Dusty Jones: Hello, and thank you for listening to the teaching math, teaching, podcast the teaching, math, teaching, podcast is sponsored by the association of mathematics, teacher, educators, a community of math teacher, educators, learning to teach math teachers better. I'm your Co. Host, Dusty Jones, and joining me is Co. Host, Joel Amadon. Joel, how are you doing?

Joel Amidon: Not too bad, dusty. Thanks for thanks. Your host. And this is great. Yeah. 

Dusty Jones: Excited. I'm excited. Because today we're talking with Dr. Sam Otten. Sam is an associate professor Lois Noel's faculty fellow and department chair of learning, teaching and curriculum at my Alma Mater, the University of Missouri

Dusty Jones: to day. We're talking with Sam for a number of reasons, including his work on the math, Ed. Podcast his research on flipped mathematics, instruction, and how these impact mathematics, teacher, education.
Welcome, Sam, how are you to day?

Sam Otten: I'm doing pretty well. Thanks for the invitation. 

Dusty Jones: Yeah. Could you take a minute to introduce yourself beyond what we've already shared. What did we miss?

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Oh, sure! Well, I think you get a good recap of my roles here at the University of Missouri. I've been here 11 years now, going to my twelfth year. I guess I could add that before Missouri I did grow up and did my education in Michigan. So I grew up in the upper peninsula of Michigan, and I went to Grand Valley State, had some great math educators there and then I did my grad school at Michigan State University, had great math educators there. And my family still lives up in Michigan. although, of course my immediate family is here in Missouri. My wife's a teacher and we have 4 children who are all growing and getting active and involved. And I mentioned my wife's a teacher, but also I actually have a lot of teachers and educators in my family. So my wife, my mom, my grandma, my brother, my brother-in-law, my mother in law, like just a lot of educators of various types all around. So I feel kind of at home talking about schools and talking about learning and all that stuff, and I'm guessing, not just in math, but like all sorts of subjects and and grade levels and things like that. Yeah, some in math, some in elementary grade levels, some in special education. Okay? Great.

Dusty Jones: So first question, how did you get your start in teaching math teachers. And then why did you do that?

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Well, the start was definitely as part of an assistant ship at Michigan State. So I was there in grad school. And then, as part of getting funding for my Doc program, I got involved in doing some of the content courses, some of the pedagogy courses for people who are becoming math teachers or teachers of mathematics. And I will say, you know, for me it was it started in grad school. But then it went into several years of faculty for me to really form
my identity as a teacher educator, because I didn't come at it, wanting to be a teacher educator, you know. Some people come to get their Phd. Because they want to be a leader in training the next generation of teachers or with working with that community and making an impact by shaping future teachers. That was not how I came to the Doc program or or came to like higher Ed and mathematics education.
 I was really wanting to be a math teacher directly, and then I kinda took a detour doing some pure mathematics and some mathematical research and cut kind of forming an identity as a mathematician going along with being a math teacher. And then where I really went in grad school, and then, in my first few years as faculty member was just having an identity as a math. Ed. Researcher. And that was really what I took up as my identity was alright. Let's ask some questions. Let's get some data. Let's investigate some of the phenomenon that's around math teaching and learning. And as I got my faculty position, of course, part of my role was to be a math teacher educator. So I was, you know, working especially at the start in the middle and secondary teacher preparation program. So then, I just started to bring teacher educator in as part of my identity. Go to semi mte conferences sometimes. It, you know. It wasn't my home base when I started, but I got a little bit more comfortable there talking about teacher education. And then over the years. I you know, I took more of a leadership role and some of the teacher education stuff in our programs here at the University of Missouri, and then even my research questions started to shift towards preparing, but also working with teachers in practice and continuing their education and their learning trying to support that. So I would say, now, you know, 1516 years into this

Dusty Jones: I definitely do have teacher, educator as one of my identities. But it wasn't really, you know, it wasn't what drove me at the start. Yeah, that that's interesting. I remember being an a doctoral student and thinking, You know, what what area am I going to go into? And I had a similar thought that I thought I needed to be a math. Ed, researcher. I just thought I needed to be. That's just what I thought I wanted to do. And but I kept falling into places where I was really interested in the teacher. Education aspect so that's interesting to hear. your your journey to this to this identity. That's great. And and I don't think you're saying you've given up any of those other sorts of that's great. What was the best advice you received when you started teaching math teachers.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Yeah, I
I thought about this question, and I didn't really come up with like words of advice. But I definitely came up with a couple of things that were influential. As I was getting started. One was back at Michigan State, so Mike Steele was at Michigan State at the time. And he was heading up our secondary teacher preparation program. And one thing I really noticed from him and took from him was
 purposefully making space for the preservatives or their prospective teachers to reflect on their field like they were having field experiences. Then they're coming to campus for methods, courses, and Mike dedicated the whole first portion of every class to let's talk about Field. What if people noticed? Let's bring some things out for discussion. And so he kind of gave over that time to the students to bring things to the table and to.
 you know. Say, I've been pondering this and then having their peers react to it, and then Mike will kind of chime in or ask a question to sort of probe into it further. So for me, just noticing. Oh, he's putting that up front and center. And it's a dedicated amount of time every single class session.
 So I definitely took that from him as like, okay, take those field connections seriously. Don't kind of bust the door down with. I've got something planned for today. Let me start to. Really, you know, ship notes like, No, let the students actually bring some things that are on their mind. So that was definitely something that was impactful to me.
And then here, when I got to the University of Missouri, Barbara Rees was very influential in kind of helping me get started, and then James Tar was leading the secondary teacher preparation program here at the University of Missouri. And one thing I remember from them I can't remember exactly. You know who said it or where it came from. But definitely an idea I took from them at the start was
when I'm thinking about the methods, courses for perspective teachers that it's okay to focus on a few big ideas and not to feel like you have to cover a lot of different topics or cram a lot of different things into the semester
and Missouri. We have the luxury of having 3 semesters of teaching methods which is really nice, but even with that you can start jamming stuff in there you can start wanting to cover so many different. Oh, this reading would be good! This idea be good. Oh, we should do this activity. And Barbara and James just having that wisdom of saying you can scale back, and you can really spend some time with a few big ideas rather than trying to get through a lot of important ideas.

