Task Analysis

Goals of the Experience

1. Notice features of "good" mathematical tasks
2. Anticipate diverse ways for students to attempt a mathematical task

Overview of the Experience

The Task Analysis Experience calls for teacher candidates to

1. consider a rich mathematical task from multiple perspectives, and
2. consider how a student will approach the task.

The teacher candidate begins the experience with a classroom scenario, where Azul introduces the task to the groups of students in his class. The scenario pauses and teacher candidates answer a series of questions about the mathematical task. These questions were adapted from the Teachers Empowered to Advance Change in Mathematics Project (TEACH MATH) Task Lens found in the Analyzing Video Cases Activity within the Classroom Practices Module. The questions have the candidates considering the mathematics contained within the task, the quality of the task (e.g., cognitive demand), and the potential knowledge and resources (i.e., “funds of knowledge”) a student could draw on to attempt this task.

The experience ends when teacher candidates are called to make their own depictions. They create depictions for how one or more of the students will begin to solve the task. The depictions are shared in a discussion forum with their peers. Finally, teacher candidates are asked what they would do to maintain the cognitive demand of the task.

How to Use the Experience

If you would like to use this experience in a teacher education setting, please complete the Google Form on the "How to Access" page of this website.

Once you have gained access to the experience there are two ways for you to use this experience:

1. Use in the current form. Here are directions for how to clone an experience for your own use.
2. Use in the current form with a different task. This experience is designed as a "template" experience where different mathematical tasks can be quickly inserted into the experience for teacher candidates to consider different mathematical tasks. To use a different task:
   • Clone the experience,
   • Select the Agenda for the experience and "Save as" to your own Resources
   • Open up the Agenda in the Plan Tool
   • Copy a link to your desired task (I put pdfs of tasks within a shared Google Drive folder)
   • Insert a link to your task on Slides 2 and 4 by highlighting the text and using the "http" button within the Plan tool.
   • Save the agenda
   • Open up the cloned experience
   • Replace the agenda with the agenda you just modified.