Preparing Elementary Teachers to Curate, Adapt and Use OERs in Mathematics Education.
Dr. Steven Khan�Assistant Professor�Brock University �St. Catharines, Ontario
November 18, 2020.
I would like to begin by thanking the many peoples who have called these lands ‘home’ for many generations. In particular the Haudenosaunee and Anisnhinabe peoples and other nations whose teachings and continued presence remind us to consider the way the land lives in us, and shares its life with us. I want to express gratitude to the many nations that constitute our multispecies kin who challenge us to honour our responsibilities and promises to ALL our relations (not just our human ones)
I have come to value this practice of acknowledging land, treaties and place as a reminder that we all come from somewhere, we all belong somewhere and in particular in this New World, survival depends on the friendship, trust, and collective wisdom of others.���
Background image screen shot from: https://native-land.ca/
What?
Who?
How?
Why?
Where? When?
My goal for Elem-PSTs (and for myself)
A well-prepared beginning teacher, confident in their knowledge and skills, mathematically competent, humble and growth-minded, collaborative, capable of flourishing and enabling flourishing with learners in times of uncertainty and trauma and able to curate mathematics as a place of loving kindness and...
I/identities are intersectional and fluid
Mathematical I/identies are curated�(curated = cared for not just collected) �Acknowledgement: Stephanie LaFrance (GRA)
Underpinnings of curation
‘curate’ (n.) refers to a person tasked with the care or cure of souls.
Framing curation
Curatorial practices entail, “acts of self-exploration, self-cultivation and self-care” (Weisgerber & Butler, 2016)
What Learning Mathematics means to me…�(1 paragraph summarizing +20 years of thinking, doing, being)
The time has come for a new prosperity, one that takes flourishing seriously as the goal of education… Learning to value and to attain flourishing must start early — in the formative years of schooling (Seligman, 2011, p.97, bold added)
Every being cries out silently to be read differently.
― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
Why do mathematics?
This is a simple question, but worth considerable reflection. Because how you answer will strongly determine who you think should be doing mathematics, and how you will teach it.
“What if you were to imagine that your primary role as an educator is to learn how to thrive in your role, and, in so doing, to continually co-explore and to enthusiastically facilitate all means by which each person in your learning community flourishes along with you most of the time?” (Cherkowski & Walker, 2018, bold added)
Rationale (particularly persistent peculiarities)
SFUSD Open (cc 4.0)
Working on SFUSD Materials Remix
Decide what you want to work on to remix. [Grade level and topic]. �Create a shared folder EDEL_415_OER_Remix_Name1_Name2_�Copy the Unit Template to your own Drive. Rename EDEL415_OERUnit_Title�Remix part of a Unit - at least 5 days worth of lessons/activities. No more than 10 days. �Use comments / annotations to guide the reader. �Suggestions: �- Adapt or create sufficient materials for routines to be used as starters. �- Adapt or create sufficient materials for centers.�- Adapt or create lesson outlines with attention to concept development using variation theory and learning progression ideas.�- Adapt or create relevant diagnostic tasks.�- Adapt or create relevant fluency tasks.�- Adapt or create milestone tasks (OK definitely do this!). �- Create slide decks for the Unit for use in the classroom. �- Check spelling, grammar, punctuation.
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Student Responses to Assignment
Starting well (with more knowledgeable experts)
We had the opportunity at the beginning of the term to have someone come in and talk to us about open education resources and what to look for in websites with regards to copyright. I appreciated this because I know that many other education students are confused when it comes to what they can photocopy and use in the classroom. One of the challenges of this assignment was feeling like we are copying resources that we should not be.