Dusty Jones: That's
that's really good to hear, I think, especially because, as time goes on, there's only more and more topics that that are important enough to add and and spend time discussing.
Yeah.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: And I guess I also kind of realized with both of my
pieces of advice that I've kind of taken. They both sort of have to do with the timing or the pacing of setting up that that course experience, and they both kind of involve reining yourself back like like, make sure space for those field conversations, and then make sure you let the big ideas breathe, and you don't sort of crowd them too much stuff.

Dusty Jones: That's great.

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): I feel like, I shouldn't let my students hear this podcast episode because if they did, they'd be like, hear that. Stop jamming things in to this class. Give us time to to process, you know, but, like you, you, you just said, you have 3 classes. But like, yeah, it's so much space like, Oh, we can do this. We can do this versus like, yeah, scale back. What is, what are the big ideas invested? I mean, I'm ha wrote that down highlighted capitalize, whatever that's yeah. That's great.

Dusty Jones: One newer question we've been asking this season is, what's a word or a phrase, or a quote, or or some some saying that that translates well in audio format that helps you center your work. The work you do in teaching mathematics teachers.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Yeah, I tried. So there's definitely an idea that has been guiding me recently.
And so I tried to put it into a phrase, although it's not like I have it on a poster or anything like that. But here's how I tried to phrase it, for this.
Most prospective teachers have come from typical classrooms.
and they will go to typical school settings kinda kind of by definition, definition of typicalities like, they've probably come from typical kinds of schools. They're probably gonna get hired into typical kinds of schools.
And so I think it's worthwhile to focus on improvements in conventional instruction.
Not just try to replace conventional instruction or present a totally new vision of math instruction.
So that's that's this kind of to me like recognizing the prevalence of conventional instruction. recognizing the prevalence of typical class settings, typical school context, that sort of thing.
I've really over the years come to respect the power of that. And then realizing maybe we just need to work within that constraint. Because when I was an undergrad when I was a grad student, when I was starting out a faculty reading things about, you know, teacher education
a lot of times it felt like it started with this new vision of instruction, like, here's a new way of thinking about math pedagogy A lot of the documents will even start with like, yeah, a vision. Imagine this kind of classroom where these discussions are happening in student explorations and all that stuff.
And over the years, I just realized, wow! We sort of have a tendency to always start with that new vision. But then I feel like it's actually coming at the perspective teachers with something new that doesn't match their experience. And then we're trying to like
really move them over to our side of things. And I feel like.
I don't think that's what we would tell the teachers to do with students. I don't think we would tell the students, go to your students and present them with something totally foreign.
totally unfamiliar, very different from their own experience. And then just try to win them over and try to like, convince them that they have to come to your way of seeing it or your way of doing it. I feel like what we would tell teachers with students is to like, listen to your students? What, what have they experienced? What are their ideas, what are their, what are their expectations, and then try to build from those?
So for me. That's now like, if I was starting over and building like a teacher Ed program from scratch. I don't think I would present
an alternative reform, oriented vision of math instruction at all. Well, I shouldn't say I wouldn't present it at the start, and I'm not sure if I present it in the middle.
and I'm I maybe would present it at the end. But I'm not even sure about that for me. I'm guided more by this.
Let's
build on what they have experience. Let's build on what their vision of math teaching is, and let's try to shape it with our expertise. Let's try to shape it and improve it, but still building from what they're coming from, which might be quite conventional. Yeah.

Dusty Jones: And and I think that I mean, that goes along with your idea of, you know meeting your students and and and
where they are, and and where they come from. I mean it. It would be hard to, you know. Present this vision of somewhere else where? But we don't know. We don't know how to get there from here. From where you are. There's this, you know. Gap.
You know, I'm thinking of that like a canyon or something, and we want to be over there. But we're over here
we can just imagine ourselves over there. But when you get that job in the typical classroom, which is very similar to where you came from.
what do you do? How do you realize that? Yeah.

