MTHED 277

Task Design for Personal Growth and Stewardship

Students recognize and can explain how the thoughtful use of mathematical tasks can enable them to reflect on and improve their instruction, and how such use can nurture and empower adolescents to draw upon their divine potential, intelligence, and capabilities to learn and do mathematics.

Mathematics

Students have a deep understanding of select central concepts of high school mathematics with a significant attention to algebra and functions, as well as core representations, canonical examples, and alternative algorithms germane to teaching these concepts.  Other learning outcomes in the course are situated in the mathematics of algebra and functions.

Identifying Concepts and Procedures

Students can analyze a section in a textbook or curricular unit, a specific mathematical topic, or a task to identify and describe the important mathematical concepts and procedures related to that section, topic, or task.

Task Analysis

Students can use their knowledge of mathematics and how adolescents learn mathematics to analyze a task in order to anticipate the type of mathematics learning it might foster or reveal.

Task Design for Learning

Students understand how mathematical tasks can support adolescents' development of conceptual understanding and procedural fluency, and can use that understanding to design mathematical tasks that allow adolescents to use their prior knowledge and experiences to develop understanding of particular concepts and procedures.

Task Design for Promoting Equity

Students understand that who adolescents are becoming is dependent on what positions are offered to adolescents by teachers, other adolescents, themselves, and mathematical tasks, and understand how tasks can be used to promote social justice.