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Copyright of Conference Papers -- Psychology of Mathematics & Education of North America is the property of Psychology of Mathematics & Education of North America and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Video-based professional development (PD) supports teacher learning through grounding discussions in representations of practice. We consider PD where teachers, not the facilitator, were responsible for choosing video clips and generating a focal question. Using a framework for pedagogically productive talk, we investigate what contributes to productive video-based discussions. By analyzing two discussions held back-to-back, we unpack how the same group of teachers engaged in more and less pedagogically productive talk. This research has implications for understanding the features that contribute to productive video discussions in PD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attempts to understand and design for mathematics teacher learning have frequently identified key disconnects between teachers' contexts, the professional development experience, and, ultimately, teachers' practice. In this paper, we offer a theoretical approach to understand these discontinuities drawing on Rogoff's (1995) three planes of analysis of sociocultural activity. We then apply these three planes to illustrate one example of a teacher learning environment designed for coherence: side-by-side coaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on six coach-teacher dyads’ interactions (n=295) across 25 lessons, this study examines the foci and depth of coach-teacher modeling interactions. Qualitative analyses revealed six types of coach-teacher interactions, and two levels of depth that take into account the extent to which reasoning about content, pedagogy, and students was made evident during coach-teacher interactions. Implications for future research as well as practice are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cooperative approach to mainstreaming between a school for the deaf and a nearby regional Occupational Education Center of the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) in New York State was investigated in four programs representing local variations of this model for partial mainstreaming. Three distinct periods of the mainstreaming effort were isolated for study: the period of selection, the period of orientation, and the period of articulation (when communications concerning learner needs and progress are being coordinated between the two facilities and home). Interviews were conducted with 120 administrator-supervisors, pupil personnel workers, and teachers. Among findings were that the need for information about the types and content of courses at the BOCES Centers receives the most attention; that the personnel in both participating institutions make little or no distinction between selection and orientation activities; and that communication between the two institutions does not appear to be a major concern in the day-to-day operation of the cooperative program. (SBH)

Following rehearsals of instructional practices, teacher educators often facilitate debrief discussions for participants to reflect on and make sense of their experience. This study explores the ways in which rehearsing and non-rehearsing teachers, who act as teachers and students respectively, make sense of that experience collectively and how their positions as teachers and students are reflected in their talk. Data from eight rehearsal debriefs conducted with in-service secondary mathematics teachers during practice-based professional development are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rehearsals have become a common way to support mathematics teacher learning. Primarily, research on rehearsals has focused on the experience of the rehearsing teachers, and we know much less about the experiences of non-rehearsing teachers. In this study, we investigate nonrehearsing teachers’ public sensemaking about rehearsals during debrief discussions following rehearsals. We use the lens of professional noticing to capture the ways in which non-rehearsing teachers made sense of the rehearsals and positionality to account for the dual roles of student and teacher that non-rehearsing teachers take on in rehearsals. We found that non-rehearsing teachers primarily attended to and interpreted their experiences from the position of student, and made connections beyond the rehearsal from the position of teacher. These findings have implications for considering the experiences of all rehearsal participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates cultural and relational expectations of autonomy in an independent living program for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Drawing on 1.5 years of ethnographic observation at this program, I look at the work of technologies to mediate the interactions between staff and participants. I find that technologies play an important role in structuring interactions in order to preserve the autonomy of participants who are supported by program staff. They do this by focusing the content of evaluations of autonomy on specific sets of action, insulating participants' autonomous social identity from undue scrutiny that might discount their independence in other contexts. As the focal point for action, technologies allow staff to intervene in and scrutinize the daily lives of participants without undermining their autonomy because staff act toward technologies and not participants. Finally, I find that technologies take on some of the work of participants and staff. What is unique about the actions performed by technologies is that they can be attributed to both staff and participants. This allows the participant to emerge as an autonomous actor even in the midst of their dependence on others. These findings engage research on assistive technology, especially their impact on shaping the social identities of people with disabilities, a political project closely tied to efforts to secure their civil rights. Research like this is particularly important for informing the design of state support for a broad range of dependent populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning to respond to student thinking in the moment is challenging precisely because responsiveness cannot be scripted in advance. In this study, I situated teacher learning opportunities within teachers' daily instruction to support learning to respond during teacher-student interactions. This embedded professional development - side-by-side coaching - was found to have a significant positive impact on teachers' ability to respond to and advance students' mathematical thinking in the moment through the practice of conferring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responsiveness is critical to math learning. This study examines how elementary mathematics teachers use a discourse structure adapted from literacy instruction - the conference - to engage in responsive teaching with students as they grapple with mathematical tasks. Teacher-student interactions from nine lessons in two fourth grade math classrooms were analyzed to define the structure of a math conference. An emergent typology of the pivotal conferring teaching move, the nudge, is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research brief describes an analytic approach to examining the relationship between productivity and the distribution of student authority during collaborative mathematics problem-solving among elementary learners. Our approach focuses on distributions of both intellectual and social authority -- shared, concentrated, and contested -- and its relations to how students engage with the collaborative task and one another. We then discuss the utility for such an approach to examine how students work together on collaborative mathematics tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opposition to legalized abortion is part of the bedrock of conservative politics today. Yet despite the almost seamless integration of the contemporary pro-life movement into the Republican Party, the relationship between the two is historically and ideologically peculiar. The pro-life movement was formed largely by Catholics, not conservative Protestants. Moreover, the background of the movement was to a large degree rooted in progressive Catholic ideas about social justice and the (progressive) experiences of many early activists in advocacy for peace and the poor. At the same time, Republicans did not initially embrace pro-life activists following the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Twenty years ago, then, there was nothing inevitable about opposition to legalized abortion becoming one of the central social issues around which conservative mobilization and electioneering revolves. This paper argues that the the pro-life movement has moved from a progressive, Catholic orientation to a conservative, Protestant orientation, as part of a explicit social movement strategy by conservative leaders to coop the movement. Moreover, the transformation of the movement induced by this cooptation is responsible for some of the important dynamics within the pro-life movement today. The analysis draws on historical sources, General Social Survey data, and original interview and ethnographic work to identify an important mechanism in the political realignment of the 1970s and 80s, as well the limitations placed on the pro-life movement in the United States as a result of that realignment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement scholars have long been interested in the role of students and college campuses in social movement recruitment and activity. For the most part, however, their attention has focused almost exclusively on liberal activism. This paper brings attention to the extensive conservative organizing that has long been present on American college campuses. It identifies several important processes by which conservative social movement mobilization is taking place on campuses today. It also clarifies the specific ways in which biographical availability and social networks-two of the key underlying mechanisms for social movement recruitment-- operate among today's students. The empirical data for the paper come from a national study of the pro-life movement in the U.S. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What impact does religion have on the pro-life movement in the United States? Looking at religion as churches and religion as ideas, and understanding religion in either case as an independent force which influences the mobilization of the movement, this paper demonstrates the important yet limited ways in which religion impacts pro-life activism. It then suggests a new way to conceptualize religion in the context of social movement theory. It argues that we need a focus on everyday practices as the mechanism that sustains religious faith and makes it salient and relevant in people?s lives. I apply this focus to the ways in which religion and the pro-life movement interact and find that social movement activism is permeated with religious practice. As people fight the battle over abortion, they are also enacting prayerful lives, birth and death rituals, the gathering of the faithful, expressions of faith, understandings of personal sacrifice and persecution, and the doing of God?s work on earth. Religion and the pro-life movement are not so much discrete, distinct social phenomena in which the former influences the latter, but instead are overlapping social processes that impact each other. Focusing on practices helps best understand the existing empirical data, and also suggests that social movements can be sources of broader social change beyond simply the substantive issues on which they focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that terrorism research has not focused sufficient attention on the dynamics of terrorist organizations themselves. It uses an approach rooted in social movement theory to argue that the dynamics of terrorism can be better understood through focused attention to the formal organizations that envision, plan, and carry out most terrorist attacks. It then introduces a new dataset on the most active terrorist organizations worldwide in which qualitative information on groups involved in political violence is being collected and organized systematically from publicly available sources. The paper then demonstrates the potential power of this approach by showing how the conventional wisdom regarding the role of ideology in motivating terrorism is wrong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six days of interactive on-line programming brought the 2006 COSEE Great Lakes Preconference Workshop from NAAEE to over 350 additional workshop participants. Technological expertise of the College of Exploration expanded the face-to-face workshop with video, materials, interactions and excellent evaluations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An evaluative summary of the first Great Lakes COSEE lake exploration workshop will provide samples of curricular materials, a discussion of teacher implementation efforts, and a description of additional educator workshops planned for the next four years. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of legal and extralegal factors on the decision to prosecute a murder as first degree or as a capital offense. Additionally, this study investigates how these factors influence juries' decisions to decide the punishment of life in prison or the death penalty. The cases analyzed include offenders convicted of murder committed after September 1, 1994 and incarcerated in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) on January 31, 2006 or released after September 31, 2005. This time frame was selected because the criminal statutes that define murder were revised and the characteristics of murder versus capital murder were different prior to September, 1994. The first research questions asks, is there a difference in the circumstances of a murder that influence whether a suspect is prosecuted for first degree murder or for Capital Murder. The second question analyzes the differences in the circumstances of the murder and whether the offender was given life imprisonment or death. Findings are expected to show significant effects of legal and extralegal factors on the decision to prosecute and whether an offender received a life or capital sentence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A set of parole guidelines developed by an outside consultant is used by the parole board of a large southern state to help make their decisions of whether to release an offender from prison to parole supervision. The goal is to make the decisions as objectively as possible. An evaluation of the first four years of the guidelines implementation will show if the guidelines are a good predictive instrument of future criminal activity versus successful reintegration into society. This study will also investigate if particular pieces of the instrument are better predictors than others, whether additional information can increase the predictive powers of the guidelines, and how consistently the parole board is following the guidelines. The purpose of the study is to improve the decision-making process involved with releasing offenders from incarceration to community supervision, but there are also implications for decisions regarding whether an offender should be placed on community supervision rather than incarcerated and whether an offender should be revoked from parole or remain on supervision with additional controls after violating their terms of supervision short of the commission of a new offense. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]