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): Sam was that did when you start talking? Was that a topic of a poster that you and I believe Charles munter had at yeah.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Was that remember that? Right?
Our poster. We just made our poster like a dividing line, and like one side, was on the left. One side was on the right, and we stood there, and then we actually like debated it in front of the poster. I talk about that as like, hey? Like

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): pushing on the you know the medium and and stuff like that. And like, Hey, I this was the amazing cause. There's like you went and like, there it is. There's the debate right in front of it, like. And it's it was. It was awesome. Yeah. And it's been a very rich debate. And I've I've kind of shifted, you know. So I was. I was kind of more like, Oh, yeah, we should promote the reform way of teaching it. I mean, I'm still in favor of that. So so what I would say is.
if there's a teacher Ed program that that is consistently graduating teachers.
like 90% of which go to their school. And wherever they end up in their school they're able to do inquiry based lessons. They're able to have rich discussions with students, they empower their students in an inclusive way.
If there's a teacher, I program that is achieving that at like a 90% level.
then I applaud them and be like, let's learn from you. Let's try to do it. But in my experience and from the teacher I programs that I've seen and talked to about this. I've been talking to people about it for years.
I'm not hearing people that are saying, Oh, yeah, we have 90% success of people enacting reform oriented instruction once they get out into the regular schools. Usually, what I hear is like they've had a few success stories that they're very proud of, but then a lot that revert to conventional instruction, and then of some that feel guilty because they're not doing reform instruction, and they're like letting their professors down. Cause I'm just, you know, teaching from this textbook and going like the rest of the school is.
So for me, I'm like, okay, another approach is
to try to graduate 90% of people that are doing better than average like conventional math instruction. And I would actually take that as a win, if we're doing better than average, if we're doing.
and if we're avoiding the most harmful kinds of math instruction like there, to speak bluntly, there's some kinds of math instruction that is harmful to students that excludes people's ideas, that shuts them down, that turns them off.
So if we can at least avoid those harmful kinds of teaching and make them a little bit better where it's like, all right, we're doing a little bit more to to draw on students ideas, or a little bit more, to build some connectual connections.
I would take that as a win, even though it maybe feels like more modest, or it feels like
withdrawal from the reform oriented. NCTM. Champion kind of thing.

Dusty Jones: Yeah.
So maybe this is related, and I think you've touched on this. But what advice would you give someone who's starting out and teaching math teachers?

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Yeah. So my advice would be, don't listen to me. If with everything I just said before, I know that that's not for everybody. I just am trying to make a little bit of space in our field that, hey? Maybe some people that are taking this. Wh. What? Sandra de Rajo, who's working with me on some of this? We're we're calling incremental approach. Amber Kandela has also been talking to us about it.
The incremental approach doesn't have to be for everybody, but I do think that our field would benefit from making some space for an incremental approach. So if I'm talking to somebody new, don't listen to me. Nctm. Has a lot more institutional wisdom than I do, and stuff
what I would say, though, is.
they should build on prospective teachers experiences. So II do think that I can say.
don't ignore their experience, which might be in a conventional classroom, and don't try to just force your way of seeing things onto them. You should try to build with the experience that they have had and the vision that they're coming with for what it means to teach math. I do think you should build from that vision. You shouldn't just try to replace it with your vision.
I also think some advice I would have for somebody starting out is
don't listen to me.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Listen to math teacher educators, listen to this. Podcast. Listen to the organizations, but don't only listen to the professional organizations or the you know the the professional organizations also listen to teachers. Like

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: teachers in the school. They have thoughts about what should be in a methods class, or they have thoughts about what's important to emphasize in a program that's preparing teachers.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: And I think that should actually be valued right along with the ante guidelines, or whatever we say on this podcast like that sort of thing. Shawn, yi. And I did a survey

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: of methods, instructors at the Secondary level, like secondary math teacher educators. We did a survey of like what they think is most important to put into those methods courses. But then we turned around and we did a survey of practicing teachers, and we asked them the same question, like, what should be in those math teaching methods, courses, and the 2 groups, didn't. They? Agreed on some stuff? But they disagreed on other stuff.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: And I think if you're starting out in Teacher Ed, you should actually listen to both of those groups, and Shawnee and I publish those results in like a Mte connections Newsletter I can share. If people are interested.

Dusty Jones: Yeah. Included in the show notes. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: basically. For me, it's a little bit of humility amongst the teacher at community that we might not have all the answers like, we have our perspective. We have thought about things. We've tried them out. So that's one important voice. But we should also have the humility to recognize

Dusty Jones: teachers may have a different point of view, and actually, maybe we should listen to them sometimes. Not just our own little scholarly bubble. Yeah, I agree. I think maybe all professions would benefit from it. But definitely in education, I think, having some humility about our profession, the fact that we might not have all of the answers.
I mean, that's part of what research is about, you know, in trying to find, you know, post some interesting questions and and find what?
What we can out about the world. and along those same lines in terms of like listening to the teacher education space, the kind of university space, but also listening to teachers from the field.
I would encourage a new teacher educator to think carefully about the field and the methods, and how those are integrated, how they're connected. It's a very common topic of discussion amongst teacher educators like, how's your field? How is it aligning with your methods? Course you know. How is that going? And then people trying to talk about finding the right field placements or finding the right school settings that are working well in sync like with the methods. Course.
One thing I would say to a new teacher, educator, though, is that it's easier to modify what you're doing in your methods class than it is to modify the whole systems and structures of the field. So II see a lot of people that are trying to find the perfect field placement or find the right host teacher or find the right school
and that's fine to do. Some of that vetting do some of that looking. But if there's a misalignment between what they're seeing in Field, or what they're hearing from the host teachers and what's happening in methods.
I can fix that alignment pretty quickly by just changing my methods course. whereas to change the field side of thing. I feel like it's like a 20 year endeavor that I don't know if it will ever work.

