We are interested in understanding the perspectives and experiences of students, pre-service teachers, and in-service teachers when they engage with mathematical problems. Therefore, we study different actors within the education system.
We use tasks and activities as tools to capture how people think about mathematics and how they communicate mathematics.
Teaching in mathematics education stems from issues related to both mathematics itself and the teaching of mathematics. "Tasks" is a collective term for such issues. This research group consists of teacher educators focused on developing such problems within mathematics and mathematics education.
Heads of research group
Members
More about the research
The research group is subject-specific. All members teach mathematics and mathematics education in teacher education programs. This shared background gives us a common interest in improving our own teaching practices, including the selection of tasks and the design of instructional activities, assignments, and exam questions.
Our shared interest in task design from a teaching perspective has two strengths. First, it allows us to structure group meetings so that all members benefit from participating, since the research we discuss is directly relevant to our teaching. Second, the group becomes a forum where early-career researchers can more easily develop their research expertise.
Relevant Questions in Task Design Include:
- Frameworks and principles for task design
- The relationship between task design, methodology, and student learning
- The student/teacher-student perspective in task design
- Designing tasks and activities for textbooks
- Resources used in the development of tasks
- How students and teachers interpret tasks and activities in various resources, and their intended purposes
- How design principles reflect different conceptions of mathematical ideas
- How students’ experiences of mathematics are influenced by teachers’ pedagogical approaches and their choices of tasks and activities
- Task design and the implementation of sequences of tasks and activities
- How teachers and pre-service teachers perceive task design, and how they choose to create and adapt sequences of tasks and activities
- The relationship between task design and societal core values
- Task design and individual differences among learners
Members’ Research Interests
The members’ research interests span a wide range of areas:
- Algebraic geometry (especially moduli of bundles on curves and noncommutative algebraic geometry)
- Selected aspects of mathematics in schools (formative and summative assessment, proof and argumentation, algebra, programming in mathematics, vocational mathematics, mathematical creativity, history of mathematics)
Selected aspects of mathematics in teacher education (the effect of task design on pre-service teachers’ competence in teaching mathematics, pre-service teachers’ approaches to answering didactic questions, the relationship between theory and practice in teacher education, efficacy beliefs in teaching mathematics, pre-service teachers’ and teachers’ competence in areas such as rational numbers, probability, algebra, and teaching these topics)
Projects
Our members are involved in a number of research projects, including two projects funded by the Norwegian Research Council, FINNUT programme:
- Inclusive Mathematics Teaching: Understanding and developing school and classroom strategies for raising attainment (IMaT) (2019-2022).
- Teacher Qualification for the 21st century - teachers' professional competence (TEQ21) (2018-2023) (nva.sikt.no).
Other projects:
- Pre-service teachers’ developing theorizing about mathematics teaching during school placement
- Developing a research disposition
- Algebragruppen (Algebra Group)
