During the Math Education Seminar Series, you will learn how research in math education can provide insight into the art of teaching.  After an introduction to education research by a math professor from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, you will be asked to select a topic of personal interest to focus on.  After using Harvard’s library resources to identify at least a dozen background sources for your topic, you will then put the various research results into context by writing a 12 to 15 page summary paper analyzing the current state of knowledge about your topic.  

As part of the math education project, you will also be asked to lead a seminar discussion in class, distributing two articles related to your topic to the class to read before your seminar, along with a set of discussion questions. 

In the past, participants have shared their math education papers with the rest of the class by exchanging a bound copy of all of the papers at the end of the semester.

Examples of Past Papers:

The Benefits of Review in the Math Classroom
Use of the Harkness Method in the Mathematics Classroom
The Benefit of Instructor Provided Notes
A list of recent Math 599 Math Education Seminar Series research papers

As teachers, we often end up teaching the way that we have been taught.  In order to discover the most effective ways to teach, and to become an innovative teacher, it’s important to experiment with different approaches now and then. During the class, everyone will be given the opportunity to try alternative approaches for teaching math topics. After being asked about the way you typically approach your teaching or tutoring, you will then be challenged to create a teaching activity featuring a new approach, something “outside your comfort zone” either exploring a teaching element that you have felt unsure about using before, or something you have always wanted to try but didn’t feel that you had the time to experiment with.  You might also choose to work with particular props or teaching tools that you have been considering but haven’t been able to use yet.

During the semester, one participant will be scheduled for each class meeting to share their teaching activity with the rest of the class who will act as practice students. After each alternative teaching experiment, two members of the class will be asked to give constructive feedback via email, after which the person who led the activity will be asked to think about how the experiment went and provide a debrief about the experience.

Past example: Sample AMTE Reflection

In the final part of the course, you will get an opportunity to work with your choice of math teaching technology (e.g. graphing calculators, PRS systems, smartphone or iPad apps, CAS, GeoGebra, Desmos, Mathematica, etc.). The goal is for you to experiment with something you have been interested in but haven’t had the time or resources to use in your own teaching yet (or perhaps have tried out to a limited extent already, but want to expand your use with).

The class will be organized into groups of teachers exploring similar technologies with the joint objective of creating a series of lesson plans incorporating the technology.  The goal is to explore how well the technology can be used to support effective math teaching. 

The final class meetings of the Teaching Projects course will feature presentations by each technology group, demonstrating the various technologies and sharing highlights of the lesson plans with everyone in the class.

Past example: Proving the Pythagorean Theorem