Wiki Laboratory Notebooks: Supporting Student Learning in Collaborative Inquiry-Based Laboratory Experiments

Recent examples of high-impact teaching practices in the undergraduate chemistry laboratory that include course-based undergraduate research experiences and inquiry-based experiments require new approaches to assessing individual student learning outcomes. Instructors require tools and strategies that can provide them with insight into individual student contributions to collaborative group/teamwork throughout the processes of experimental design, data analysis, display and communication of their outcomes in relation to their research question(s). Traditional assessments in the form of laboratory notebooks or experimental reports provide limited insight into the processes of collaborative inquiry-based activities. A wiki environment offers a collaborative domain that can potentially support collaborative laboratory processes and scientific record keeping. In this study, the effectiveness of the wiki in supporting laboratory learning and assessment has been evaluated through analysis of the content and histories for three consenting, participating groups of students. The conversational framework has been applied to map the relationships between the instructor, tutor, students and laboratory activities. Analytics that have been applied to the wiki platform include: character counts, page views, edits, timelines and the extent and nature of the contribution by each student to the wiki. Student perceptions of both the role and the impact of the wiki on their experiences and processes have also been collected. Evidence has emerged from this study that the wiki environment has enhanced co-construction of understanding of both the experimental process and subsequent communication of outcomes and data. A number of features are identified to support success in the use of the wiki platform for laboratory notebooks.     

Preservice Teachers' Stories Of Mathematics Classrooms: Explorations Of Practice Through Fictional Accounts

This report describes four preservice secondary teachers' fictional accounts about mathematics classrooms. The narrative structures and meanings of the preservice teachers' stories, written while the preservice teachers were enrolled in a secondary methods course, were examined with the goal of gaining insight into the preservice teachers' emerging identities as mathematics teachers. Although past research has examined experienced teachers' stories, little research, if any, has focused on stories written by preservice mathematics teachers or on intentionally fictional stories about mathematics classrooms. This report uses methods of narrative analysis to develop understandings about preservice teachers' storied identities and specifies areas for further investigation into the role of narrative in mathematics teacher education.     

Beliefs About the Teacher’s Role in the Mathematics Classroom: One Student Teacher’s Explorations in Fiction and in Practice

This case study of a preservice secondary mathematics teacher focuses on the teacher’s beliefs about his role as mathematics teacher. Data were collected over the final 5 months of the teacher’s university teacher education program through interviews, written course assignments, and observations of student-teaching. Findings indicate that the preservice teacher valued classroom roles in which students, rather than the teacher, explained traditional mathematics content. As his student-teaching internship progressed, the teacher began to develop new roles and engaged students in additional mathematical processes. These results emphasize the need for preservice teachers to recognize how teacher and student roles impact interrelationships between understanding and mathematical activity, and illustrate the nature of teacher learning that can occur during an internship.