October 6 Colloquium – Billy Jackson, University of Maine
Developing a Theory of Pedagogical Content Knowledge
for Secondary and Post-Secondary Mathematics Teachers
Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) has become a rich area of investigation for math and science education researchers. Culminating from a seminal speech given by Shulman in 1986, much of the research in PCK for math teachers has focused on the K-8 level. Deborah Ball at the University of Michigan and several of her colleagues, students, and postdocs have led the charge in building an initial framework for PCK. The research group I have been a part of for the last 5 years has been working on our own model of PCK which is aimed at understanding the PCK development of secondary and post-secondary instruction of mathematics. In this talk, I will expound upon our efforts and compare and contrast our model with Ball and company’s model. Unlike the existing model, we propose a nonlinear model in which the components interact and affect each other. We also place an emphasis on the culture in the mathematics classroom and examine the impacts of its’ presence on PCK. Examining culture necessitates an inclusion and discussion of discourse in our model, an idea of which is as best in best in the background of existing models but central to ours. The science education community has placed an emphasis on the teacher’s disposition and orientation towards teaching and learning about science, and so I also want to discuss how such constructs are present in our model.
Bio: Billy Jackson is a new faculty member in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMaine. He has a background and publications in applied mathematics in the area of dynamical systems, but his recent research interests have focused on mathematics education, particularly teacher education and MKT. He was a postdoctoral research assistant in mathematics education for a year at the University of Northern Colorado under the direction of Shandy Hauk as a part of the department’s NSF funded MSP grant. He has taught mathematics and mathematics education courses at all levels of the undergraduate curriculum and also completed a year of teaching high school students math after receiving his PhD.
Monday, October 6, 2014
3:00 pm
Arthur St. John Hill Auditorium, 165 Barrows Hall
Please join us for snacks in the lobby at 2:45