0:00  
Hello and thank you for listening to the mathematics teacher educator journal podcast. The mathematics teacher educator journal is co sponsored by the Association of mathematics teacher educators and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. My name is Eva Anheuser and I'm talking with Ken Holland brands, and Valerie Faulkner, both at North Carolina State University, who are currently the editors for the journal, we are discussing the editorial they co authored with Heather West and Emily Elrod, titled analyzing eight years of mathematics teacher educator articles, where we were, where we are and where we're going. Published in the June 2020, issue of the mathematics teacher educator journal, we will begin by summarizing the main points, and then go through talking about different things of the editorial, Valerie, and Karen, thank you so much for joining us.

0:53  
Thank you.

0:54  
Yeah. Thanks for having us. Yeah.

0:56  
So let's look back over eight years crazy that this journal is already out for eight years? Let's start by talking about the main goals for the journal. And have they remained the same? Or have they changed?

1:11  
Yeah, I think the goals of the journal have stayed the same. For the last eight years. As you know, Hank Smith and Melissa Boston were the original editors of the journal. And they along with the editorial board worked really hard in coming up with a vision, a vision for the journal, that it would be one that is for mathematics teacher educators, that contributes to our professional knowledge base, about what we know about teaching and preparing mathematics teachers. But it's more than just sharing activities, you need to be critically examining the tools and the innovations that we're using, collecting evidence and sharing that evidence, so that the knowledge that we're developing can be examined and evaluated over time and improved upon. And so that goal and mission, which was established eight years ago, really is still center, and central to what we do in the journal.

2:09  
Okay, so I'm trying to actively listen and summarize what I think I heard. The idea for the articles is to support mathematics teacher educators, and in the way where we share some kind of intervention that we did. And we describe it in enough detail that other people can also use it. Is that summarizing that accurately?

2:35  
Yes, absolutely. We also have articles, though, that might be theoretical in nature, right? So rather than a tool or a lesson, or some sort of instrument, it might be this conceptual idea, or framework, in which case, we still want to see how it connects to existing research and literature, and understand the ways that it could be used by mathematics teacher educators in their own settings.

3:02  
Okay, so there's two kinds of articles one deals with some innovation or tool and the other one's more theoretical. Could you get it give an example of what that could look like?

3:12  
Right. So recently, Lynette Guzman published an article in which she shared an activity that could be used by mathematics teacher educators in their class with teachers, to help them think about their own position in relation to mathematics, and teaching and their students. And so while there was an activity, the main nature of that particular article was to talk about how teachers positions in relation to mathematics and teaching was shifting. Okay, so that sounds more like a intervention or a tool.

3:59  
Question? Yeah.

4:00  
Yeah. Karen, I think that she was, it was theoretically based in the sense that the warrants, you know, the bridge from the argument was more theoretically based. So the way that she positioned her work was making the argument that we need to use this dissonance that we sometimes have will say something like, you know, all kids can learn math, but then we'll say something like math people ran and asking kids to, or young pre service teachers to deal with that sort of dissonance and make sense of that. So her supporting argument, or bridge or warrant was more theoretical in nature, as opposed to you know, read more research based in nature.

4:48  
I remember talking to her and it was such a powerful conversation that I actually ended up using what I talked to her about the next day in my class. Wow. Yeah. So let's move on to the next question who should read the journal?

5:05  
So this is Valerie again. And yeah, so the journal is designed for anybody who is a mathematics teacher educator. So if you're involved in the preparation of teachers, that could be in service teachers, you might be a math coach, you could be at the university level, you could be a school district specialist, we're trying to create a forum where we can all engage in the sort of activity of getting better at the work of being a mathematics teacher educator. So yeah, we would like all those different people to read it. Certainly we're working to have more of the articles be more directly related to the work in schools, particularly with coaches. But we have a good variety of articles that our interventions or innovations that happened within the university setting, and then those that happen, oftentimes with university professors, but in the school setting, and I know that one of the reasons that this podcast was created was to allow people to kind of just listen to a brief summary of the paper so they could see whether it would make sense for them to read it. So people could listen to the podcasts before or after, and then decide whether they need to, or want to further get further information.