Dusty Jones: Yeah, we've we've been some people been working on that, you know, for a while.
I think the field's moved. II don't know if it's where
it was aimed at. Yeah.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: oh, I have. I have one more piece of advice, too. Which is to have fun
like, have have fun in your class. Keep a space for some humor. That's just important for building community, but also important for just showing that
when we're doing math and when we're
teaching math, we can actually try to bring some
some real joy into it. It doesn't need to be like a slog. It doesn't need to be like this
huge weight that lays on us, I think, having fun and makes everything better. Yeah, definitely.

Dusty Jones:  Sam, how do you set boundaries and priorities to get the right things done
and still enjoy your life

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: there, we yeah. So there we go. Enjoyment.
Yeah, I'm glad you asked this question. Cause II do think it's really important to
protect personal time. Whether it's personal hobbies. Just rest whether it's family connections, whatever. For me. What I found works is to
really set a clock for work. So like for me, it's around 8 30 to 5.
And I try to really work and be efficient while I'm at work. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna try not to waste time during that 8 30 to 5. I'm gonna try to really be efficient with what I'm doing.
But then I pretty much want to unplug and check out for the evenings and for the weekends. For me. It's a lot of family stuff with the 4 kids and everything going on, but it could also just be personal rests and recuperation, or hobbies, or whatever so for me, I try to work diligently while I'm here, and then I try to stop when I'm not here.
and what I really liked about our department is that our department, our colleagues and stuff. We're all kind of supportive of that same idea of like, let's protect each other's weekends. Let's protect protect each other's evenings. And that's nice to have that kind of culture in the department. I will say, though sometimes at home.
if I'm like watching a sporting event, or maybe a movie or something, I might do some non cognitively demanding work. So I might
put a few things into a grade book. Or I might edit a podcast, episode. There's a few things that don't take
they're not a heavy lift cognitively, and I'll sometimes do those on the couch at home. But other than that, I really try to close the computer and just be at home when I'm at home. And I do think that's really important. Yeah, you're not. You're not figuring out the
teaching schedule or grant budget, or anything like that. No, no, I pretty much. I mean, it's pretty much nothing else, any means. And weekends other than yeah, maybe just
filing something away. That's or deleting a few emails or something like that. Yeah, that's great

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): leadership from the top. Yeah, that's good.

Dusty Jones: Yeah. And I having served as department chair for a year and and change. I know that.
You just have to leave it there. It's not like it goes away.
So I I'm I'm glad that you're able to do that. And I'm sure it's helping.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: I'm sure if you were not doing that, things would not be as good as they might be with your family or with your life in general side, like when I'm talking to faculty, I say, like my goal is not just for your
productivity or my goal is not just for your success. My goal is for your long-term success like that. You're working in a way that's sustainable for 10 or 15 years. And for me, if you want it to be long term success and sustainability, it means you're also having time off. You're also with your family. You're also having hobbies. You can. You can turn off work. And I feel like that's more sustainable for the long term. Yeah.

