Elham Kazemi | University of Washington (original) (raw)

Papers by Elham Kazemi

International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, 2018

In this paper, we explore the ways in which learning more about research on students' experiences... more In this paper, we explore the ways in which learning more about research on students' experiences in mathematics classrooms has the potential to transform the work we do with teachers in teacher preparation, professional development, and research settings. We focus in particular on questions of student access to and participation in mathematics and highlight studies of the racialized and gendered experiences of students and the connections between these experiences and broader narratives about race, gender, and ability/disability. We conclude with questions and possibilities raised by these studies for our individual and collective efforts to support and understand teacher learning and changes in teacher practice.

Educational Researcher, 2021

Recent innovations in professional development are rife with a wide array of efforts focused on t... more Recent innovations in professional development are rife with a wide array of efforts focused on teacher collaboration. In this essay, we address some of the unexamined assumptions about the nature and significance of interactions in teacher professional collaboration, drawing on the concept of the “fourth wall” from theater and film studies. The fourth wall is a term used to describe the invisible wall that separates actors from their audience. We use this metaphor to interrogate the function of the fourth wall in professional learning and argue that it reflects a culture of professional learning that, despite innovations that tout teacher collaboration, upholds isolation in teaching and teacher learning and deep embedded norms of noninterference in one another’s practice. We also attend to the possibilities for supporting teacher learning that breaching the fourth wall affords when shared enactments of practice are used as a context for teachers’ sensemaking and collaboration.

Cognition and Instruction, 2022

Abstract Researcher-practitioner collaborations often stop short of engaging researchers and teac... more Abstract Researcher-practitioner collaborations often stop short of engaging researchers and teachers in collectively negotiating the moment-to-moment improvizational decision-making of instructional practice when students are present. We consider the potential for learning at one boundary that often exists between researchers and practitioners as they collaborate on instructional practice: the boundary between performing-teaching and observing-teaching. We draw on performance studies to conceptualize this boundary as a fourth wall. Our analysis examines researcher-practitioner collaboration across four sites in which participants were learning together about the complex work of facilitating student discussion. We analyze how one boundary crossing routine provided opportunities for researchers and practitioners to interact at the boundary of the fourth wall during enactment of discussion-based instruction with students. To analyze episodes of this routine, we draw on conceptualizations of potential learning mechanisms of boundary crossing in research-practice partnerships. Our findings identify and describe the mechanisms for researcher/practitioner learning that arose when our participants crossed the boundary of the fourth wall: perspective taking, boundary spanning, and recognition of shared problem spaces. We argue that these learning mechanisms create potential for researchers and practitioners to wrestle with and learn about the challenges and opportunities within facilitation of student discussions.

Democracy education, 2018

In this response to KalenicCraig’s (2017) article, “The Rights of the Learner: A Framework For Pr... more In this response to KalenicCraig’s (2017) article, “The Rights of the Learner: A Framework For Promoting Equity through Dynamic Formative Assessment,” I consider what implications the RotL framework has for the work that teachers and students must do in learning environments where these rights flourish. The RotL emphasizes student sensemaking and communication in the classroom. Given the realities of classrooms as racialized, gendered, and classed spaces, this emphasis on communication demands critical consciousness for both teachers and students. This article is in response to KalinecCraig, C. A. (2017). The Rights of the Learner: A Framework for Promoting Equity through Formative Assessment in Mathematics Education. Democracy and Education, 25(2), Article 5. Available at: https:// democracyeducationjournal .org/ home/ vol25/ iss2/ 5 Mathematics educators have been increasingly attentive to the ways the teaching and learning of mathematics advance or undermine our goals for equity ...

This interactive poster session highlights findings from the first two years of the Teachers as L... more This interactive poster session highlights findings from the first two years of the Teachers as Learners initiative, sponsored by the James S. McDonnell Foundation. In 2018, ten research teams were funded to explore cognitive, sociocultural, and systemic dimensions of teachers learning to implement challenging instruction and classroom discourse in service of promoting students’ engagement and agency in the intellectual work of subject matter learning. The quintessential question these projects address is how teachers learn what they need to know and be able to do to create such contexts. Cross-cutting themes address contexts of professional learning, reflective practice, and iterative cycles of design, enactment, and re-design. ICLS 2020 Proceedings 2151 © ISLS

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 2019

Background/Context The literature review by Phelps in this special issue highlights the challenge... more Background/Context The literature review by Phelps in this special issue highlights the challenges of research–practice partnerships and other forms of insider–outsider collaboration in education. In addition to addressing well-known challenges, this case study article focuses on the full-service community school model as a strategy to address holistic needs of students, families, and staff in poverty-impacted school contexts. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This article documents work that was conducted across five years, when a large research university partnered with an urban elementary school to establish a full-service community school. It provides an account of the assets, challenges, and processes that impacted our work, from the planning phase through four years of implementation. It describes efforts around four main areas: academic excellence, extended learning, holistic health and wellness, and family engagement. Research Design This is a participatory ...