6:28  
Okay, let's move on to discussing a little bit about the history of the journal. And I know I'm gonna ask Karen, do you want to just talk to us a little bit more about how it got established and how it's developed? from there?

6:45  
Yeah, sure. So for a number of years, we've had practitioner journals for mathematics, teachers, teaching children, math, math, in the middle school, and the mathematics teacher. And the journals would receive articles that were really not good fits for those journals, because they were addressing Teachers of Mathematics at those different levels. And so given the need for a journal that was specific for mathematics, teacher educators, the journal was established. And so as I mentioned, peg Smith and Melissa Boston were the first editors of the journal. And they worked really hard to establish this vision of what a practitioner journal would look like for mathematics teacher educators. And then they worked with the second set of editors, which were Sandra Crespo and Kristin beta. And again, we're because this journal is very different from maybe a research journal, they worked on articulating a writing tool to help authors in thinking about what are the key pieces that need to be included in the manuscript that's appropriate for the journal. And so then Valerie and I picked up the journal recently. And some of the things that we've been thinking about is the mathematics teacher educator is an online journal. So what are some ways in which we can take advantage of its online presence in terms of sharing videos or technology tools, or other things that we can do, because it's online, we've also tried to work really hard in reducing the turnaround time. So when an author submits their manuscript, we want to make sure that they get a decision about whether or not it's been accepted or whether they should revise it, or maybe it's just not a good fit. So we've been working to get that to about three to four months by the time they get the first decision. And we've also are really excited to announce that we have our first third issue in a volume. And so this year, you'll see mte issue that was published in June. Prior to that we've always had issues in September and March. And so it's it's good to see that we're getting lots of submissions appropriate for the journal that are being published in those issues. The goal was always to have four issues. So we're moving in the right direction. Also, we have a podcast now, as you mentioned, which we're really thrilled about, and it can extend the reach of the journal beyond our readers. And we have coming up next year a focus issue that will be on power and privilege. And we're looking forward to publishing that next year. We also worked to better describe what does a manuscript look like that might not be the typical intervention or tool. And so we updated the writing tool that Sandra and Kristen created to talk about what should be the key pieces for a theoretical type of article.

9:48  
Okay, cool. That's like a lot of things going on.

9:53  
For sure.

9:54  
So let's talk a little bit more about the editorials and what they are about and why should readers read the editorials?

10:05  
Yeah, so as I mentioned, the mte journal is a little bit different from a research journal. And so to communicate what this journal is all about, we've been using the editorials as a platform for doing so. And that was started with the first editors Peggy Melissa, and then carried on with Sandra and Kristin and Buckcherry, and myself and Valerie are trying to do that as well, where we pick sort of a piece of the writing tool, or a key feature of a manuscript for the journal or something that maybe makes it a little bit different, and try to communicate that to authors. So we've had editorials that focus on how do you describe your shared problem practice? or What does the evidence look like in an empty journal. And later on, in September, we'll be talking a little bit about the nature of those interventions and tools. And Valerie had a nice editorial where she compared a research article to an empty article, and highlighted the similarities and differences that she'll and she'll talk more about that.

11:08  
Yeah, I can talk a little bit about that. It was really fun to do to really think about what were the questions that people were asking us. And as we receive manuscripts, what were maybe sort of some common themes and how they weren't the exactly the fit that we were looking for. And so we created a diagram and an editorial where we compared the sort of stock understanding, we have as, as you know, professors about what is a research article look like, and then compare that to the niche we're trying to fill. So it helps people understand that we're, as Karen mentioned earlier, it's not just sort of sharing and caring, where we just share our interventions is that it's a little, it's a little bit between sharing and caring at a research article. So where there is expected that there is a warrant that is convincing, and lets people know, oh, wow, I've seen this is a really neat innovation. And they have some really nice evidence here, that this will probably work well, for me, too. So we just sort of tried to delineate that. So as people consider writing for the journal, that they have a guideline, and I will say that we built this on the work of the prior editors who had several editorials that were, you know, excellent, and help people understand these issues as well.