Dusty Jones: Well, Sam, one of the things that I want to talk to you about is the math. Ed, podcast. So you started that
I think in 2012. So over 10 years ago. Can you share a bit about the genesis of that podcast and then also
who do you think should listen to the math? Ed, podcast.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: yeah.
 you know, 10, yeah, 10. It was 2012. There were podcasts around at that time, although they were not nearly as popular or as ubiquitous as they are now, but they were around, and so when I was at Michigan State, I refuse to pay for the student parking cause. I thought it was too expensive, so I walked. I walked to everything my first few years, and then I moved a little farther out, and I took the city bus every day for all my grad school stuff. So as I was commuting to campus, I would listen to podcasts. You know, on on some ear buds on the bus.
But I was listening to like, you know, comedy podcasts or sports podcasts, or politics, podcasts, or like comic book podcasts. So I was listening to all this other stuff which is which could be good for like work, work, life, balance. You know, you don't have to work all the time. But I was in grad school. And I was thinking, like.
what if there was a math? Ed podcast and I could actually be doing a little bit of work just while I'm sitting on the bus or walking to campus. But one didn't really exist at that time.
The other piece. So that was, you know, kind of just this idea of it would be nice to listen to some method stuff while I'm doing this. But there was another piece to it. That kind of made it all click.
When I was at Michigan State several times.
A professor would have
us read an article, and they would have the author of the article actually call into the class. So this was before Zoom, but we would. It would usually be an actual audio phone call. But there would be. Wow! We just read this article. And now we can ask questions to the author, and the author can tell us a little bit of stories about like where that article came from, and and that sort of thing.
and what I noticed when I was in grad school was, I noticed that those articles where the author called in
I remembered, like every single one of them. And then and yet I read dozens of other articles, and I remembered maybe 30 of them, or 40% of them, you know, like
strong memories, but the ones where they called in. For some reason it just helped the article come to come to life. It put a voice to the ideas. It just helped me really connected in my mind, a lot stronger. So I put both of those ideas together which is like, okay.
it'd be nice to have a math that podcast maybe I could just recreate those, call ins with the author, have them describe an article, and maybe that will make the article come alive and be memorable to the, to the field. I don't know how many people are going to actually listen to it, but that was the kind of concept and
At first I thought about having a little bit of like Math Ed news, and then a guest that I would interview about the research, but I think wisely, I didn't do the news thing, because that would just
become stale or it become expired, you know, like afterward. But the the interviewing somebody about study. The nice thing is, people are still downloading episodes from like years ago, like people will say, Oh, yeah, I just listened. That episode from 2,017. And so because I did focus on them talking about their research, it's something that can be downloaded from the past catalog. So yeah, I thought that was kind of a a good decision.
And it also means I can have people back more than more than once, cause I could talk to him about this article, and then, couple of years later, I could talk to him about a different article. So it's kinda nice that way, too.
I wasn't sure how many people were. Gonna listen to it, but pretty quickly it started getting a few 100 downloads. And I'm like, Oh, cool. There's actually people listening to it. That was already like more than I expected. I didn't know what was gonna happen. But then, just keeping at it, keeping at it over the years. It's now grown grown to like a few 1,000 people that listen to it, which has been really rewarding. And then just hearing from people that say, Oh, yeah, listen to it, or, you know, been great hearing the feedback
in terms of who should listen to it. I mean, I'm I'm fine for anybody to listen to it. Part of the the goal that I had was to have it be freely available, and that the back cut cat cat catalog is always available, and it's worldwide, and I'm trying to keep it that way. I've always done it just myself. I've paid out of pocket. Sometimes people have given donations, but there's no like funding behind it. It's just. I've been doing it on my own, but I've always been committed to having it free and keeping all the past episodes available.
I definitely knew that, or wanted researchers to listen to it. Like the people producing this research, the reading, the research journals like they can hear from other researchers.
And I've tried to keep the podcast sort of focused on the research side of things cause just just to have a lane. You know, I felt like there's so much in method. I'm I'm glad you guys are here to pick up some other lanes. But I feel like my lane is really like empirical data talking about research findings and that sort of thing.
So I knew researchers hoped researchers would listen to it.
I figured grad, students might listen to it when I started that I was just coming out of grad school. I'm like, Oh, yeah, this would be beneficial to me to hear people's real voice and hear them talking about the studies.
and then I was happy to find that teachers also listen to it, I think because it's conversational. It's not as intimidating or lengthy as a 40 page research article or something. And then also the fact that it's free makes where teachers can just download and listen to it. They don't have to worry about journal subscription or library access or anything like that.
So for me, those are always the ones I think of researchers, grad students, teachers. I've also heard some happy stories from people about
non educators listening to it. So sometimes a guest will come on. This has happened multiple times where they'll say, like.
my sister listened to the episode, and we had a good conversation, or, like my parents, listened to the episode, and now they know a little bit about my research, and some of them will say, like, this is the first time my family has actually like engaged with my research. They've never read the books or read the articles, but they listen to the podcast. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. II I'm one of the thousands of people. I guess that listen to those. And I'm always excited when I see a new one pop up on my feed. Yeah, thanks for listening. And so so, yeah, I

Dusty Jones: I could answer this question myself. But I thought, well, I just, I'll ask Sam, what does he? Who does he think should listen to it? So people who listen to our podcast, I'd say, you know, take a take a look over. We'll put a link to
the math. Ed, podcast. In our show, notes, it's math. Ed, podcast.com. It's not not hard, as as we used to say. All one word but we don't have to anymore with Urls

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): and Sam. I'd say, like some of the other episodes that you had to where you interviewed, like some of the legends in in math education, you know, like Megan, Frankie and and Randy Phillip and Patrick, Jeremy Po. Kalpatrick, Tom Carpenter, where you learned Tom Carpenter wanted to be a point guard for the Golden State warriors. I believe at the time.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Yeah, those are fun, too. So that was just an idea that came up later was like, Okay, I have an actual audience that like a feed for this podcast and then realizing.
still keeping it on research, but talking about somebody's kind of research, trajectory across their career. Yeah, those are some of my favorite episodes as well, and I have. I have a big one lined up for this winter. So stay tuned. Yeah. Happy to add that one to the list of the kind of career retrospectives exciting. Well, I'll say, because I went to Wisconsin and just hearing about, you know.

