PLENARY SESSIONS

In this talk, I share findings from my research program which examines mathematics teaching as situated pedagogical sensemaking. For over two decades, I have analyzed teachers’ talk in workplace and in professional learning settings as found talk aloud protocols about the problems of practice teachers encounter in their work. By centering teachers as problem solvers, I have identified key aspects of pedagogical sensemaking: (1) the challenge of representing ephemeral and contingent classroom interactions; (2) the conceptual infrastructures (e.g., policies, curricula, department cultures) teachers draw on or resist as they make sense of problems of practice; and (3) the centrality of pedagogical judgment in contending with the non-ideal nature of teaching situations. These findings point to the situated nature of teaching and teacher learning and point to the need to engage teachers as agentic problem solvers rather than passive implementers.

Creating assessments of student knowledge is an integral part of course design as institutions require faculty to report a final grade that, in theory, reflects a student’s knowledge of the content. Designing an objective mathematical assessment is challenging at best but likely impossible. However, instructors can include a variety of formal and informal evaluations to provide multiple perspectives of their students’ knowledge and capabilities. The corpus of assessments used in a course is sometimes referred to as the assessment diet. I will provide an overview of some alternative assessment strategies and two case studies of how the implementation of these strategies affected student success. In the first case study, we will discuss how more frequent, lower stakes assessment practices in College Algebra led to a decrease in DFW rates. We will examine the implementation of oral check-ins in an Introduction to Proof Course. Wrapping up, we will discuss the pros and cons of alternative assessment methods and implications for teaching in the age of AI.