12:29  
Could you give an example of like a very clear difference between a regular research article and an empty paper?

12:38  
Yeah, sure. I mean, one of the things that will happen in a regular research article is that you there may be no innovation, it's it's sort of information, you may find that, you know, tracking students is damaging for their academic outcomes. Or you may find that I don't know, experience has an impact on effectiveness, or, you know, there's all different things that you could find that a regular research article that aren't about their information for us as a community. But that's different than, wow, I'm doing this thing. It's based on research, we have this shared problem with practice. And I've been doing this thing, and it's really working for me, this is how I know it's really working. And I think other mathematic teacher, educators may benefit from this instructional tool. So that's how it's different. It's, you might have a research article that's about an instructional tool. But ours are always almost always about something that we do, too, as part of our instruction that helps us to move people in a direction. So and that's where that shared problem practices so important. There's this thing like it's hard to get, you know, one shared problem practice, I know, Eva you've worked on is this idea that sometimes undergraduates don't even know that they don't know things. So that's a shared problem of practice. And then how, what kind of tools or perturbations Can you introduce that help them move to the next place?

14:12  
So would you say that replicability is a big part of an empty paper that somebody is able to actually go ahead and just implement what they read, versus that's not always possible from a research paper?

14:30  
Yes, I think in both cases, you do look for replicability. But in the research paper, you're trying to replicate that research and here, you're trying to take that tool and replicate that classroom experience, right and replicate that, that growth that you're trying to find in whoever it is that you're working with. So yeah, replicable in the sense. We call it portable. So it's like a portable tool that you can take and replicate that instructional experience.

14:58  
I think portable is a better word because I think what I meant to ask is that you actually have enough information in the article that you can go ahead and do the same thing, which isn't always true in research papers.

15:13  
Yes. And that's where the appendices come in really nicely. We have tend to have very, you know, thick, full dependencies where there's actual lesson plans, expected answers, you know, things like that. So, yeah, portable.

15:27  
Yeah. And I know that I have used a lot of the things that came out in mte papers, because I read them and I go, like, Oh, I want to try this. And I try it. And it's usually there's definitely enough information there to go ahead and do that. So I think that's a really powerful aspect of an empty paper. All right, let's move to the follow up questions to this. So we have a bunch of these kinds of papers, how are we collecting them into a knowledge base?

16:00  
Yeah, so Kristin B, Ada did a editorial, I think, in about four years ago, called taking stock, where she did a pretty thorough analysis of all of the manuscripts that had been published in mte, by looking at the keywords, and then creating categories of keywords, and then analyzing where we had several manuscripts that had been published related to that keyword. And so we asked our graduate assistants to do that again. So in the years since we've been publishing mte, and we looked all the way back since its inception. So over the eight years, where do we see that we have some knowledge that's beginning to accumulate? And we found that there is a lot of articles around teacher knowledge. So people who have tried to look at what do teachers know, what do they notice? How do they reason about particular mathematical ideas, we have a really nice collection in the journal. There's also a lot of articles around particular mathematical content, rational number concepts proving as well as processes like proving, and maybe you're looking for something around function or statistics. So you can find articles that are around specific math content. There's also quite a bit about students thinking and reasoning is well as articles that have described a professional development experience or an aspect of teacher preparation course, what we haven't, we also analyzed the articles by grade bands to see if we had articles around, you know, elementary or middle grades or high school mathematics, we found that there was quite a bit at the elementary and high school levels, but less that was specific to middle grades. And we don't know if that's because middle grades, just in terms of years is a smaller span of students experience, or if it's because middle grades tends to be mixed in with elementary or high school, but we were missing at that particular grade band. And as far as the keywords, we saw that there didn't seem to be much around equity, or around actually the use of technology. And so with the in relation to the equity piece, we felt it was important. So we had a special call for articles around equity, and are looking forward to publishing our first focus issue related to equity in 2021. That's amazing. I'm excited for that one.

