U N I V E R S I T Y  O F  P I T T S B U R G H

Learning is Situated in Actual Practice

Margaret S. Smith, School of Education A Winner of the Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Teaching Photo by Joe Kapelewski, CIDDE

I have a practice-based view of teacher education, maintaining that learning must be situated in the actual work of teachers. My students begin by examining artifacts of practice and use those artifacts to generate theories and principles. Using examples from real teaching practice as a basis for in-class work, we then make bridges to the actual work my students are doing in K-12 classrooms. Thus, we develop ideas by examining real practice, and then we take ideas and apply them to our own practice.

Thinking about Teachers’ Work

The activities in which I engage pre-teachers involve thinking about teachers’ work: Teachers plan, teach, reflect, and then start the cycle over again. For example, teachers themselves should engage as learners in solving mathematical tasks from curriculum materials and then step back from the experience and talk about what they want their students to learn and how they, as teachers, should go about facilitating that learning. My students also critique video or narrative cases of teaching and analyze actual classroom situations to better understand how teachers support learning through their actions and interactions in class.

My graduate students often work in small groups. I give them an actual math problem or ask them to analyze an authentic piece of work by a child. My goal is to help them develop insights along several dimensions. For example, typical errors or work that looks indecipherable may actually show thinking by K-12 students. This enables the teachers to become good evaluators and readers of K-12 students’ varied representations of mathematical concepts.

Exploring Alternatives

The kinds of problems and tasks I give pre-teachers are not those for which there is an immediate answer; rather, I develop problems and questions requiring them to explore alternatives. A small group is likely to recognize various approaches. Most classes culminate in a whole-group discussion where ideas from all groups are shared. I expect my students to challenge and to build on others’ ideas. The class then tries to come to a consensus.

I see myself as a discussion facilitator, pressing people to think harder about what it is we’re discussing. Through the process we try to establish some general principles or ideas. Even though one lesson may focus on a particular situation, the goal is to end up with ideas that are applicable to other teaching situations. All assignments are designed to make connections between the work we do in my classroom and the work they are doing in a K-12 classroom. For example, if we had discussed student thinking as related to a particular type of algebra problem, I might ask my students to interview three of their public school students using such problems. They would then analyze solution strategies we use and relate them to our reading on student thinking.

Key Questions

The kinds of questions I ask are a key to the success of this strategy. For example, rather than simply giving the answer to a problem, I press them to explain what they mean and why it’s a reasonable solution. I invite other students’ comments, so everyone in the room is held accountable for understanding. Sometimes I ask students to paraphrase what’s been said to gauge whether the information is being processed. Also, I ask questions to help people see relationships across ideas that initially may seem unrelated. I might ask how a solution relates to that offered by a previous group or how one idea relates to another.

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