs. This finding prompted a reconceptualisation of the nature of teacher professional growth.

Experienced teachers, researchers and mathematics community members, contributed to the documentation of the professional vocabulary of teachers to describe the pedagogical practice of the middle school mathematics classroom. In this paper we use this Australian Lexicon to study which terms teachers deem essential for their classroom practice. We follow with an analysis on whether these essential terms correspond with the language used in commonly disseminated government documents. This examination has given us an insight into the terms that are of great significance and value for our teachers and provided a detailed picture of vocabulary alignment with various official communications.

Using an eighth-order Taylor expansion in baryon chemical potential, we recently obtained the (2+1)-flavor QCD equation of state (EoS) at nonzero conserved charge chemical potentials from the lattice. We focused on strangeness-neutral, isospin-symmetric QCD matter, which closely resembles the situation encountered in heavy-ion collision experiments. Using this EoS, we present here results on various QCD material parameters; in particular we compute the specific heat, speed of sound, and compressibility along appropriate lines of constant physics. We show that in the entire range relevant for the beam energy scan at RHIC, the specific heat, speed of sound, and compressibility show no indication for an approach to critical behavior that one would expect close to a possibly existing critical endpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the Australian mathematics education research community and experienced teachers of mathematics participated in the process of documenting the professional vocabulary of middle school mathematics teachers. This vocabulary, the Australian Lexicon, captures the language in use by Australian mathematics teachers when describing the phenomena of the middle school mathematics classroom. In this paper, we examine the structure of the Australian Lexicon with particular attention given to content, connection, and characteristics of the professional vocabulary available to middle school mathematics teachers in Australia.

This paper reports a study conducted in a laboratory classroom with the capability to record classroom social interactions in great detail using advanced video technology. The social interactions of student groups during collaborative problem solving were analysed based on transcript data. This analysis suggests that meaning negotiation in mathematics classrooms can be usefully distinguished as social, sociomathematical, or mathematical. We suggest that all three modes coexist in an entangled form in the negotiative interactions documented in the mathematics classroom and we envisage all three as constitutive of learning.

A central premise of this project is that teachers learn from the act of teaching a lesson and that this learning is evident in the planning and teaching of a subsequent lesson. We are studying the knowledge construction of mathematics teachers utilising multi-camera research techniques during lesson planning, classroom interactions and reflection. This paper reports on the learning of two Year 7 teachers, one in Melbourne and one in Chicago, teaching the same initial lesson focusing on division, remainders and context. Both teachers claimed to have learned about their students' mathematical thinking after teaching the initial lesson, but found planning a second lesson to accommodate this learning challenging.

This study examines a teacher's questioning strategies in mathematics classrooms in China when implementing reform-based mathematics curriculum. It explores teacher's strategies to deal with the tensions involved in the creation of opportunities for students to express and communicate mathematics ideas while ensuring the productivity of mathematics communication and the accomplishment of the lesson goals in a limited period of time. By doing so, this study has implications for teacher education and professional development in terms of how to strengthen the links between intended mathematics curriculum reforms and teacher's actual practices in mathematics classrooms.

A central premise of this project is that teachers learn from the act of teaching a lesson and that this learning is evident in the planning and teaching of a subsequent lesson. In this project, the knowledge construction of mathematics teachers was examined utilising multi-camera research techniques during lesson planning, classroom interactions and reflection. Our goal is a refined understanding of classroom events that create opportunities for teacher learning. This paper reports what one Year 5 teacher appeared to learn from the process.

At some stage when planning, teachers make decisions about the mathematics tasks they will pose and how they will structure lessons. It seems, though, that these decisions are complex, and that this complexity has been underestimated by curriculum developers and teacher educators. The following is a report of data collection that simulated some of these planning decisions. The results suggest that teachers may need support in matching tasks to curriculum content statements, in articulating the purposes of tasks, and in considering how tasks might be used to address differences in student readiness. [Additional funding was provided by New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education and Training, Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, Catholic Education Office Melbourne and the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority. The project is collaboration between Monash University, Australian Catholic University, University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney, University of Newcastle, and the University of Melbourne.]