Without feelings of guilt creep
“Throughout the remixing it allowed my group and I to utilize resources in a way that we have not considered previously. I, personally, have never thought of a remix as an alternative to planning in the past for numerous reasons. I found that in doing so I continued to feel guilty throughout the process because it was not completely created by our group and I was not aware of where to gather resources like this to work with. In the past we have always been told by our professors and mentors that we should not recreate the wheel, meaning we should use already made resources to enhance our teaching practice. But, in a university context when working towards my degree I found that professors wanted our own ideas portrayed through the many lesson plans that we were instructed to create. I found that this assignment allowed me to really recognize what it meant to not recreate the wheel without having the feeling of guilt creep while using other resources. I also appreciated that we were given pages on where to find resources that were useful for both the project and future classrooms. In the past, I have found that some resources that we were given were great for the project that we had in front of us but, when I entered my practicum I found it harder to utilize the resources given. In some regards, the resources could be integrated flawlessly but, in others, it required so much work to alter it to exactly what I needed it for within the classroom.
Well this is new… (studenting → teachering)
Working through this assignment I found that it was very different from assignments I’ve completed previously. Previous assignments usually required the creation of a lesson or unit. They usually required us to reinvent the wheel to a degree. When I was on my practicum, I found that it was usually far from true. Teachers willingly borrowed and adapted from each other, sometimes without regard to copyrights. I found that this assignment was much more applicable to practice and also made sure we kept copyright laws in mind.
The notion of taking something that exists and making it better was new to me and especially for a university assignment. This afforded me the opportunity to explore my creativity in a low-risk environment. I was able to swap out parts that I didn’t like with elements that I believed to be more meaningful and applicable to fifth grade students in Alberta. I noticed that the designated homework assignments didn’t align with the lesson or the curricular objectives. As I was remixing, I made it a point to revamp it to provide students the opportunity to practice the strategies learned in class. It was interesting to find out that in order to find a unit that aligned with grade 5, we had to actually take a look at the grade 4 units.
Unnecessarily stressful to create from scratch
Something I learnt while completing this project was that it is okay not to reinvent the wheel...As a teacher, you are constantly thinking on different methods to enhance your teaching and adhere to your students' learning styles. That is stressful as is. Piling on creating original material adds on unnecessary stress. Completing this project allowed me to further research other open resources I could potentially use in my career. To my surprise there were alot of open resources readily available. I found some math resources as well as language arts and science.
What real teachers do
“Practicing remixing an existing educational resource was one of the most valuable experiences of my degree. Designing entire units from scratch is incredibly time consuming, and frankly, requires a level of expertise that new, inexperienced teachers may not have yet...This type of assignment seemed to be a more accurate reflection of what real teachers do more often than designing everything on their own.”
Growth Mindset approach… (I’ll learn something.)
“This assignment presented an interesting challenge. Previously, my experience was creating materials that fit my personal teaching style, however remixing a resource that was already developed allowed me to see how others would go about teaching the same ideas but in a different manner. I wanted to go into this assignment with an open mind and ask myself what I would be willing to try if I were to teach this topic. Perhaps I would not choose these approaches myself, but they could be really effective in teaching this content therefore I did not want to be extremely critical when remixing.”
“I would not say that much of my learning from this assignment was in the way of actual mathematics but more geared around pedagogy, unit design and unit delivery.”
Why is working in Teams not normalized in PST-Ed?
“It was great to be able to work on this assignment as a team. This was a new approach for all of us and it was great to work together on it. This helped us share ideas and seek advice from one other. Successful teaching is usually a team effort and a collaboration between the teaching team. This assignment helped us play to our strengths. Each one of us was able to fill an area the other might have been uncomfortable with.”
“Some strategies I learnt while completing this project was the importance of teamwork. Becoming a teacher will mean that you will have to work as a team. With your division staff as well as the school as a whole. Working together with three other pre-service teachers allowed me to feel that team support to a certain extent. How we discussed the project as a team as well as the way we divided the project was the ideal way I would like to be supported when becoming a teacher.”