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): you heard like
echoes, or you go into a room, and you see, like, Hey, there's this person's, you know, like Jim Hebert's dissertation right on the you know, on the shelf here, or something like that, and then getting a chance to hear, like some of the stories about the work that was being done, like, you know, like you've captured. And now that that's available, like you get to hear some of those things about the the kind of legacy that people left, especially now that, you know, like

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Jerry Ko, Patrick has passed and Tom Carpenter has passed, and that that's still there. And I yeah, we had that. So Susan Emson helped me also with Liz Venema. That was a really good one to get on the record. Glenda Lapin has some good stories from connected chef, and, like, you know, connected math is still around still being used. And so to hear like, how did that start? What's the what's the origin story for that. It's cool

Dusty Jones: so recently in your own work, Sam. You've been examining flipped mathematics, instruction, especially in algebra classrooms.
How are you defining a flipped classroom. And what are some key takeaways for? Math teacher educators?

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Yeah, yeah. Zandra de Rajo and I Ruby Ellis and others. But we've, you know, been working on flipped instruction for quite a few years, and we started before the pandemic. So we're kind of in the right spot at the right time to think about instructional videos and stuff
for us. We, we think about flipped instruction in relation to conventional, unflpped instruction. We also think about flipped instruction in relation to fully online instruction.
So flipped in the first sense, it's it's a less. We do it at the lesson level. So a lesson is flipped.
If the homework for that lesson is not problems and exercises. Usually it's a video homework like, watch this video. That's your homework. But it could be read this thing. It could be listen to this podcast like anything that's more like they consume something for their homework instead of answering problems or exercises. And we call that flipping but also we specify that flipped instruction or flipped lesson
does have a class component. There is a time in the lesson where the teacher is getting together with the students, and that's to distinguish it from like fully online teaching, because both the fully online teaching and the flipped can both have an instructional video, but the presence of the instructional video, it still matters, well, what else do you do in the lesson do you get together with the students. And do you talk about the video? Do you try some things together in the room? So those were kind of the important definitional features for us.
we've and you asked about kind of some key key takeaways of the work.
I'd say we have key takeaways around the videos. And then we have key takeaways around, like what happens in the rest of the lesson. With regard to the videos, what we found. And this kind of confirms other research from multimedia learning and stuff is, the videos do not need to be long, and in fact, they probably should not be long. Shorter videos are are better.
Also, the videos don't need to be too fancy. In fact, putting all kinds of sounds, sound effects and graphics that float across the screen. That stuff's actually distracting. And it's better to kind of get rid of the distracting, the non essential sorts of video elements.
And then the one thing we came as a team to really like. As we were looking at so many algebra videos.
they do a very good job of introducing the topic of the video. But they do not do a good job of motivating the topic for the video. So they'll say, this video is about solving systems of equations. It's like, Okay, we got the topic. But like, what is, what are we gonna be able to do in this video that we couldn't before? What's you know what's my reason for wanting to learn this, and we felt like
those don't have to be long. They don't have to be fancy, but we felt like
if there was a motivation at the start of the video that that might be more effective than just
stating the topic. And then the other thing we talked to teachers and stuff is part of the study, and teachers very often want to make the videos. They feel like they're they're doing their job if they're the one making the videos
In looking at the data and thinking about it for years, we were not totally convinced that the teacher has to make all the videos themselves. We understand that the teacher wants to, and maybe that's just important for them to feel good about it, and maybe for the parents and the students to recognize the teacher in the video.
but in terms of the learning that can come from it, we felt like a lot of times. The teacher might save time and effort by using some videos that are already there.
So
we wanted to sort of give permission to teachers that like, you know, what if it's hard technology wise if it's hard in terms of the time commitment for you to make all these videos.
we'll give you permission to. You. Don't have to do that. You can find some videos that already exist or definitely, you can reuse videos from year to year like, don't feel like you have to remake all these videos every year. So we wanted to just kind of lighten teachers, load a little bit.
on that regard.
so yeah, that's a little bit on the video side of things. Okay.

Dusty Jones: yeah.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: now, beyond the videos,
so that's about the videos. But actually overall, we didn't have strong evidence that the videos matter that much. So even though we've published things on the videos. And there's all this work on videos.
it actually seemed to like.
yeah, I should, I should say.


Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: having a video might matter versus like not having a video, but like getting the perfect video is kind of a fool's errand like, it's a wild goose chase. It's like, No, just have a video. It's probably going to be fine. Let's actually look at what you do in class time. Yeah, I think I'd be curious. I think Sandra would say the same thing that
once you've got the video fine check. That's that's fine. It's not worth it to
stress and pour over the exact phrasing of the video and the exact editing. And like, you know what you got a video, it's probably fine. What does seem to matter more is, what do you do with the students from the video or connected to the video or with your class time. It does seem valuable to
have class time for students to work like, while the teachers in the room. That does seem to be important. So it's like, okay, you have the video. Hopefully, the students watched it. But when they come back to class. Let's actually give the students some time to dig into some some problems like, let's have and try some of it out. The teacher can be there to respond, or they can work with each with each other. That seems to matter more than like the exact, perfect video. For example,
we did find overall. We looked at 47 algebra classes, and like 20, some of them were flipped. 20. Some of them were non flipped. We tried to make them comparable
verall. We did find that the positive learning results were on the flip side. So we did a procedural measure, a conceptual measure. The procedural was kind of equal on the learning outcomes. But the conceptual actually favored the flipped
group a little bit. Now that's correlational. It's it's definitely not causal, because these flip teachers were choosing to flip, and so they were choosing to try something innovative. They were willing to put in the time to make a shift to flipping like. So it's not a random sample of teachers who are the ones that are flipping. It's also not a random sample of their context. If they felt like they were in a context to try the flipping.
So the positive flipped results are not necessarily causal.
but other literature is also finding positive results for flipping. And so
but we Xandra and I would hypothesize we weren't able to like, you know, answer this definitively, but we would hypothesize that the benefit of the flipping is because of it freeing up some class time. And then what the teacher does with that class time. It's not because the videos are like
Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: a magic, a silver bullet to like solve the the learning problem.

