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 Sennheiser, and I'm talking with Emily L. rod and Valerie Faulkner from North Carolina State University, who are some of the multiple authors of dish issues editorial, we will be discussing this editorial, which is titled interventions, tools and equity oriented resources in the MTA journal. It was published in September 2020. We'll start with summarizing the main points, and then just kind of talk about it, Emily, and Valerie, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having us. So let's kick into the first question. What is this tutorial about? This editorial is really a journal kind of reiterating the statements made by AMT and nctm and June of 2020, we were trying to position mathematics teaching from an anti racist viewpoint, in this editorial, we really want to focus on the central feature of an empty article, which is the intervention or tool together that we call might call that a solution strategy or an innovation. And so we really wanted to focus on that in general, but then specifically provide readers with some of the equity focused articles that have already been published and mte. And describe how they are positioning their intervention or tool in their manuscript. Let me jump in here for a second, because otherwise, I'm going to lose all my follow up questions. Okay. So one of the things you said is that you're summarizing a bunch of interventions or tools that relate to equity that are already published. So if somebody was looking for that this editorial might be a good way to look, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit, it seems like you're distinguishing an intervention from a tool. Yes. Yes. And we have a lot of conversation around this. Yes. Could you explicates what you mean by those? Sure. When we say intervention, what we are meaning is something that provides an opportunity for learning to occur in the interim of encountering this described innovation. So an example of an intervention might be an instructional task sequence that's implemented within a methods course, or a professional development intervention. And then for a tool, we really look at that as a structure or a framework that could be used by other math teacher educators. So that might be an observation tool, or an analytic framework to revise tasks or something like that. So let me see if I can wrap my head around it. an intervention is something that I could take into my classroom and just implement right away, like a task or sequence of tasks. And a tool is something that I could use to kind of help me reflect on something like an observation tool you said, or a framework. So it's not something I can just immediately take into a class and implement exactly an intervention is really, we think of it as more of something that math teacher educators could take into, into their methods, courses, or even into a professional development setting and implement those. And a tool is really something to help you do other things. So maybe reflect on teaching or observe teaching. And it might be that you can take it from our articles and use it immediately that it it would look a little different than than an intervention would. Okay. I was trying, as I was reading the editorial, I was trying to categorize what fits into which side of these. So I think that's a helpful distinction. So sorry, I interrupted you. What else did you want to say about? Well, editorial is about so we kind of describe our process. So we went through and looked at all of the articles that had been published since 2017, which I think ended up being 31 articles, and look specifically at what they're described in innovation. And we think about it as like a solution strategy, but because mte articles should be focused around a shared problem of practice. So we want our authors and our readers to understand how that shared problem of practice was attacked or what kind of possible solutions not that it is the only solution. And so we coded all of those and looked at some key ideas and those and then the editorial, that kind of the bulk of editorial is really focused on equity oriented interventions and tools again that have been published in previous 5:00 issues of the journal. And so we highlighted three of those within this editorial thinking about how for instance, participation structures and a classroom, and what kind of framework we can use to reflect on those think about how we can support perspective teachers and thinking about ensuring that their tasks are culturally relevant. And then also thinking about how to engage in math modeling from a social justice perspective, those three articles and their interventions and tools are described in more detail in this editorial as well. We also provided a list of references for other mte articles that are also situated around equity and anti racist teaching. So let me follow up on this because equity is being used by many people in many different ways. So how did you participate editorial choose to define equity for us. And I don't know that we necessarily put a definition of equity in the editorial, but we really are trying to position it around the statements from a mte and nctm. That came out in June, to really think about how we act in ways in our math classrooms and in supporting our prospective math teachers act in ways that are anti racist, and really can to really consider our potential biases in our teaching, so that we can provide more equitable mathematics teaching for all students. All right, yeah, if I can just jump in for a second Eva, this is Valerie. Emily, thank you, Emily, is the lead author on this editorial. And I just want to jump in and say yeah, and oftentimes the authors themselves will say that they are taking an equity approach to a problem. And that will also help us to identify whether it's something that people would be interested in, who are looking for that type of, you know, discussion. Yeah. So that actually leads nicely into the question I was gonna follow up with, which is how do you decide which articles were equity focused? If you did not have a clear definition of what equity is? How did you go about deciding as you read through them? What, which intervention has an equity focus in which one doesn't? That's a great question. So you know, it depends on how widely we define equity. Right? I like to call it the Karen King School of equity when I was at the AMT few years ago, right after it was this February 2017. And there was a big discussion about equity and what we can do, and people were talking about very specific, you know, equity based tasks, like the Michigan water task that was in an earlier edition of mte. And then Karen King stepped in and said, you know, really strong math instruction for all students is equity. Right? So I mean, you can define equity as broadly as you could define equity in such a way that every article we publish right as an equity