Research Seminars at the University of Georgia

Research seminars based on graduate students’ research interests have a long tradition at the University of Georgia. Some seminar groups change from semester to semeter, others span several semesters or years.

2005-2006 Seminars

Several of last year's groups are continueing their work in 2005-06. Members of the equity group and the lab class group work on the final versions of their papers. Members of the PRIME research group will presentsome their research findings at AMTE 2006 and the 2006 NCTM pre-session.

Several new groups have formed:

• Within PRIME, Amy Hackenberg and Erin Horst are working on an interpretative study that describes graduate students’ learning experiences in relation to their participation in PRIME. Specifically, their study focuses on understanding graduate students’ learning with regard to becoming a professional developer in mathematics. They define a professional developer in mathematics as a person who orchestrates learning experiences for mathematics teachers as part of their profession. However, within the study, they are interested in understanding how the graduate students define and conceive of professional development for secondary mathematics teachers, what they highlight as beneficial or detrimental in working with secondary mathematics teachers in situations involving professional development, as well as how their professional identities may be changing to include (or exclude) coming to be a professional developer. Semi-structured interviews with nine participants are currently underway, with data analysis to follow.

• (Vignettes)

2004-2005 Seminars

In 2004-2005, four research seminars focussed on themes that had evolved from the two CPTM summer institutes:

• Danie Brink, Sarah Ledford, and Andy Tyminski were building on Mary Boole’s description of teacher lust as they investigated particular interactions of mathematicians and mathematics educators within teacher development contexts.



Sarah and Andy are discussing their progress with Jeremy Kilpatrick


• The equity group was exploring the struggles and issues that had surfaced when three university teacher educators attempted to address equity issues in their mathematics methods classes for pre-service teachers. Members are Angel Abney, Natasha Brewley, Kanita DuCloux, Hyeon Mi Lee, Soojin Lee, Jaehong Shin, and Sharren Thomas.
  
• Members of the Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) research group were: Bob Allen, Stephen Bismarck, Jongsuk Keum, Hyung Sook Lee, Na Young Kwon. This group was trying to describe the MKT of an instructor from the analysis of video data and other artifacts collected at the Summer 2003 Institute at the University of Georgia.
  
• In the laboratory class seminar, graduate students were exploring characteristics of laboratory classes and applying these characteristics to various professional development experiences such as the CPTM summer Institutes, Japanese Lesson Study, and PRIME. Members were: Lu Pien Chen, Judith Reed, Ginger Rhodes, and Tom Ricks.
  

In addition, research of PRIME participants focused on development of professional learning communities in the context of student teaching.

Members of the Apalachee High School learning community enjoy dinner before the final PRIME meeting of the year

2003-2004 Seminars

Tension group, Role conflict (in progress)