Abstract:

This paper reports on a teacher education research project that aimed to explore how mathematics teacher educators can design and implement artifacts that support a community of beginning teachers to use technology strategically and incorporate computational thinking in their teaching of mathematics. The main goal of this research was to study how a graduate program in childhood mathematics education in NYC is responding to the calls for this strategic use of technology in teaching mathematics and to the national and state’s standards for integrating computational thinking and computing in k-12 education.
Strategic use refers to when teacher and students use technology tools as determined through decision making where mathematics rather than technology is kept as the focus of instruction.
The artifacts and inquiries of this project land on where computational thinking and mathematics education intersect. Many studies found that they intersect in various aspects like problem-solving which is a fundamental goal of mathematics education and computational thinking. Another aspect includes all the thinking processes such as abstraction, decomposition, algorithmic thinking, pattern recognition, modeling, logical and analytical thinking, generalization and evaluation of solutions and strategies.
In this study, the research activities and methods span according to the following three-cycle research sequence of a) whole-class teaching activities, b) lesson study investigations and c) teacher action research:

Cycle 1: Whole class teaching activities: this cycle includes all whole-class activities, discussion boards and digital presentations in the context of childhood mathematics method courses which are related to strategic use of technology in teaching mathematics and/or integrating computational thinking.
Cycle 2: Lesson Study Group: This cycle includes activities done by a group of teachers who collaborated in the context of lesson study conducted about Integrating computational thinking in elementary mathematics.
Cycle 3: Teacher Action Research: This cycle follows two teachers as they conduct their proactive action research about strategic use of technology in teaching mathematics and/or integrating computational thinking.

Examples from each cycle will be shared. Results will be presented then, followed by a discussion on how they can inform curricular and program improvement and contribute to our understanding on the characteristics of computational thinking in mathematics education and the role of mathematics teacher education programs in integrating computational thinking in the k-12 schools.

Keywords:

Elementary Mathematics Education, Computational Thinking, Strategic Use of Technology, Teacher Preparation.