18:43  
So if I am now that we have eight years worth of manuscripts, and I'm interested in finding something specific, how would I go about doing that

18:54  
you would do this as you would for any article you do, perhaps an advanced Google Scholar search. Within the mathematics teacher education educator publication, you could do a general search feature on the nctm website. Eventually, we would like to have a better search tool within our own mte website. But we do have a graph with hotlinks that we could share with people that again, that has been built. But first starting with Sandra and Kristin and then with our current graduate students have created a really nice tool for us to figure figure out where things are. But right now we're just at the US your Google search or general search and you'll find them they'll come up.

19:41  
So this graph with hot links that you mentioned, is that available? Not yet, not yet, but it will be we hope so if

19:49  
we can imagine if you were to go to the website, and if we had this graphical interface that you could click on elementary fractions, pre service teachers. It was Then link you to the articles that are relevant. But we haven't quite figured out yet how to make that work on the website.

20:07  
I love this version. I hope that's going to come out at some point. Okay, let's jump into the June issue that just was released. Can you talk a little bit about the highlights of the June 2020 issue?

20:23  
Yeah, absolutely. So typically, when we're selecting manuscripts for publication and a particular issue, we are trying to provide a variety of secondary elementary, middle grades. This particular issue is a little bit different. Most of the articles are secondary, there is one that looks at elementary children, their thinking and how to assist undergraduates in doing research around that I'll talk about that last our first article on the issue is by Casey and Amidon and they talk about how lesson sketch can be used to support secondary teachers noticing students mathematical thinking. And then they also bring in this other lens by considering ways in which that experience can be a formative assessment experience for mathematics teacher educators, to understand how teachers are noticing student thinking, so there's multiple layers going on there. But the lesson sketch activity, we have it linked. So if you're interested in using that in your own classroom, it's available in the journal also related kind of the technology piece. We have loved it Nicola Deke and Katyn who describe a set of design principles for thinking about how you can help teachers notice student thinking, right, so what are some general principles if you're going to design a task to help students help teachers notice it in thinking, they describe those there, they also highlight of function task, it takes the form of a vending machine, it's it uses GeoGebra, and that that particular task is also also linked in that article, and you can access that Woods it will help describe how math teacher educators can support teachers and learning to launch a task. And they talk about the role of their instructional vision in what teachers do when launching. And then the last article is different from many of the articles we've published in the past. We know there's a lot of emphasis at different universities for engaging undergraduates in research. So you might be wondering, how can I engage undergraduates in research related to mathematics education, so krauth, Bergner, Austin Burgess and hold I have provided an illustration of how they can think about engaging undergraduates in collecting videos of children's mathematical thinking, analyzing that thinking qualitatively, and then considering the implications of that analysis for their own teaching practice. They provide a really nice example of ways that you might structure that if you were going to be working with undergraduates, and what that might look like. So those are some of the highlights in our urgent issue.

23:12  
It's really exciting to hear that some of these activities are directly linked in the articles, because it will make it a lot easier to be able to just see what they were, and then

23:24  
implement those sparen. Can you speak to the new format on the journal and how that has become even a little bit easier? Yeah,

23:31  
so in this June issue, this will be the first issue that you can read the journal both on the website in an HTML format. So just like you would a web page. And so the links are really nice. As well as a downloadable PDF PDF form, you can still see the PDF on the web. So you can see both formats, which in the past, it's always just been a PDF form. So I think moving to the HTML format, will also give us flexibility in the types of technology that we can link to and embed within an article. And we're exploring different options for that. Very exciting.

