RME 2015 Research-to-Practice Conference

By Megan Hancock

Imagine a freshly baked chocolate cake. Now imagine the individual ingredients before they were mixed together and baked.  Would you rather eat a freshly baked cake or the individual ingredients? Most people would prefer to eat the freshly baked cake!  Without the TEKS Mathematical Process Standards, mathematics instruction is just like the individual ingredients for the cake.  The individual activities can stand alone, but when the activities are integrated with the process standards, mathematics becomes much more rich and enjoyable.  The TEKS mathematical process standards can be difficult to implement, but the presenters at the fourth annual Research-to-Practice Conference hosted by the Research in Mathematics Education (RME) Department at Southern Methodist University (SMU) provided attendees with examples and resources to facilitate their implementation.  

The TEKS Mathematical Process Standards describe ways that students should be interacting with mathematics. When the process standards are integrated with mathematics instruction, students are able to problem solve, discuss their mathematical thinking, apply mathematics to real world concepts, and analyze mathematical relationships.  I connected the process standards to a high school mathematics lesson that I displayed during the poster presentation.  “Double Stuffed” was an activity geared towards the first unit in an AP Statistics. I found the lesson on Statistics Education Web (STEW) and modified it to incorporate the TEKS Mathematical Process Standards.  Students are presented with the task of determining whether double stuffed Oreos really do have double the stuffing of single stuffed Oreos.  This was an open ended task, so students were welcome to use whatever methods they saw fit to answer this question.  Students used multiple representations to communicate their mathematical thinking and multiple strategies to solve this problem.   This lesson could also be used throughout the entire year to weave other statistical knowledge and skills together around one task.  

Teachers often struggle with ways to create authentic mathematics tasks that integrate the process standards, but there are many resources available to teachers to help incorporate the standards.  NextLesson provides teachers with real-world problem solving activities that are personalized to students’ interests.  Each activity has multiple different versions so students are able to learn the same concepts while working on a problem that interests them.  Spark 101 Mathematics provides 10-minute video case studies related to science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.  These videos provide teachers with the beginning to a lesson that incorporates real world mathematical topics.

Each presenter at the RME Research-to-Practice conference discussed different mathematics activities that effectively implemented the process standards.  Dr. Candace Walkington, an assistant professor at SMU, discussed personalizing students’ mathematical tasks.  According to Walkington, Sherman, and Howell (2014), “personalized learning can help students meet the Common Core Standards by allowing them to reason abstractly while contextualizing and decontextualizing mathematical ideas and to model situations with mathematics and by providing support for making sense of problems and persevering.” This statement also holds true for the TEKS Mathematical Process Standards.  Personalization goes hand-in-hand with the process standards.  Students will better interact with mathematics if they feel it has an importance in their lives.  

The TEKS Mathematical Process Standards turn mathematics instruction from independent activities to rich, real world activities.  Attending mathematical conferences allows teachers to learn about current research, best practices, and helpful resources.  Teachers are also able to converse with other teachers from different schools and districts to learn what works best in their classes.  The RME 2015 Research-to-Practice Conference did just that.  When standards change, teachers often struggle with adopting new practices to best implement the new standards.  The discussions at the RME Conference provided teachers with ideas for implementation of the TEKS Mathematical Process Standards. 

According to Cherrstrom (2012), “graduate students and professionals who attend conferences have the potential to enjoy and benefit from making a variety of connections” (p. 148).  Attending mathematical conferences allows teachers to learn about current research, best practices, and helpful resources.  Teachers are also able to converse with other teachers from different schools and districts to learn what works best in their classes.  The RME 2015 Research-to-Practice Conference did just that.  When standards change, teachers often struggle with adopting new practices to best implement the new standards.  The discussions at the RME Conference provided teachers with ideas for implementation of the TEKS Mathematical Process Standards.

Walkington, C., Sherman, M., & Howell, E. (2014).  Personalized learning in algebra. The Mathematics Teacher, 108(4), p. 272-279.