Dusty Jones: So for for math teacher educators, I can see a couple of ways to think about. This one is thinking about my own classes. That I'm teaching, you know. Is there some benefit to trying to flip that, and and maybe some of your work could could inform that. But then the other thing is, how am I preparing my prospective teachers to do flipped instruction. Do you have? What? What what?
What words do you have toward those topics? 

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Yeah, I mean, I do think for new teachers. I do think it's good for them to be somewhat aware of instructional videos. I think it's good to give them
at least a little bit of these guidance. That kind of like I mentioned like don't make them long. In fact, shorter is better. Don't make them distracting. Don't make them overly convoluted. Like, I think, giving them some of those basic things to look at. For a good video is, I think, worthwhile for for new teachers to know, because instructional videos now are so prevalent more than they were like, you know, when I was going through teacher prep
but then, I think also telling them
the videos are not the be all end. All the video. You're not gonna find a perfect video that all of a sudden is gonna teach everybody fractions, or it's gonna teach everybody, you know, solving equations? So putting them in their proper context, which is that instructional videos are one tool in the math at repertoire. But they're really not the strongest tool. And they're they have
the risk of people putting too much value on the video thinking, Oh, yeah, if people would just watch this, they would get it. It's like, no, it's still gonna really matter what the learning opportunities. You a te, a real teacher, a professional teacher, does with the students like live. It's still gonna matter. I think, a lot more.
So that's a couple of things I would mention to it. I also think new teachers could kind of have
some creativity. And I think they could maybe help us think outside the box of
beyond the typical way of using videos. So typical way as you sign the video, students watch it. Then they come to class, and maybe they do some practice. But our team is, was kind of wishing that people had a little bit more creativity like you could have the video not present. A topic or present a definition. And a worked example, you could have a video that just spurs a problem. And then you could come together and dig into the problem. We also thought you could have the video after the lesson.
not before, like, you could actually try something with students. And they they get their hands dirty. They kind of work on a bit. And then the video is actually a recap. That sort of synthesizes or formalizes the idea afterward.
also, like the new teachers might be more comfortable with video editing and sort of using their phones to kind of make little shorts and stuff. I think of Teddy Chow, and he's like digital math storytelling like, I feel like that could also be incorporated where it's like, all right, let's actually have the students ideas. Then the students put them into a video as a way to kind of encapsulate their own learning
rather than the teacher hitting them with a video for each topic. So I feel like the the new generation might really wow us, with some very cool ways of using videos in

Dusty Jones: a variety of ways. Yeah, 1 one of those reminds me of a talk I heard you give about inciting incidents. For for math problems. And so II guess that goes, put in my next question, what resources would you recommend for people that are interested in in learning more about this sort of thing?

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Yeah. Well, Sandra and I, and and Ruby Ellis and Jp. Hon. And others. I mean, we've we've been pretty productive with that math flipped math study. So if you go to flipped math study.net
you'll be able to find presentations. We've done, and then a lot of articles. We have a whole set of articles. I think we've probably published 8 or 10 different articles from the flipmat study. Some of them are about the videos. Some of them are about using class time trying to spur collaboration. Some of them are research articles that are about like, why did the teachers flip and then how did the teachers use the videos in relation to their textbook?
They may. They kind of use their video to replace the textbook. Actually, once they had a set of videos that became the textbook instead of whatever textbook they had before. So there's a whole set of things. Yeah, that. And Sandra and I are still thinking about it. We're actually still trying to publish a couple more articles that report on the student learning outcomes. That's the last piece to the puzzle
cause we did have measures of procedural learning, conceptual learning, and those are the ones we haven't published yet, but they're well. They're out in some conferences we've we've shared them at some conferences. And then I'm trying to get those out as well.

