Study On Mathematics Teaching Research Specialists' Mentoring By Means Of Grounded Theory

It has been more than 60 years to gather experience of organizing teaching research in elementary and secondary school,especially in mentoring the math teachers.But the theory of Mathematics teaching research specialists' mentoring has not been built up.It's time to build a Chinese theory in mentoring math teachers.This research is an initial attempt which is comprised by constructivism theory and improvem.ent.1.Adopting a grounded theory approach,this study,which based on Qingpu experiment system,try to build up a theory and a work model of how mathematics teaching research specialist mentors practices teachers.The first part,consisting Chapter 4,5 and 6,is mainly about the selection of teachers'guidance experience and the elaboration of how Grounded Theory is rooted in the study in three phases.The first phase,"the login with the description of empirical materials".It starts from the effective experience of mathematics teacher learning mentoring.The study is then rooted in the live experience of MTRSMs,e.g.a"refreshment" model with a recycle that integrates the updating external inputs and the optimizing internal experience.Finally,an action routine for teacher professional development is established from the reflection of teaching practice.The second phase,"conceptualization of materials",i.e.category architecture.Associating existed literature,it analyzes the diagnoses of students' difficulties in learning mathematical problems and the experience of improving the quality of mathematics teaching in large areas,and then categorize the contents that MTRSMs guide teachers and distinguish different levels of ways that MTRSs use.Based on these,an experimental tool is designed for detailed coding analysis,and a four-stage"practice-knowledge" model,front analysis-taskdesign-process evaluation-teaching improvement,is emerged,as the core of MTRSMs' mentoring experience.The third phase,"the theoretical abstraction based on connections among concepts".There are two main orientations of MTRSMs' "practice-knowledge",practical knowledge,and interactive skills.Practical-knowledge orientation shows that the cycle between front analysis and post evaluation is the interactive process between objectives and outcomes.The essential way for teacher professional development is the continual design and improvement.The quality of MTRSs'mentoring could be sharply increased,if analyses as the prerequisite and evaluations as the reason for improvement.Interactive-skill orientation indicates there are four cognitive regions of interactions between people.The knowledge and experience sharing requires one's skills of "opening myself ' and "listenging and responding".Teaching and research mentoring in our country(China)reveals the special function of "the fifth cognitive region",that is it is better to draw on the skills of "questions focuses" and "reflection and construction" to obtain new experience and,create and enrich new knowledge.2.Through the theory and the model we analyze some different cases in order to improve the theory and the model.The second part,including Chapter 7,8 and 9,presents the variant characteristics of(MTRSMs')mentoring,and exemplifications of "practice-knowledge" mentoring.First,"from the variant feature to the guidance space".The teaching-and-research mentoring in China obviously has the variant characteristics of multi-angel understanding of concepts and promoting the process step-by-step,which reflects a learning essence that is improving from a solid base.The quantitative analysis of the "potential distance" in the procedural experimental data shows that a core connection from cognitive base to a new problem and new knowledge is particularly important.According to this,teaching mentoring space can be expanded into three dimensions:reality,reasoning and learning psychology.Second,"the meaning of practice knowledge".The study analyzes MTRSM's practice knowledge that is distinguished from regular teachers',with the mentoring space as vertical and practice process as horizontal.In the aspect of "analysis-design",mentors at least have the knowledge to highlight key-points,and to grasp the logical backbone of the knowledge points;be able to integrate cognitive sequences that could enhance students' learning effectiveness into teaching;can make good use of mathematicization that closely connected with the real life;and have the power conduct teaching recreation.In the aspect of"evaluation-improvement",mentors should focus on the teaching improvement of the abstraction of mathematics and its meaning generation,be able to promote students'own imterpretations and exploring skills through adjusting scaffold for students,and be good at establishing systematical knowledge to improve classroomteaching with emphasis on ability objectives.Third,"sharing and constructing interactive skills".Due to the specific role of mentors in teachers' behaviors.Sharing skills,such as the guiding discourse that can stimulate teachers to reveal their real problems in teaching,lead the teachers to enhance their ability of effective listening,as well as negotiation and response based on their teacher profession.Construction skills,such as shourthan,instantly identifying the focus issues and building up periodic tables to report reflections on teaching,can help teachers construct new methods in their teaching through discussing the notes.Last but not least,it is noticed that the value of Grounded Theory focuses on its proposition on methodology,which reflects a gradual process based on evidences.Especially during the process of the mentoring for teacher professional development,it involves many cyclic actions.The essence of Grounded Theory lies in the practical work of the practitioner,and there is usually not an end.This study,which focuses on the conceptualization of Chinese mathematics mentors' practice knowledge is only a limited start.Researches with larger sample sizes to "reinforce" and to systematically"prune" and "refine" results of this study are still needed in the future.