Prove It! Engaging Teachers as Learners to Enhance Conceptual Understanding -- Journal Article

Gathering teachers for a staff development workshop is a great way to get teachers thinking about the way they teach their students. In this article, teachers are asked to prove their answers rather than just telling the answer to a fraction problem. Doing so makes teachers think about the way they ask students to present their answers in their own classroom. Teachers need to learn to teach for understanding and discovery so students can be more comfortable with mathematics.

The activity presented to the teachers asked them to find the answer to a simple fraction problem. When asked how they got the answer they said "I found common denominators and multiplied." The facilitator then asked them to prove how that works; this is where teachers found the problem to be difficult. This opened the activity to other activities all throughout the mathematic spectrum. With these activities teachers realize the most important part of a math problem is discovering how to do it, not the answer to the problem. Learning for understanding is important to teachers also, not just the students. Teachers also need to reflect on their teaching experiences that way they have a better understanding of what to teach and how to teach it. In the end, learning is not a one step process its an entire circuit of questions, answers, and discovery.

Sweetland, J. and Fogarty, M. (2008). Prove it! Engaging teachers as learners to enhance

conceptual understanding. Teaching Children Mathematics 15(2), 68-73.