NSF Awards: 1708327
Making sense of fractions can be challenging for students with learning disabilities. In this video presentation, we illuminate how our project is studying and supporting the development of conceptual understanding of fractions by students with learning disabilities (LD). Rather than focusing on whether students can or cannot develop conceptual understanding, our strengths based approach focuses on uncovering the complex understanding students DO have. We share what we have been learning, including previews into student thinking and the development of novel teaching methods that facilitate mathematics learning for this underserved population.
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Thank you for visiting the FAACT project video. This exploratory work is a part of the DRK-12 network. We are in our fifth year.
Our video is designed to provide viewers with a conceptual preview of both our work toward goals in previous years of the project as well as goals that we are currently investigating. This preview includes information regarding (a) What we have found out about how students with learning disabilities think and learn about fractions and (b) An evolving framework for the design of intervention environments and planning/enactment of pedagogy that we are currently testing.
We are happy to gain feedback regarding what viewers learn about our project by watching the video. We are especially interested in your feedback on the questions below. We provide a question for parents, teachers, and researchers. Please comment on any of the questions or other aspects of our video. Thank you!
Question for parents: What aspects of our intervention framework would be helpful to learn more about to support students' mathematics at home?
Question for teachers: What ideas from this framework might be useful or apply to your own math interventions? What aspects might be challenging to consider?
Question for researchers: What suggestions or feedback do you have that we might consider as we work to enhance our intervention framework?
Steven Greenstein
Brian Drayton
Co-Director
Thanks for sharing your research.
It seems right, to work with students' reasoning, to understand conceptual barriers they are facing, and choose strategies to help them overcmoe the barriers. What have you learned about helping teachers understand students' thinking about fractions?
I imagine that this varies a lot, depending on the particular learning disabilities being considered. Are there particular disabilties that you are focusing on in your research?
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your questions!
Prior to focusing on student thinking, I have found that it is important for teachers to unpack perspectives on disability (their own, their schools, their community) and reflect on possible implications of these perspectives on practice. I've also learned that creating opportunities for teachers to take on the role of researcher can support their understanding of students' mathematical thinking and student dispositions toward mathematics more broadly. We are finding that this approach supports teachers in the broader work of anticipating student reasoning within planned tasks and also being responsive to student thinking in the midst of teaching. A course that I created and refined as a part of this project has supported my learning in community with teachers.
In terms of students, I have worked with a number of students over the course of the project who displayed a diverse array of incoming understandings and who also had different cognitions. Most of the students that I have worked with within this project experienced differences in working memory or processing, while others experienced differences in motor coordination. This is why I have found it most effective to begin with learning environments and tasks that allows for multiple means of action, engagement, and expression of thinking to promote access.
Steven Greenstein
Robin Jones
I'd love to know how any existing research on differences in students' fraction knowledge is used. For example, how do we as researchers share our frameworks with teachers, while at the same time encouraging them to create their own through their investigation of student thinking? In a perfect world the two would challenge each other and build on each other, so we could share what we have learned and learn more from teachers.
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Hi Robin,
This is a great question. One way I do that in this project is through the course I developed as a part of this work. Teachers take part in a Mathematics Strengths Project, which has several components (e.g., clinical interview, use of a redesigned curriculum task using UDL principles, observation of and conversation with students about perspective of math, number talks, 3 act tasks, worked examples). Anyway, teachers begin this project by asking a researchable question about a focus student and then work to use what they learned from the above to make strengths based claims about the student's reasoning. Some of these claims align with established research, some claims extend it, and some challenge it. The project gives teachers a space to present and discuss their findings, which positions us as a community that learns together and pushes forward knowledge.
Robin Jones
Steven Greenstein
Robin Jones
Oooo, "strengths-based claims" is a phrase I'm adding to my vocabulary. I really like the idea of asking teachers to focus on one student, and emphasizing that they need to ask a researchable question about what the student can do. So it's not about comparing students to each other, or directly to external frameworks using some checklist. It's about teachers arming themselves with current research, then looking at the relationship between that research and what they see students doing. They can feed the research into their work with kids, and can feed their discoveries of kids' thinking back to their understanding of research.
Jessica Hunt
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Yes! This has really made a difference in my work with teachers in terms of positioning them to use tools like interviews to focus on student thinking from a basis of strengths.
Juanita Silva
Assistant Professor
Hi Robin,
Thank you for taking the time to think critically about how to help share our framework with teachers. We have worked in the past in introducing the framework with pre service teachers' in our methods courses. In these courses, we introduced the framework and received constructive feedback on its usability and how to improve it. In addition to sharing our framework, we have also created an interview tool for teachers to use with children. This interview tool will allow teachers to investigate student reasoning in similar ways that we do in the project were teachers can compare and contrast their experiences with our framework.