Learning one’s own curriculum better
“Finally, this project helped me to become more familiar with the Alberta Program of Studies (PoS) and how important it is that my lessons and unit plans align with it. It was surprisingly easy to adjust the unit plan so that it aligned with the Alberta PoS. This is exciting as it indicates that there are many resources available to me as a future teacher that I can simply tweak and adjust as needed. I do not have to come up with everything from scratch! We did have to adjust various aspects of the unit plan. For example, we changed the worksheets to only include Canadian currency and changed measurements from the imperial system of the United States to the metric system of Canada. Again, these were very simple changes to make and it resulted in perfectly usable and applicable worksheets for our classrooms.
Prior to taking this course, I had never been introduced to Open Educational Resources (such as SFUSD) and just how impactful they can be for developing and executing a lesson/unit.”
Developing an attitude to value openness
“This project is going to be useful when we start teaching. We now have this amazing unit plan altered to the Alberta curriculum so teachers across the province can use it.”
“I enjoyed creating my own task cards and pulling ideas from other open resources such as Illustrative Mathematics.”
“Remixing this activity was much easier and also much harder than I anticipated. There are things that I did not need to adapt, but others that involved a lot of major adjustment. However, I appreciate what this assignment has taught me about how to approach remixing and I hope to incorporate it much more in my future planning and teaching”
“As a result of open education resources being available to educators, we are given a great starting point to form our lessons and units, along with the opportunity to adjust the lessons to our preferred pedagogy. This means that our classroom learning can be full of meaningful activities that promote kindness, diversity, and the importance of considering all that is around us. I am grateful for the opportunity to use open education resources in my practice. They not only save time and money, they give educators the opportunity to effectively plan their units and lessons, which in turn benefits the students at the end of these teachings.”
Necessary vs arbitrary change
Overall, I had a great experience remixing an OER and learning the importance of implementing “necessary change” rather than “change for the sake of change”. This assignment opened my eyes to the fact that there are so many terrific open-source resources waiting to be modified and supplemented to align with Alberta standards, and I am excited to continue remixing, exploring and implementing meaningful/engaging lessons in my future teaching career.
Experience, Confidence, Initiative, Connected
“this remixing exercise has helped show me that there are really good resources available to teachers. Additionally, it has helped remove some of the apprehension I might have felt towards using resources that follow a different curriculum than my own. I have increased my tangible experience adapting such resources and will have more confidence utilizing some in the future, many of which come from the United States. Indeed, I’ve actually started to explore the SFUSD resources outside the requirements of this assignment and have adapted numerous ideas for the pre-kindergarten classroom to whom I’m teaching right now. During my education degree, I have often felt that many of our required assignments are somewhat disconnected from the realities that we will face as new teachers. This assignment, in contrast, was refreshingly different as it gives us not only a tool we can use if we ever teach Grade 3, but the confidence to adapt other, similar tools as well.”
Challenges - Coordination, time, group size.
“Another challenge of the assignment was to coordinate the work of all group members in order to create a cohesive unit that demonstrated a clear progression of ideas and raveling of critical discernments...I believe the unit could have flowed better, considering the tasks were intended to check and consolidate understanding incrementally, and allow students to work with sets of critical discernments as they were ravelled gradually. This is something I would focus on more intensively if I had the time and opportunity to do this on my own; I will definitely be doing this when I have my own classroom.”
“Some cons to remixing however are that it can still take a considerable amount of time.”
“As for the format of the group assignment, I found it very hard to effectively work within a group that included 5 members. It was difficult in the sense that everyone had varying opinions on what content and how the format could be changed. I also found it difficult to consult with 5 people on meeting when part of our group showed up to class a limited amount of times. It also seemed as if two of our group members were not interested in collaborating as a group outside of class.”
More Culturally Relevant OER
“...the recipe used for the Milestone Task can be changed to something else, such as an Indigenous recipe or a recipe from another country. This could demonstrate how mathematics is a part of every culture in a very similar and important way, and this knowledge of ratios and proportions is not limited to the Western mathematics classroom.”