focus, because we're trying to improve mathematical instruction for all, but we didn't define it that widely. So we were looking at things where authors were specifically discussing, as Emily was saying, issues of bias, or specifically looking to broaden the scope of the types of tasks, we're using that in order to be more equitable and consider children's backgrounds, things like that. Emily, am I on track here? Yes, yes, you are. When we were looking at the additional references for the what we are considering equity oriented articles we actually did some work on earlier. And it was published in an earlier editorial around kind of key words and thinking about what are the major categories of articles that are published in mte. And so like Valerie said, we really just read through the article, and many authors positioned their work around an equity focus within you know, the literature base that they're situating their research in. And so that's how we arrived at our list of equity oriented articles that have been published in mte. And previous issues. And 9:23 this is not like a best hits list or anything. We were just trying to find some articles that we thought would be timely right now. And to make sure people were aware of those. So you said you started in 2017. Can you tell us why that light, then? Sure. So in 2017, and the march 2017 issue, the editors at the time, Sandra Crespo and Kristen Bay, the ADA had published the writing tool that we still use. And so that writing tool is really the structure for what's expected for an MTV article and within that 10:00 They made a very key point to include the intervention or tool as a major component or mte articles. And so we felt like with that being published in 2017, that was really kind of how manuscripts were being reviewed kind of the basis of review for those manuscripts. So that's why we started in 2017. Because we felt like the vision for what an empty article should look like, was clearly explained in that editorial. So we felt like moving forward from that made sense to look at what kind of interventions and tools were being shared at that point. So if you start with that issue, and you go till now, what percentage of the articles did have an equity focus? I'm not sure that I have a percentage or number. 10:51 So you have a list in the you have a living or Ill give it our or generously. I mean, given our ill defined definition of equity. Yeah. But you give a list of papers in the editorial, right? How many cases there are, though, there's about 12. And so like I said, earlier, we reviewed or kind of summarized, went back and looked at 31. So a lot of third, right, of the articles were equity focused. And it sounds like the definition you use just from talking to you guys, was if the author self identified their work as being having an equity focus that was more or less your inclusion exclusion criteria, which seems reasonable. Yes. So now, it would be really interesting to go to the next level and look at those 12 and see what are their definitions of equity? Yeah, anyway, that's like for the future graduate students who work on the editorial. 11:58 All right. So I was gonna move to the question about the highlights. If we hit everything we wanted to talk about, or is there anything else about this editorial you would like to add Emily, before we move on? the highlights of the issue? I think that was it. Good. We hit everything? Yeah. Good for us. All right. So that's, yeah, nice editorial to have reviewing all the papers. So thank you for doing that. So let's kind of look forward. Now. There's four articles in this issue. Right. Can you give us just a quick highlights of what's in this issue? Sure. So we have one of our articles is Bob McCulloch and colleagues, thinking about creating a third space for learning to design and their technology based math tasks. And so really, this article is focused on helping pre service in this article, secondary math teachers make connections between their coursework and the practice. And so in this article, they talk about how these pre service teachers worked with partner teachers at a within a local school district to design technology based tasks through this iterative design process and having feedback provided by both the partner teacher and the university instructor. And so in this one, if we think about kind of connecting it to our editorial, this task design intervention is portable, which is one of the key tenets of our empty articles is that portability of the intervention or tool. And so they show they provide examples of technology tasks that were designed, they describe the iterative feedback cycle. One of the nice things about our journal is it is online. And so we can have leaks embedded within our articles. Specifically, on this one, there's links to like Desmos activities that were created by students in this class. And then Campbell and colleagues as another one in this issue talks about planted errors in rehearsals with their teacher candidates. And so really, they're thinking about how these planted errors can help students who are learning the practice of teaching to really understand what that looks like in the classroom. And for the Campbell article, there are video examples available on our website. And then they also give very detailed examples of the planet errors and the tasks that they use in those rehearsals. So though, that just highlights how that intervention could be taken and used and another secondary math methods course. And again, kind of highlighting the benefit that we have as an online journal to include all of these types of multimedia so that our readers can really understand what's happening. You know, listening to you, I was thinking about this distinction between interventions and tools, and how that's a really useful distinction and 15:00 I'm not on the board of mte or anything, but I'm wondering if that could be one of the keywords so, or it could be something that we would request teachers to put into either the title or the abstract, so that readers would know immediately whether this paper is about a tool or an intervention. So if you're working on keywords, yeah, not, here's a suggestion. 