Sharing Lesson-Specific Instructional Knowledge
Abstract: Do you know instructors that teach well, where you would love to get into their heads about how they reason through their lessons? Or, do you have a lesson about an important mathematical idea that you have refined over time, and that you think would be valuable to other instructors? Questions like this prompted us to develop a written genre for sharing lesson-specific teaching knowledge in undergraduate mathematics. In this discussion I introduce a way to share the results of having carefully crafted and refined a lesson over time, which we (my coauthors) call Lesson Analysis Manuscripts (LAMs). LAMs can help us learn from each other, and incrementally improve undergraduate math teaching, through detailed accounts of specific lessons. Importantly, we emphasize sharing knowledge and skills that aren’t usually part of our teaching conversations, such as how to think through instructional choices, how to lead classroom discussions to support learning, and how to describe the student thinking in our classrooms.
This talk is appropriate for faculty, undergraduate students, and a more general audience.
Biography: Dr. Doug Corey is a professor of Mathematics Education at Brigham Young University. His research has focused on elements and characteristics of high-quality instruction; Japanese math instruction and teacher education; and sharing detailed, lesson-specific instructional knowledge through carefully crafted lesson plans. He is co-editor, with his colleague Steven Jones, of a recent book published by the MAA: Sharing and Storing Knowledge about Teaching Undergraduate Mathematics. The book introduces a written genre for college mathematics instructors to share lesson-specific knowledge, a genre they call Lesson Analysis. His real love is teaching math, and showing the power of math to make sense of the everyday world. He recently turned this love into a youtube channel called "MathTheWorld" which mathematically analyzes everyday situations.
Contact: corey@mathed.byu.edu