24:11  
So let's kind of start wrapping up by thinking a little bit about somebody who wants to write for mte. What advice would you as editors give somebody who's starting to think about writing an article?

24:26  
Yeah, I'll take that one. So, I mean, the first thing would be to read several articles and the editorials published in the journal, particularly the editorials that are focused on this idea of writing for mte, which are a lot of them. So read those articles, get a feel for the flow, and what we're looking for, become a reviewer for the journal is a great idea because you'll get not only will you get to read a manuscript, but then you'll see the feedback we give and, and I think that's really instructional useful. Using the writing tool is really important. So there's two things kinds of articles that we seek most of them are the ones in the sort of form of from practice intervention tool, and then a warrant. This sort of describes why they feel that authors feel confident that this is a tool that should work for others, and then the dependencies with that portable tool. And but then there's also the more philosophical one where the warrant is a little bit different, it might be more based on sort of theoretical understanding or a current issue, you know, something like that, we don't have as many of those. But if somebody is thinking about that, we do have a tool for that. So people have asked for that space, people have said that they wanted a space to do more of that work. So we're hoping we get some manuscripts around that writing tool, that part of the writing tool, talking to us about your ideas. So contacting me or Karen, and we'll usually share manuscripts. So if it's something that is something more that I am more likely to have the background knowledge in, then I might talk to somebody or Karen will, but contacted either one of us. And we'll get you to the right place to talk about your ideas and to think through the structure of your manuscript. I'd also say to keep an eye out for the conferences, so at conferences, we will have often times have a presentation that addresses this issue specifically, and you know, help people think about well, can I convert my dissertation into a piece or you know, I'm doing this thing in my classroom? What evidence would I need to get that to work for the journal, and we are happy to do that work with you and to sort of help you make things fit. So please, that's not a burden at all. Let us know if you've got ideas that you want to talk about.

26:54  
So let me follow up on a few of the items you mentioned. You said become a reviewer for the journal, how would I go about doing that?

27:02  
Yeah, so just go to the website. And I think you can go to about the journal, and you can sign up to be a reviewer. When you sign up, you want to make sure that you let us know what your expertise is. And we'll try to match your expertise with the manuscripts that come in. And what

27:19  
expertise Do I need to become a reviewer?

27:22  
Let me jump in Karen. It's also true that if you are signed up for other journals, now with the larger scholar, one people we can access be, let's say if you've reviewed for Jeremy, you'd be in the same pool that we're in, correct?

27:37  
That's correct.

27:38  
So if you so you may let us know that you're interested, as well would be another way to say look, I have a little bit of time, I'd love to read an article or two in the next year, you could let us know as well. But I'm sorry, what was your question?

27:53  
My question was, let's assume I'm a graduate student, can I review for empty? Like, what do I need to have to be able to review,

28:02  
right, so in order to be a reviewer for the journal, we would recommend that you have experience working with mathematics teachers, maybe you've been a TA for methods course, maybe you provide professional development to mathematics, teachers, maybe you've done some research around teacher learning or teacher practices. So having a familiarity with mathematics, teacher preparation, and work with mathematics teachers, I think is important. Our guidelines for reviewing manuscripts we feel are really clear. And so when you're writing your review, you can use that as a template to prepare your review. We also try to be purposeful in assigning reviewers based on different experiences. So we'll have someone who's from the editorial panel, we'll have a reviewer who's experienced, and then we'll have someone who maybe is less experienced in writing reviews. And then when we make our decision, you'll see the reviews of all of the reviewers. And you can see the way in which your review might be similar to or different from the others. And we think that's an educative process. There's also a really nice editorial that standard wrote that says is your review providing educative reviews, you might want to read that and she gives some great advice about how you might structure reviews so that it can be educated to the author.