Journal of Teacher Education, 2015

In recent years, work in practice-based teacher education has focused on identifying and elaborat... more In recent years, work in practice-based teacher education has focused on identifying and elaborating how teacher educators (TEs) use pedagogies of enactment to learn in and from practice. However, research on these pedagogies is still in its early development. Building on prior analyses, this article elaborates a particular pedagogy of enactment, rehearsal, developed through a collaboration of elementary mathematics TEs across three institutions. Rehearsals are embedded within learning cycles that provide repeated opportunities for novice teachers (NTs) to investigate, reflect on, and enact teaching through coached feedback. This article shares a set of insights gained from 5 years of developing, studying, and learning how to support NTs’ enactment in rehearsal. The insights we share in this article contribute to building a knowledge base for pedagogies of teacher education.

This research report examines the resources leaders access as they engage in collective mathemati... more This research report examines the resources leaders access as they engage in collective mathematical activity. By examining resources we explore how leaders' participation in the collective work looks and sounds different across groups. Furthermore, through our mixed-method research design we investigate possible linkages between leaders' resources and a group's mathematical knowledge for teaching. This novel use of MKT is central in our exploratory study to raise questions and hypotheses about what leaders need to know to lead. Background The data for this paper were drawn from Researching Mathematics Leader Learning (RMLL) 2 investigating how leaders learn to cultivate mathematically rich learning environments for teachers. Two key assumptions under gird our work. First, to improve children's mathematical learning, teachers need to develop deep understandings of mathematics (Ball & Bass, 2000; Hill et al., 2005; Ma, 1999). Second, leaders of mathematics PD need to learn to create and nurture PD climates where teachers have rich opportunities to grapple with and understand mathematics more deeply (Wilson & Bern, 1999). There is widespread agreement that improving teaching and learning requires that teachers participate in high-quality PD (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1999; Loucks-Horsley et al., 2003). However, what leaders need to know in order to construct high quality PD is under-defined (Even, 2004; Stein et al., 1999). We have chosen, with sound theoretical support, to focus on developing leaders' understandings of norms for mathematical reasoning or sociomathematical (SM) norms. These are the norms that guide the ways people interact mathematically (Yackel & Cobb, 1996). Our work is informed by the classroom research on SM norms where norms are established and cultivated in students' mathematical activity (Kazemi & Stipek, 2001; Yackel & Cobb, 1996). We extend this work, focusing on how leaders may engage teachers in mathematically rich environments where productive SM norms are essential in supporting mathematical discussion and debate 3. This paper examines the mathematical resources leaders bring to mathematical activity to understand what might be entailed in leaders developing an understanding of productive SM norms and putting these norms into practice in mathematics PD. We recognize that leaders' collective mathematical activity is not the same as leaders working with teachers on mathematics. We conjecture that if we know what resources leaders have access to, and how the resources are taken up by leaders when collectively engaged in productive mathematical activity, then we may better understand what resources are available to leaders and perhaps needed to cultivate mathematically rich PD environments.

Leaders of professional development (PD) are asked to engage in ambitious teacher learning if cur... more Leaders of professional development (PD) are asked to engage in ambitious teacher learning if current calls for mathematics reform are going to be advanced in classrooms. Researchers have shown that the effectiveness of mathematics professional development to support teacher learning is directly linked to the quality of facilitation and yet little research has focused on the actual work of PD leaders (Banilower et al., 2006; Even, 2008). In this chapter we report on findings from a leader development project examining leaders’ uses of justification as they engaged in mathematical work and connections between leaders’ mathematical work and their work with students and teachers. Our findings show that leaders’ uses of mathematical justification built and drew on mathematical knowledge for teaching (Ball et al., 2008). Furthermore, they spoke about how this knowledge was useful for teaching students. However, leaders had difficulty using these ideas to support the teachers with whom th...

This chapter is focused on building teachers’ content knowledge through professional development.... more This chapter is focused on building teachers’ content knowledge through professional development. Through our leadership-preparation project (Researching Mathematics Leader Learning [RMLL]), we are creating resources for leaders of professional development to engage teachers with mathematics by solving and discussing solutions to mathematical tasks. We aim to support leaders in cultivating mathematically rich learning environments for teachers by focusing leaders on the normative ways teachers engage with mathematical explanation. Our approach to making sense of leaders’ thinking is based on the contention that we need to identify important features in professional development for leaders if they are to reason about, act on, and learn from these professional development experiences. Research on teacher noticing supports this goal through a focus on identifying and making sense of complex teaching situations (Jacobs, Lamb, Philipp, & Schappelle, 2009; Sherin, 2007; Star & Strickland,...

