Abstract
The following is a report on an investigation into ways of supporting teachers in converting challenging mathematics tasks into classroom lessons and supporting students in engaging with those tasks. Groups of primary and secondary teachers, respectively, were provided with documentation of ten lessons built around challenging tasks. Teachers responded to survey items in both Likert and free format style after teaching the ten lessons. The responses of the teacher participants indicate that the lesson structure we proposed was helpful, and the elements of the lessons suggested to teachers were both necessary and sufficient for supporting students in engaging with the challenging tasks. Implications for teacher educators and curriculum developers are offered.
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The Encouraging Persistence Maintaining Challenge project is funded through an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant (DP110101027) and is a collaboration between the authors and their institutions. The views expressed are those of the authors. We acknowledge the generous participation of the project schools.
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Sullivan, P., Askew, M., Cheeseman, J. et al. Supporting teachers in structuring mathematics lessons involving challenging tasks. J Math Teacher Educ 18, 123–140 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-014-9279-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-014-9279-2