15:26 Anyway, sorry, I was thinking, because I was like, Oh, so is this intervention or to analysing every clinical to know, as you read what the article is gonna be about? So I think Valerie, you're gonna tell me 15:38 more? Yeah, so we've got beilin in a car, have a article titled exploring real numbers as rational number sequences with her prospective mathematics teachers. And they explore an instructional sequence that addresses quantitative relationships, for the construction of real numbers as rational numbers sequences. So they have a very specific instructional sequence. It's a five hour cycle that was taught outside of class. And in it for their their methods. They're analyzing the video recordings of the lessons and written reflections of the students. And this piece is filled with really nice figures to help think about implementing this instructional sequence, really terrific student work samples. So it's a really, really nice piece in terms of being able to as Emily was talking about just taking these ideas and trying them out. And then the other one is by osco, and coca, Louis and Edwards. And it's called fostering middle school teachers mathematical knowledge, by analysis of tasks and student work. And here, they analyze the professional development sequence that they've been working on. And they do so to better understand the growth of MKT mathematical knowledge for teaching in teachers. In particular, they're parsing out and really looking specifically at the knowledge of content and students, and the knowledge of content and teaching and the sort of dynamic interactions that happened between those two as critical domains within the construct of MK t. So really nice, specific look at how is it that when we look at curriculum materials with students samples, how does that impact the teachers analysis of both the content and of the students? So yeah, they say this is a paraphrase of a quote, their key contribution is showing how teachers analysis of mathematics problems, in conjunction with their analysis of student work promotes the development of K CT and KCS within proportional reasoning. Okay, thank you. So I need to dig more into these four papers. And I was wondering if we could close out this podcast by talking a little bit. So we talked about interventions and tools, and you guys reviewing the last so many years of articles, and we talked in our last editorial podcast a little bit about what advice would you give for someone who writes for MTV? So I like to just close with that. So what pieces of advice would you give? And then if you're willing to share a little sneak peek about the next editorial? I would love to hear that? So that's Yeah, I took those questions. Yeah, I'll take that one. This is Valerie. The advice really, is to take a look at some of these bad past editorials. And they've really worked to be as educated as possible about the types of articles and the types of communication we're trying to have with each other as a community. Emily's one that we're discussing today is a good example of really thinking about your intervention and your tool. And seeing some of these nice exemplars is a great way to start next month, or next issue, the editorial is going to be about the warrant sort of the methods and analysis that you guys used to support. That's right. It's really important. So yes, our focus is on communicating with each other about tools that we use and how to improve our instruction. But it is also important to have to be able to convince your audience that you've researched this well enough that you have a convincing argument that this is a tool or an intervention that you could really just pick up and try and expect to have similar experiences that they had, if that makes sense, right. So it's a tried and true tool that has been studied. So that method section, there'll be an editorial about next upcoming issue. So the advice if I may summarize 20:00 For people who intend to write for empty he would be if I think back about our last conversation to use the writing tool. And then if I think about today's conversation, read some of the editorials that give you a little bit more insight into the different pieces of writing tool. Yes, I would think i think so what do you think Emily? Yes, I think using the writing tool, reading back past editorials, and obviously reading past articles that have been published in the journal, and another aspect, another way that you can understand what it means to write for mte is to be a reviewer. So we're always looking for new reviewers to review the manuscripts that come in, because then you can get a real sense of what is being submitted. And then you also get to see as a reviewer, once the decision letter goes out, you get to see the other reviewer comments as well. So you can learn from those comments, I know that myself and the other graduate editorial assistant, we have learned so much by reading all of these manuscripts and reading the reviews and having discussions around it. So I think being a reviewer is also a way to get your feet wet within this journal. So if I want to be a reviewer, how do I go about that, Oh, just email us, you can email me 21:20 at VFFAULK en@ncsu.edu, we'll make sure you're on the list. And I want to add to this that I have published a few papers in mte. And literally every single paper I submitted was not accepted as is to be careful, like every paper I published has been through to at least two revision cycles. And it's easy to kind of when you write forget some of the things that are so glaring when you review. So I think that the other piece I would give and I learned this as a PhD student reviewing for j army is looking to see what goes in can give you a little bit more of bravery to submit what you have, because nothing looks the way it comes out. When it goes in, right. There's so much good feedback you get that makes your paper so much better, even though it's annoying when you get it. So I think that's another aspect that reviewing is nice ways to just see Oh, oh, wait, you know, we can submit this or Yeah, I guess MTS also really been good about if you have an idea to just contact the editorial board and talk to somebody and they can help you develop it. So even if you're all the way down or checking whether the idea is good, or those kinds of things. Yeah, I'm in fact, I've got just had a call last week, and I've got one in my inbox that I'm going to review of a prospective manuscript. And yeah, that's great. That's great stuff. And I really appreciate this conversation. Because I think, as Emily said, and you said to Ava, the process of getting feedback, nobody actually loves feedback, right? I mean, there's always that sort of like, Ah, right. But it's been so fun to work with authors and help them get their message clearer. And so it really is, is a valuable process that we've really enjoyed. I also would say that actually I love getting feedback, but I don't do additional work. I have to just but that's what I love the product at the end. Because it's always like always, whenever I get feedback after my first annoyance that my brilliance wasn't adjusted as Yes. Then I go like, Well, duh, why didn't I do that? You know, or, I mean, it's just so often so clear. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, it's Yeah. It's a very caring process, really. All right. So thank you both for joining me today. And thank you so much for writing this editorial. I'm going to close us out. For further information on this topic or other topics. You can find the editorial on your math teacher educator website. This has been your host, Eva Anheuser. Thanks for listening and goodbye.