UC Faculty of Education held a workshop on professional teaching skills in mathematics

The activity, part of the FONDECYT project led by academic Horacio Solar, brought together academics, students, and teachers to deepen teacher noticing.

Students, academics, and mathematics teachers from across the country met on July 24th at the UC Faculty of Education for the workshop "Professional Teaching Competencies in the Mathematics Classroom." 

The event is part of the FONDECYT project No. 1231033 "Teacher noticing to promote professional skills in the teaching and learning of school algebra: A study with novice teachers and future teachers", where UC Education professor Horacio Solar, in charge of the event, is the principal investigator. UC Education professor is also part of the project. Florencia Gómez. 

Alejandro Carrasco, dean of the Faculty of Education UC, highlighted the importance of mathematics in the development of students, and pointed out what some data show: there is a gender gap in the development of mathematical skills in the school system. 

Furthermore, "many students experience anxiety and frustration when learning mathematics. Therefore, the role of teachers in the school system is key in bringing mathematics closer to students. We, the teacher training institutions, have a much more crucial role, because we are the bridge that will help future citizens and professionals acquire mathematical skills and competencies," the dean indicated.

For this reason, he noted, "I find the work this team is doing extraordinarily important. What we will be working on here today will have, in the medium to long term, a critical impact on our society." 

Look professionally

The event included a lecture by the Dr. Ceneida Fernández from the University of Alicante, who is involved in research focused on teacher training in mathematics, with an emphasis on the characterization and development of professional skills; and also a second line of work focused on understanding rational numbers, concepts of ratio and proportion, and the development of proportional reasoning in primary and secondary education. 

The academic invited us to reflect on several situations. The underlying question, she explained, is in the title of her presentation: "Learning to Professionally View Teaching and Learning Situations in Mathematics."

"And the answer is simply what they do in the classroom. That is, looking at a learning or teaching situation in mathematics in a professional manner. Why is it professional? Because surely if another person enters the classroom and isn't from that profession, they won't look at what you're seeing in that situation," Fernández explained. 

Teachers are increasingly expected to be able to use more professional knowledge when observing teaching and learning situations in the classroom, and this does not just mean knowledge about the subject. 

Another type of knowledge emerges: using materials in the classroom; the management of group discussions; knowledge about different types of mathematical tasks; and knowledge about how students learn.

"And all this knowledge is related to mathematics teaching. And it's necessary because it allows us to identify relevant situations or materials. Once you identify what might be relevant, you can interpret it and make good or better decisions."

Leading teachers

In the second part of the seminar, Horacio Solar presented the progress of FONDECYT, which, in its third year of implementation, seeks to strengthen two curriculum competencies among mathematics teachers: argumentation and modeling. To this end, the team incorporated a key figure: "leader teachers," practicing teachers who, after a year of training, support other teachers in developing these skills and what is known as "professional perspective" or teacher noticing.

“Noticing has to do with a teacher's ability to analyze learning situations in the classroom,” Solar explained. Among the preliminary results, he highlighted that The lead teachers show a very adequate level of noticing in argumentation, which "gives clues that they will be able to accompany other teachers very well in this area." However, she acknowledged that modeling remains a challenge: "It's harder to recognize a modeling task, what the students are doing, or what the teacher is doing in this case. And this is something that has also been seen in international studies."

The project is currently working with groups of teachers in Santiago, Concepción, and two SLEPs—Gabriela Mistral and Colchagua—where nine teacher leaders are being trained to mentor between 30 and 40 teachers in their networks. "We want to see how these teachers are developing modeling and argumentation noticing, because they are also being directly trained in these topics," she added.