James P. Bywater

This chapter explores how using explanatory mathematical student writing artifacts can be used to position teachers to attend to, interpret, and respond to student mathematical thinking from an iterative and engaged stance. This chapter argues that as conceptualizations of teacher noticing shift from a view that is linear and detached to a view that is iterative and engaged, a corresponding shift should occur in the learning to notice activities that pre-service teachers engage in. The chapter proposes the idea of text clubs, and explores, with two illustrative examples, how pre-service teacher discussions that center explanatory mathematical student writing artifacts offer a potential alternative to the predominant role of video clubs that center teaching video artifacts, and how this approach may support the advancement of new paths for mathematical writing research. Request access from your librarian to read this chapter's full text.

This multiple case study focused on the implementation of a computer-aided design (CAD) simulation to help students engage in engineering design to learn science concepts. Our findings describe three case studies that adopted the same learning design and adapted it to three different populations, settings, and classroom contexts: at the middle-school, high-school, and pre-service teaching levels. Although the classroom orchestration of the particular learning design was customised for specific audiences and contexts, findings from this study suggest that the core components of the learning design, such as content, assessment, and pedagogy, and their alignment among them, resulted in students’ learning. Specifically, results from a pre-post science assessment suggest that the three student groups arrived at similar understanding post-intervention levels, along with a significant aggregate growth in their scientific understanding. Regarding design performance, students in different groups demonstrated different levels of success in meeting design constraints. The findings also suggest that students’ success rate in meeting the design constraints directly influenced their final design performance, where middle-school students had better performance than students in the other groups. That is, across the board, students increased their conceptual understanding of heat transfer, Earth, and solar science and were able to produce feasible designs. Implications of the study include how learning experiences with engineering and science simulations should be designed so that teachers can adopt and adapt materials for their specific audiences, contexts, and settings.