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): Sam, would you see this work as like you talked about incremental changes like, possibly like moving to like, Hey, take what you're doing. Let's let's flip it like is that like one of those like maybe incremental changes that you're talking about before.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Yeah, that's a good question. So and Sandra and I are, we worked together on flipped. And then. Now we're also working together on incremental Pd. With amber candela. And Paul wants savage. But
it's a good question. The thing about flipping is flipping
doesn't have to be a transformative revolutionary change for the teacher. If the teacher is very comfortable with.
I've got some definitions. I know how I like to explain them. I have some worked examples, and then I have some practice problems or exercises that come after like. If the teacher is very confident and and comfortable in that sort of zone.
Then flipping can still work in that zone. You could still be like, all right. Go ahead and take your definition of works. Examples. Put those on a video that will free up some class time. And now you might be able to nudge them a little bit on. Let's do a little bit something more with the class time. Maybe. Now you have the students do this together before you know you, you finish the class, or maybe you give them more time to work, and that is going to be a little bit more beneficial than just using most of the class time to talk at them.
So I, yeah, I do think there's a way in which
flipping can start to make some room
for learning improvements and some kind of instructional improvements. But it's not
this big transformational shift of you need a whole new curriculum. You need a whole new way that you have as a role of the teachers. You're going to be completely different. You're going to be a facilitator, you know, and and sometimes those transformations are
not taken up easily by the teacher. But flipping, I think, could in some ways, although again, I do think there's always this danger that flipping people or administrators or parents will think like the instructional video is doing all the work it's like, No, actually, the teacher is still the one that's that's doing the work with the students. And I should put this caveat into that Xandra and I
this whole flipped math study. It was not because we were proponents of flipping.
It was because we wanted to understand the phenomenon of flipping better. And so we have. It turns out there are some benefits. But we we didn't go into it because we wanted to push flipping.
although
I mean we will try to talk honestly about some of the drawbacks, and then some of the benefits that can happen from it.

Dusty Jones: That's really cool, Sam, do you have anything else to promote or share with us?

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Well, in terms of the incremental professional development? Or just this? This approach of recognizing what teachers are already doing, and just making very modest
suggestions that they can take or leave. I'll just mention that we do have a an Nsf. Grant that we're working on me and Zandra Amber, Canella Paul wants averaging some grad students. It's called practice driven professional development.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: We have a website that we've started, although we, we need to expand it more. But it's practice driven. pd.com. And we are trying to empirically investigate whether teachers take up some of these small suggestions, and whether they sort of respond well to that kind of Pd rather than the transformational revolutionary kind of Pd, so that's one thing I can just mention. We've talked about it quite a bit throughout this conversation. The other thing I'll just promote is that at Mizzou. We are looking for more math educators. So our doctoral program is seeking applicants.
So we usually review in November and December for people who can start. We have a full time funded tuition waiver great community here. Dusty is a wonderful product of our doctoral program. 

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): Come on, now, that's awesome.
Hey? Cut! Let's the workday 8 to 5, and then, you know, leave room for for other things. But with family or hobbies or writing a children's book like fantastic.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Yeah, if you wanna read an alphabet book with your kids, that is an alphabet book. But with a mathematician's sensibility of. Let's let's play with the words, and let's kind of like. See what we could mess up with the words, missing letters is there for you? I think it's good for especially ages like 4 to 6

Joel Amidon (he/him/his): awesome.

Dusty Jones: We will put that in the show notes as well. It's a fun. Read, we're fans, Sam, come on, that's right. I didn't bring up DC comics, because II as much as I like comics. I find myself gravitating toward Marvel. I don't wanna start a fight. I'm not that kind of person.

Sam Otten: DC is kind of winding down this year. So it's okay that it didn't come up. It's okay, it'll it'll wind back up in the future. 

Dusty Jones: Good, good. And and Sam, in honor of you. I, one of the things I like about the math. Ed, podcast. Is that last question.
And so I wanted to ask you, if you weren't in mathematics, education as a career, what might you imagine yourself doing as an alternative career.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Yeah.
I've had different answers for this over the years that the one that I would say right now is because this summer I went back up to my family farm, so I grew up on a farm in the Upper Peninsula, and I have 3 brothers. We actually all went to the farm. We did some farm cleanup. We did some, hey? We did square bales, we did round bales. We fought with equipment, trying to get it working and it was actually kind of fun. So maybe my answer right now would be.
I would be trying to run a family farm, mostly making hay selling it and keeping the equipment running
if I did that, though I know enough about family farming to know that I would also need some side hustles. I'd I'd need some other things to do to to make some money, so I probably
play piano at weddings, or, you know, around to get little money for music gigs, and I might do some math tutoring or something like that to make a little bit of money. But I'd give it a shot with,
maybe a hobby, farm family, farm kind of thing

Dusty Jones: that sounds great. And maybe there'd be a a, a podcast along with that for, you know, people that
are farming and want to listen to podcasts. I don't know. Yeah, well, you got a lot of time sitting in the tractor. So as well. Just listen to something about farming while you're going back and forth, back and forth, so you can hear it over the tractor.
Well, thanks so much for joining us, Sam. This has been a really fun conversation. I'm excited to share it with the rest of the community.

Sam Otten (he/him) LTC: Thanks for have thanks for having me.

Dusty Jones: And thanks again to y'all for listening to the teaching, math, teaching, podcast if you'd like to hear more, please subscribe to the podcast. We hope that you're able to take action on something you just heard and interact with other math teacher. Educators
also, did you know that Am. TE. Has another podcast. The mathematics, teacher, educator, podcast. Accompanies the latest edition of the mathematics, teacher, educator, journal, and has authors discuss the work they have submitted for publication to the journal, find a link to the MTE. Podcast in the show notes for this episode.