Urban Education, 2008

Although most educators would agree that enacting cultural relevance in the classroom is always a... more Although most educators would agree that enacting cultural relevance in the classroom is always a complex process, we have too few examples in the research literature of what that complexity looks like and how it plays out in highly diverse classrooms. Drawing on a range of qualitative data sources, this case study examines how one teacher's interpretation of culturally relevant pedagogy bumped up against children's ideas about their own and others' cultural and racial positionings in an elementary classroom where both cultural background and race varied. The authors argue that it is vital for teachers and researchers to consider cases such as this if we are to better understand and respond to the complexities of substantively engaging children in issues of culture and race in diverse public school communities.

Journal of Teacher Education, 2009

Filling the knowledge gap in the limited research on professional development leaders is an urgen... more Filling the knowledge gap in the limited research on professional development leaders is an urgent issue if teacher learning is to be improved. This research and development project is studying how leaders learn to cultivate mathematically rich professional development environments. The authors adapted two frameworks from classroom-based research—sociomathematical norms and practices for orchestrating productive discussion—to support leaders’ understanding of facilitation of mathematics professional development. In this article, the authors describe the use of these frameworks in their work and argue for a third framework—the mathematical knowledge for teaching. Based on the analysis of their work, they believe that mathematics professional development leaders need to cultivate particular sociomathematical norms for teacher explanation and employ practices for orchestrating discussions to achieve the purposeful development of teachers’ specialized knowledge of mathematics for teaching.

Journal of Teacher Education, 2013

Currently, the field of teacher education is undergoing a major shift—a turn away from a predomin... more Currently, the field of teacher education is undergoing a major shift—a turn away from a predominant focus on specifying the necessary knowledge for teaching toward specifying teaching practices that entail knowledge and doing. In this article, the authors suggest that current work on K-12 core teaching practices has the potential to shift teacher education toward the practice of teaching. However, the authors argue that to realize this vision we must reimagine not only the curriculum for learning to teach but also the pedagogy of teacher education. We present one example of what we mean by reimagined teacher education pedagogy by offering a framework through which to conceptualize the preparation of teachers organized around core practices. From our perspectives, this framework could be the backbone of a larger research and development agenda aimed at engaging teachers and teacher educators in systematic knowledge generation regarding ambitious teaching and teacher education pedago...

Annual Meeting of the American …, 2006

This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of a classroom event in which fourth and fifth ... more This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of a classroom event in which fourth and fifth grade students in a highly diverse urban school interpreted, discussed and responded to a district survey intended to illuminate the social climate of the city's schools, with a particular focus ...

Peabody Journal of Education, 2014

In this article, we argue that teaching is and should be a central element to learning to teach, ... more In this article, we argue that teaching is and should be a central element to learning to teach, particularly as teacher education once again turns toward practice. From this perspective, we must elaborate how such a shift addresses the need to bridge the gap between knowledge for teaching and knowledge from teaching, between theory and practice, and among university courses and fieldwork. If the intent of such a shift is to fundamentally change the preparation of teachers, we argue that it requires teacher education programs to do more than increase the amount of time candidates spend in clinical field placements. It requires, we argue, that teacher educators engage in simultaneous innovation in three related, but distinct aspects of program design and implementation: organizational structures and policies, content and curriculum, and teacher education pedagogy. Without such dynamic engagement, the practice-turn will go the way of many past reforms in teacher education—it will be symbolic but not significant or meaningful.

Reading & Writing Quarterly, 2006

ABSTRACT We analyze a particular pedagogy for learning to interact productively with students and... more ABSTRACT We analyze a particular pedagogy for learning to interact productively with students and subject matter, which we call “rehearsal.” Our goal is to specify a way in which teacher educators (TEs) and novice teachers (NTs) can interact around teaching that is both embedded in practice and amenable to analysis. We address two main research questions: (a) What do TEs and NTs do together during the kind of rehearsals we have developed to prepare novices for the complex, interactive work of teaching? and (b) Where, in what they do, are there opportunities for NTs to learn to enact the principles, practices, and knowledge entailed in ambitious teaching? We detail what happens in rehearsals using quantitative and qualitative methods. We begin with the results of our quantitative analyses to characterize how typical rehearsals were structured and what was worked on. We then show how NTs and TEs worked together to enable novices to study principled practice through qualitative analyses of a particularly salient aspect of ambitious teaching, namely, eliciting and responding to students’ performance.