29:30  
Yeah, I know that when I review papers, I always am like, waiting to see what other people said and see if I'm in the ballpark with everybody else or not. So that's been really useful experience. Let me follow up on the writing tool that you mentioned. If I've never used this before, where would I find this writing tool

29:53  
so when you go to the website which is pubs.nctm.org slash MC e And you go to the submission guidelines at the very bottom of the page, you'll find the writing Tool Link there, right on the on the page. So it should be fairly easy to find. You'll also see mention of it in the editorials. But it should be right there on the website.

30:17  
Okay. And let me follow up on the last suggestion, talking to the editors, I know that that seems very scary often to contact people to talk about your ideas. Why would you want people to contact you?

30:33  
Well, for to be an important journal for the community, we want the best ideas that are out there. And we don't want somebody lack of experience to keep a good idea from getting published. So oftentimes, it's just a matter of sort of talking it through. And, you know, we're funded by the community, and we feel like it's really important to take the time to do that work and help people out. I mean, it usually doesn't take that long. I mean, I've talked to people for over an hour. So if it needs to take longer, we can talk longer. But it's actually a really nice part of the experience for us. I think we've both enjoyed that I have. So yeah, please don't be intimidated. It's valuable to us, because it helps us get stronger manuscripts. And we think it's valuable to the community because it helps more people get involved, and learn to communicate their ideas. And we're all trying to get better at the mathematics teacher educators.

31:32  
Yeah, I think also, as an author, it might be easier to make revisions to an outline than it would be to a 20 page paper. So the earlier we can talk to you about your ideas that might be easier to incorporate that feedback into the creation of a manuscript for the journal.

31:51  
So this is leading me to a follow up question, how much do I need to already have to be able to talk to you Is it enough to say, Hey, I have an idea? Should I have an outline? Does it matter?

32:03  
Yeah, this can happen in a lot of different places in the process. So what the most likely time that we talk to people is if we get a manuscript that we think has a lot of potential, and we'll write, you know, right now, it's not a good fit, but please give us a call. So we'll oftentimes talk to people and then they'll get a chance to sort of rewrite it and resubmit it. So it can happen, you know, late in the game, after it's been submitted. But I'm comfortable talking to somebody who I would think you would want at least intervention or tool or theoretical idea that you want it to get out to the community. And then you could talk about it enough to say, Look, I've done this a couple times in my class, this is how I've evaluated I've got this really good data. I think it's good data, do you think it's good data? And it may, you could even call us and talk about, you know, I've done this a couple of times. I haven't collected data yet, but I think it would be a valuable manuscript, what kind of data do you think would be helpful to collect? So I think the answer is just about any part in the process. Call, we can talk and go from there.

33:10  
Okay, so let's wrap up by talking a little bit about the upcoming issue. That's gonna be September, you guys already know what that editorial is about?

33:21  
Yes, we do. In fact, it's due in a couple weeks. And so one of the things that we are focusing on with that particular editorial is trying to describe to readers and potential authors, what's the intervention or tool, because that's, in many ways at the heart of an empty article. And so we also know lots of math teacher educators are looking for interventions and tools that will help them to prepare teachers to be cognizant of issues related to equity or social justice. And so what we're going to be highlighting are those interventions and tools related to equity that have been published in the journal that they could use with their teachers in their classrooms. So we're going to begin by talking about what do we mean when we say intervention or tool and provide some examples. And then what we plan to also have a list of other resources related to equity that mathematics teacher educators can go to, to consider for using in their classes. That sounds super exciting, and it's well timed at the beginning of the school year. So I want to thank the two of you for coming on. Welcome.

34:38  
Thank you for taking the time, Eva, and for doing this podcast in general. It's been great.

34:42  
I hope that I can talk to you guys again in September about the next editorial.

34:48  
Great, great Eva.

34:49  
For further information on this topic and others. You can find this editorial on the mathematics teacher educator website. This has been your host, Ava Anheuser. Thank you for listening and goodbye.