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Sixth-grade students at Jessie Clark Middle School who worked with the REAL curriculum.
Ready, set, action! College faculty are returning
to the K-5 classroom with a camera crew in tow. In
this study, faculty team up with elementary teachers
to help develop the way they respond to students’
comments and questions during lessons (known as
“professional noticing” skills). The videos will benefit
generations of teachers to come.
“When caught
in the hustle and
bustle of class,
teachers don’t
always stop and
think about what
students are saying
in response to
their teaching,”
Dr. Jonathan Thomas interacts said Dr. Molly
with students during videotaping Fisher, principal
for professional noticing research investigator of the
study. “In fact, they
may have only a
few seconds to decide how to respond to a student’s
question or comment.”
That moment is critical. The way a child
understands mathematics is likely different from
an adult’s perception. Great teachers have acquired
the skill to interpret the way the child is taking in
the lesson, and then respond based on that child’s
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understanding. Doing this in the heat of the moment,
with 20 sets of eyes on a teacher, can be challenging.
When done well, it can be the key to a student
catching on, versus losing interest and falling behind.
During the videotaped teaching sessions,
university faculty team with elementary teachers
to help dig deeper as students respond to lessons.
The videos have been turned into online learning
modules used by pre-service elementary teachers and
will soon serve as online professional development
for current teachers.
The experiences are also rich in data for
researchers to interpret.
Because of positive results and a collaborative
approach with partners at Morehead State
University, Northern Kentucky University, Western
Kentucky University, Eastern Kentucky University
and the Kentucky Center for Mathematics, the
National Science Foundation has continued its
initial $200,000 investment in the project with an
additional $500,000 to continue the study.
The level of collaboration on this project
even extends to undergraduate college students.
Hands-on investigations are typically reserved
for graduate programs. However, the UK STEM
Department serves as a host site for the National
Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for