Catherine McCulloch
Hi Jessica,
Thank you for sharing your project work through this video! Is information about the clinical interview protocol that you use available online/in publication?
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Hi Catherine,
The general ideas behind the protocol are here. For the actual questions and tasks, we are refining the originally developed document and will make it available publicly this summer or early fall here. I am also partnering with American Institutes for Research on Clinical Interviewing development for coaches and teachers this month and aim to have a report and possible publication from this work within the year.
Steven Greenstein
Katie Stofer
Hi Jessica - do you think this is something that could be expanded to work for all learners? Seems like a lot of students struggle with a lot of topics (math, science at a minimum) when taught in "traditional" ways. Is there any reason you wouldn't you use this with all learners?
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Hi Katie,
This is a great question. I view disability as a form of neurodiversity, so I agree that elements of this work go a long way in promoting knowledge for learners in a broad sense. For example, using principles from frameworks that promote access to different ways of reasoning (universal design for learning, for example) or using tasks that have a high cognitive demand yet are also accessible to many ways of reasoning are promising.
I would also say that variations of these design principles make a world of difference for students with disabilities in particular. For example, students who have access to, say, using a solution strategy that is unique and being able to share that reasoning in different ways (e.g., with pictures as opposed equations; talking and showing thinking first with a partner; choice in how to share with the group) is significant to the student's participation in the content. Also, providing a task in different ways - and allowing students a choice for which task they will engage with - supports students productive struggle for students who may not have engaged previously. We also hypothesize that these design elements may support perseverance for students.
In our ongoing analysis of two intervention studies we just concluded, we are seeing differences both in terms of how students' participation in the groups (how much they talk, the nature of their talk in terms of standards for mathematical practice) grows and changes and their conceptual advance (learning trajectories). We are also showing significant differences in score on a curriculum based measure of the curriculum from pre to post intervention.
Todd Lash
Kristi Martin
PhD Student
Katie,
I definitely think this is something that can help all students. If you start with student's own reasoning when teaching you can help them to build on their own reasoning. Students can then build conceptual understanding, because you are starting from what they understand. This is important for all students, but even more so for the populations that we work with, because they are frequently taught in ways that ignore their reasoning.
Blain Patterson
PhD Student
For example, many children already have an intuitive understanding of fair sharing which can then be formalized as multiplication or division through actions such as "dealing" or "splitting."
Amy Hackenberg
Hi Jessica:
Great video! I am curious about learning more about what you mean by zooming in and zooming out, and what that is based on for you.
Thanks!
Amy
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Hi Amy,
Thanks for this great question.
By Zooming out, I mean beginning intervention by creating an accessible learning environment, where many ways of engaging in a task, representing thinking, and expressing ideas is commonplace. We use elements of Universal Design for Learning Principles and also draw from CGI and differentiation in terms of task design (choice; number values) that support the cognitive demand of the task yet also allow access.
Another mechanism at work in Zooming out is establishing group norms that may be different from what students are used to when they think of “math intervention time”. For example, establishing what it means to have discussions of mathematical thinking, or establishing explicit roles around that (solver and questioner, for example). I also link zooming out to anticipating students’ reasoning in the group and building up a model of how students are thinking toward a key idea. I use the research to anticipate thinking and refine based on what I see in the midst of instruction.
Students often bring in reasoning that I do not expect. By Zooming in, I mean utilizing the models of student thinking to promote the student to engage in action, representations, and discussions that should support them to advance their reasoning or make connections. For example, many students I have worked with have learning differences (e.g., working memory) and evidence actions that are representative of prior compensations made to support their thinking in some way yet often sustain disconnected actions or reasoning. To help, I work to promote the student’s noticing and reflecting. To support noticing, I've used revoicing and reshowing of exact explanations so student can remember his or her activity or notice activity not previously noticed. I’ve also used multiple representations that act as "reshows" of the child’s reasoning. To promote reflection, I draw from Tzur's work as well, using questioning to respond to students' activity and (at times) constrain materials or representations (covering once visible materials, for example) and ask students to imagine the activity.
We are planning more cross case analysis to further examine each in our project and how they interact.
Todd Lash
Todd Lash
This is great rundown Jessica, and I really appreciate your thoughtful integration of UDL in this work. Kudos for thinking about learner variability widely. It seems like you are doing a lot of work at the teacher level, such as supports teachers/instructors provide like questing, curriculum, and implementation decisions or planning. Does your work deal in any way with student-initiated supports, such as metacognitive or self-regulatory supports that the students themselves are taught to use?
Kudos on an exciting project!
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Hi Todd,
This is a great question and thank you for the kudos!
We do not at this time. For me, the use of reshowing and restating exactly what was said - acting as a 'mirror', in a way - serves a metacognitive purpose for students to consider and reflect upon their thinking.
