Projects

Primary teachers' adaptive expertise in interdisciplinary maths and science

Jan van Driel is a Chief Investigator on a new Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP210101171) titled Primary teachers' adaptive expertise in interdisciplinary maths and science. The other CIs are Amanda Berry, Colleen Vale (Monash University), Lihua Xu and Wanty Widjaja (Deakin University). This project will start in the second half of 2021 and aims to investigate the development of primary teachers’ adaptive expertise in interdisciplinary mathematics and science. As a critical component of quality teaching, adaptive expertise is essential for teachers to innovate their teaching to enhance student learning and interest, yet little is known about its development. The project aims to explore how adaptive expertise can be fostered through classroom innovations purposefully codesigned by teachers and researchers in the context of interdisciplinary mathematics and science. Expected outcomes include a better theoretical understanding of adaptive expertise in the context of interdisciplinary mathematics and science to benefit teacher learning and improve student outcomes.

Different communities, speaking different languages, employ different naming systems to describe the events, actions, and interactions of the mathematics classroom. The International Classroom Lexicon Project documented the professional vocabulary available to middle-school mathematics teachers in Australia, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, and the United States. National teams of researchers and experienced teachers used a common set of classroom videos to stimulate recognition of familiar terms describing aspects of the mathematics classroom.

The national lexicons are now available: Teachers Talking about their Classrooms: Learning from the Professional Lexicons of Mathematics Teachers Around the World (https://www.routledge.com/Teachers-Talking-about-their-Classrooms-Learning-from-the-Professional/Mesiti-Artigue-Hollingsworth-Cao-Clarke/p/book/9780367376932). This book details the existing professional vocabulary in each international community by which mathematics teachers conceptualise their practice, and explores the characteristics, structures, and distinctive features of each national lexicon. This book has the potential to enrich the professional vocabulary of mathematics teachers around the world by providing access to sophisticated classroom practices named by teachers in different countries.

Dr Esther Chan is the Project Manager of two international research projects, the Learning from Lessons and the Social Unit of Learning projects. The Learning from Lessons project is an international project which investigates the structure and construction of mathematics teacher knowledge in Australia, China, and Germany. The project aims to understand mathematics teachers’ thinking processes during lesson planning, teaching, and reflection.

The  Social Unit of Learning project is an innovative experimental study of student social interaction during the completion of mathematics tasks undertaken in individual, pair, small group and whole class social units. The aim of the project is to investigate the social interactions that characterise learning processes in a mathematics classroom.