The purpose of this paper is to justify and reflect upon the way in which video technologies were employed in data generation for a study of student agency in a science classroom using discursive psychology. The research was designed with the purpose of providing new understanding of how students develop a sense of themselves as responsible agents in secondary science classrooms. The study drew upon discursive psychology for this purpose, and attended to the social meaning made relatively determinate in participants' conversations. An instrumental case study was developed from video recordings of a science classroom in action and video-stimulated interviews with the research participants. The scientific and moral criteria for evaluation underlying the research is explained in the paper. Phonological transcripts were generated as the primary data source for the study. The analysis, including the production of the phonological transcripts, is explained and an example of the report is provided to reflect upon the importance of the video technology for meeting the scientific and moral criteria for evaluation of discourse-based research in education. By making the criteria for evaluation explicit and reflecting upon the enhanced capacities of researchers to meet these criteria using video technology, the paper contributes to the theme of the symposium of "researcher practice in the generation of data for educational research using video-based research design". An appendix presents the phonological transcription conventions (adapted from the system developed by Jefferson (Woods & Kroger 2000, p193).

Insights into aspects of teachers' planning reported here were gathered as part of a broader project examining aspects of the implementation of the Australian curriculum in mathematics. In particular, responses of teachers to a survey of various aspects of decisions that inform their planning are discussed. While there is diversity in processes teachers use for planning, a consistent theme was that teachers make active decisions at all stages in the planning process. There were slight differences in the ways that primary and secondary teachers plan. There are important implications from our findings for those who support teachers in the transition to the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics.

This paper first postulates the existence of co-constructed patterns of participation in the classroom and then documents one such pattern of participation: Kikan-shido (instruction between desks), both as it is enacted and as it is perceived by the classroom participants. In the course of detailing the use of kikan-shido in three Australian classrooms, this paper addresses the relationship between practice, participation and learning, as exemplified by kikan-shido as a locally-enacted pattern of participation to which teacher and students subscribe and which teacher and student have agency to exploit and to shape, and in which teacher and students, are complicit (coconspirators). Acceptance of this point has implications for the research designs by which we study the activities occurring in classroom settings. [For complete proceedings, see ED489632.]

Metacognition has been accorded a role in both mathematical problem solving and in the learning of mathematics. There has been consistent advocacy of the need for the promotion of metacognitive activity in both domains. Such advocacy can only be effective if the advocated process is well understood. This paper has three goals: to set out a coherent model of metacognition in the domain of mathematical problem solving; to report on the empirical utility (and validity) of this model; and to report the insights into student mathematical metacognition arising from the use of the model in research. (Contains 50 references.) (Author/MM)

Contrary to earlier views, studies show that preschool children with conduct problems will likely continue to exhibit some maladjustment in adolescence and adulthood. A high rate of aggression and noncompliance in toddlers can be predictive of serious antisocial problems later in life, if not treated. Interventions aimed at changing the disruptive behavior for a wide range of family circumstances should focus on modifying the sources of influence affecting the development of antisocial behavior. The components of such a multimodal intervention program are: (1) the relationship between child and caregiver; (2) factors within the child; (3) factors within the caregiver; and (4) factors in the larger social context. (AS)

GameScapes and SimApps, are new narrative and game mechanic influenced tools for improving the classroom learning experience of students. In Fall 2015, GameScapes and SimApps were tested with 16 American colleges and universities and 26 members of their faculties to improve learning outcomes in first-year composition classes, many including English as secondary language students, specifically focusing on writing skills and grammar abilities. Several GameScapes and SimApps developed for the course were tested with over 1000 students. Faculty members could select at least two games from a set of 17 such games that would best align with their courses’ learning objectives. Scores earned in student gameplay were converted to points that applied to students’ grades in the courses. This paper presents a formative evaluation of the GameScapes and SimApps that were used by the teachers and students and discusses best practices, classroom observations, learning outcomes and future scalability of this methodology to other courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A GameScape is a novel mixed-method platform that combines visual storytelling with game-based learning elements to challenge the student to critically evaluate cause-and-effect scenarios. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation details of a GameScape developed for teaching five introductory environmental science modules in an introductory environmental science course. A SimApp (simulation application) is a game-based assessment technique that students complete at the end of each module. We present the design and integration of SimApps within GameScapes. Our approach is aimed at providing a novel method of integrating rich narrative based storytelling with short repetitive game play mechanics to promote improved student learning and retention. It is specifically designed to avoid trial and error gameplay and help provide proper remediation by making the player critically evaluate the choice of their decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]