I also accomplish this through questioning in the midst of problem solving, such as "Is that what you thought would happen?" or "This is challenging? What is challenging about it, for you?" While these do not teach metacognitive strategies explicitly, implicitly they support students to evaluate their activity ("What happened? Did that work? Why did it work or not work?") and reflect across situations.
Rebecca Borowski
Hi Jessica! I really enjoyed this video.
Like Amy, I am also really interested in the Zooming In/Zooming Out idea! I think this language has potential to be really accessible for practicing teachers.
The questions you posed for parents, teachers, and researchers got me thinking critically about how I personally think about fraction interventions in each of these roles. I've noticed that as a researcher I'm very careful of the language I use when I'm giving a clinical interview or even working individually with a student. As a parent, however, I'm not nearly as careful. I'm curious about how you take key philosophies from the theoretical frameworks that drive your work and make the interventions/supports you provide for parents consistent with those key philosophies.
I am excited to read more about your work. :)
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Hi Rebecca,
Thanks so much for your question- you make a great point and I continue to think a lot about this.
One thing I think makes sense is to talk to parents about how to ask questions to support students as they think within tasks suggested for use at home. So considering what questions open up thinking or support thinking as opposed to questions that close thinking off may be a good start.
Has your group done outreach to parents? How do you think about this?
Judy Storeygard
Jessica: Great project--so important to shed light on this often elusive subject for students and to focus on a strength-based model. Question: How do your tasks help students make connections among the various aspects of fractions e.g. area model, length, "fair shares" etc.?
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Hi Judy,
This is a great question, and thank you for your feedback. One way students are supported to make connections among different models of fractions occurs through the multiple means of representation supported in the task design. For instance, some students may draw rectangular bars to partition while others may draw squares or sets to support their reasoning in a sharing task. In other tasks, such as those that support unitizing, students might interact with nonstandard representations of unit and non unit fractions to promote them to think deeply about their meaning. For instance, "two thirds" might be represented within a context with a long, unpartitioned rectangle or by four circles; students may be asked to consider what one whole looks like. This is done to promote the idea that, for instance, "two thirds" is not simply two out of three shaded parts....
Ginger Fitzhugh
Senior Research Associate
Very interesting project. Could you say a bit more how you are researching the effectiveness of the teaching strategy you are developing (the 3-phase intervention study around 12 tasks)? I'm imagining that you'll submit another video next year that describes that part in detail, but I'd love to hear more. :-)
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Hi Ginger,
Thanks for this question!
Currently, we are in our second phase of research. The first phase of the work involved examining how students were engaged in the tasks, how (and to what extent) students employed the cognitive operations necessary to advance their conceptions of fractions within the tasks, and how students participated in discussion with each other about their reasoning. In the second phase, we are examining similar questions yet are more focused on to what extent students engaged, participated in discussion, and advanced their conceptions. We are also examining within subject pre post test differences in score on a measure of the curriculum.
Victor van den Bergh
User Researcher & Evaluator
Thanks for sharing your interesting project. One of the above posts mentions the development of an "evolving framework" for the design of intervention environments and pedagogy, which you are currently testing. The implication seems to be that you intend to use the framework with other mathematics topics besides fractions. I'm curious: what other topics do you think you might target next and have you already had an opportunity to begin testing your framework with them?
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Hi Victor,
Thanks for your question! I do plan to explore the framework with other topics. One that we have already started to consider is proportional reasoning, although we are in the very early stages :)
Joi Spencer
Hello Jessica and thank you for your presentation. Can you share some of the learning disabilities of the students that you work with? How, specifically, has your work supported learning for students with attention-related challenges?
On a slightly different note, I see that the students have one-on-one interactions with the researcher. In what ways do students engage with peers?
Thanks for your project!
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Hi Joi:
Thanks for your questions! I have worked with a number of students over the course of the project; most of the students that I have worked with within this project experienced differences in working memory or processing, while others experienced differences in motor coordination. I have worked with a few cases of students who have had attention related issues; I am still analyzing data.
I find that universally designed talk moves are a great way to support students to engage with other student's reasoning. So moves like wait time, revoicing/reshow, adding on. are great ways to support reasoning in small group conversations.
Jessica Hunt
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education and Special Education
Here are the talk moves I worked from in this article. I worked mainly from wait time, revoice, and restate to apply UDL principles of multiple means of representation and expression (e.g., re show and revoice; support students to restate each other using more than just verbal expression). You can find slides from our NCTM presentation on the paper here.
talk moves-
Chapin, S., O’Connor, C., & Anderson, N. (2009). Classroom Discussions: Using Math Talk to Help Students Learn, Grades K-6 (second edition). Sausalito, CA: Math Solutions Publications.
O’Connell, S., & O’Connor, K., (2007). Introduction to Communication, Grades 3–5. Heinemann
Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.