“In creating our unit plan, I felt that there was a clear link between wampum belts in the Iroquois confederacy and fractions. As I incorporated this into our unit, I made sure that students would understand the significance of wampum belts to those in the Iroquois confederacy, and give them an opportunity to create one of their own, letting them be creative and express their own beliefs and culture.”
“I found that the activities lacked the inclusion of ethnomathematics, therefore I scoured sources I knew of for a way to adapt some of my activities in order to incorporate this concept even more. I eventually remembered a video I had watched a while ago that explored the process of Nishijin weaving. This technique begins with an artist painting a design onto a piece of paper. This design is eventually enlarged to be woven on larger sizes of fabric. This fabric is then used in the crafting of objects such as clothes, bags, curtains, and much more. If I was giving this lesson to a group of students, I would change this lesson to make it related to their interests. I really appreciated how the whole unit involves a lot of scenario based problems because it can make students more interested in the activities if it involves math that surrounds them everyday.”
Most common adjectives for assignment
Remixing the Design (Graduate Student)
Linear Unit Design to Network/Fluid Design
Unit nested in fractal-like dynamic network �(more representative of actual teaching).
GRAD Responses
Open education resources are invaluable and enable me to engage in more thoughtful teaching practices. One open education resource I have been using more this year (since I’m attending a series of PD sessions about it) is First Steps in Mathematics. The first few times I looked at this Number Sense resource it was overwhelming - I think that might be a challenge with many open resources - and I didn’t know where to start. Since having some time to become more familiar with it, I have used many of the learning experiences as activities during intervention time. They enable small group experiences that are hands-on and don’t involve a lot of planning. I much prefer these activities to extra practice worksheets or only games as they create opportunities for students to create their own understanding without being scripted or too guided. They are focused on key ideas and I can easily link them to my own curriculum outcomes. As I become more familiar with the resource, I am constantly finding ways to implement it into my own practice and the collaborative discussions that have begun as a result of these resources continue to drive and shape our teaching daily.
Overcrowded and bureaucratic worries (trust issues)
“...the danger in online curricular selection is the undercutting of curricular coherence by the introduction of disjointed tasks that are of questionable quality, do not fit within the mathematical learning progression, and are incoherent. Perhaps the greatest danger is the potential for vast inconsistencies in instruction and highly variable learning experiences for students that in turn can lead to differences in student learning outcomes” (Larson, 2016).�
I completely agree. The sheer volume of math resources available online is overwhelming for an experienced teacher, let alone someone who is just starting out...
One of my main criticisms of the SFUSD Online Curriculum is that it is overcrowded with information. Auer argues that resources could be improved if they were more concise, with simple and clear materials (Auer, 2016). In addition, he mentions including better hooks and more open problems as additional improvements. Teachers also need access to strong open-ended questions to guide critical thinking, as with the work of Marian Small. I wonder if a school district would take the SFUSD and force its implementation by all math teachers to avoid inconsistencies in instruction and student outcomes? What happens in this case however, is teacher autonomy is at risk. One of the aspects of teaching I love most is the ability to exercise creativity and critical thinking when designing tasks and lessons. And while there are OERs that would support this endeavor, it is important to be able to pick and choose what fits best to allow both student understanding and teacher creativity to flourish.
Equity concerns
My thoughts on open education resources
Although I like the idea that resources are open for all to use and re-use or remix, I find the concept means that there is also resources that are not open, that are not accessible to every district, school, teacher and student. By doing so, we are limiting resources to those who can afford or have access to them. For education to be really about multi-species flourishing, everything should be open. Monetizing education creates inequity no matter what framework you use. In a real classroom setting, even paid resources are used, abused, remixed, redesigned and even shared from teachers. Some even make money by posting it on TeachersPayTeachers.
Maybe my views are too utopian to believe in a world where great education is accessible to everyone.
Flourishing with others
And finally working through this class allowed me to see just how much I flourish when engaged with colleagues in thought provoking content. It was the professional development that I didn’t know I needed. And it was inspiring in so many ways.
With Gratitude
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