Seventh-grade teachers' choices of teaching procedures in the Approaching Algebra Numerically project

Purpose. The purpose was to investigate seventh-grade teacher's use of algebraic teaching procedures.;Procedures. Twenty-two seventh-grade teachers in the Approaching Algebra Numerically (AAN) project completed the Teaching Procedures Inventory for Algebraic Concepts (TPIAC) before and after they taught the AAN materials during the 1985-1986 school year. A sample of fourteen project teachers completed the pretest in July 1985 before they participated in an in-service course conducted by the AAN project staff. Project teachers and a control sample of nine seventh-grade teachers completed the posttest in May 1986.;The TPIAC was developed by the researcher and patterned after instrumentation used in the Second International Mathematics Study. Two-thirds of the numerical and graphing procedures were teaching procedures inherent to the AAN materials. Eleven project teachers were observed teaching the project materials in order to partially validate the TPIAC.;Teachers' responses to the pretest and posttest were compared using frequencies. The samples compared were: elementary and secondary project, in-service and no in-service project, project and control, elementary project and elementary control, and secondary project and secondary control.;Results. Each comparison revealed that the samples were more alike than different relative to their use of all teaching procedures in the TPIAC. Posttest results showed that the in-service sample emphasized twice as many AAN numerical procedures as the no in-service sample.;Bivariate correlations showed that project teachers who had high scores on the posttest relative to the AAN numerical procedures had large gains in student performance on the AAN achievement test. Project teacher gain score on the TPIAC relative to the numerical procedures and the subset of AAN procedures was related to student gain on the achievement test. In-service project teachers' gain on the TPIAC relative to the AAN numerical procedures was related to student gain.;A multiple regression analysis revealed that teachers' posttest scores were more significantly related to gain in student achievement than either their level of certification or participation or nonparticipation in the in-service course.;Conclusion. Project teachers emphasized instructional procedures embodied in their students' textual materials and changed their teaching behavior. The TPIAC has potential for future studies.