A Study On Improving Teachers' Observing And Understanding Of Children's Learning And Development

The purpose of the study was to build a research framework in improving teachers' understanding of children's mathematics learning and development. And then to test and verify the framework by intervention in action research.The study first investigated how teachers understand children's mathematics learning and development in daily education practice. The results indicated that teachers generally acknowledged that the understanding of children's mathematical learning and development level was the precondition for effective teaching. Teachers usually did it through observation and communication with the children and parents, however, they had puzzles in the assessment, including what to observe, and how to analyze the observation results, what are the index for the assessment, and how to support children's learning based on the observation results. In responding to the results, a framework was developed on the basis of conceptual change theory, situated learning theory and authentic assessment theory. In the framework, videos of children's number concept learning were used as a media to encourage teachers to discuss the children's learning behaviors. The framework encouraged teachers to observe children's mathematical learning. It aimed to improve teachers'understanding of children's number concept learning and development through enhancing teachers'knowledge and skills, which includes content knowledge of children's number concept learning, knowledge of the development of children's number concept learning, and observation skill.Nine teachers participated in the action learning group to implement the framework in the classroom. The results indicated that teachers in the action learning groups made significant progresses, such as their content knowledge of children's number concept learning had been improved, they paid more attention to children's learning behaviors when they discussed teaching activities, the accuracy of explaining and assessing children's number concept learning also enhanced, the instructional strategies they provided were more effective, and their autonomy for participating the action research was promoted. Finally, questionnaire and interview were adopted to investigate what teachers learned in respect of "assessing children's mathematical learning and development" in the periods of pre-service education and service education. The results indicated that teachers were dissatisfied with the curriculum content and the internship for their college study. Teachers were also dissatisfied with their in service training in relating to the topic. In addition,, they were more likely to focus on the subjects of "teachers'behaviors", "teaching contents", "teaching strategies" and "academic goals" in teaching and research activities, however, the aspects for children's learning got less attention. At the end, the implications of the study were also discussed.