Elham Kazemi

The Labs Project 

In this JSMF-funded project across four US universities, we are interested in understanding how teachers' thinking and sensemaking may support or constrain their learning to promote discussions in mathematics and literacy.

In partnership with local schools that serve communities with rich cultural, racial, and linguistic diversity, we co-designed a PD structure which we call Learning Labs. In each lab, teachers engage in cycles of professional inquiry focused on leading disciplinary discussions in mathematics and literacy. Teachers and teacher educators come together to co-plan lessons that they enact all together in one of their classrooms, at times ‘passing the chalk’ and at times pausing to discuss students’ ideas and instructional next steps. Each of these enactments is followed by a reflection in which teachers discuss the experience they just had in light of the team’s commitments.

Supporting ambitious instruction in elementary mathematics through school-wide professional learning

In this collaborative project and several local schools, we are working on the question of how we build strong school-wide professional communities, in linguistically, racially, and culturally diverse school communities where there is enormous pressure to better serve students and disrupt longstanding inequities in schooling practices and policies. We know that teachers and students benefit from strong school cultures that de-privatize practice and bring principals, coaches, and teams of teachers together to build and enact a collective vision of high quality instruction. The school-wide professional development model we designed has three important components:

1. a fundamental belief in the brilliance of children from linguistically, racially, and culturally diverse communities
2. a principled vision of high quality or ambitious teaching with specific tools and practices that all teachers in the school community could begin to use with their students and that promote teacher and student learning
3. job-embedded math labs that allow grade-level teams, the principal, and school coaches to learn to use instructional practices and make practice public
4. leadership that supports and presses for teacher collaboration and experimentation

Video links to the practices that support student and teacher learning:

• Teacher Time Out: A way to collaborate during lesson
• Counting Collections in Kindergarten
• Which One Doesn't Belong
• Same & Different
• Related Problems
• Quick Images
• Choral Counting & Counting Collections in 1st Grade
• Choral Counting in 3rd Grade
• Counting Collections in 3rd Grade
• True/False Equations in 4th Grade
• Working on Mulltiplication in 3rd Grade
• Three Act Tasks in 2nd Grade
• Three Act Tasks in Kindergarten

Video Images of discourse moves

• Acknowledging others' ideas
• Assessment Strategy
• Participation Strategy
• Strategic Partners

Related papers

• Kazemi, E., & Resnick, A. F. (in press). Organising schools for teacher and leader learning. In G. M. Lloyd (Ed.). Participants in mathematics teacher education: Individuals, teams, communites, and networks. In O. Chapman (Series Ed.), International handbook of mathematics teacher education, Second Edition: Vol.3. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
• Resnick, A. F., & Kazemi, E. (2019). Decomposition of practice as an activity for research-practice partnerships, AERA Open, 5(3), 1-14.  .
• Kazemi, E., Gibbons, L. K., Lewis, R., Fox, A., Hintz, A., Kelley-Petersen, M., Adrian Cunard, A., Lomax, K., Lenges, A., & Balf, R. (2018). Math Labs: Teachers, teacher educators, and school leaders learning together with and from their own students. Journal of Mathematics Educational Leadership.
• Gibbons, L. K., Kazemi, E., Hintz, A., Hartmann, E. (2017). Teacher time out: Educators learning together in and through practice. Journal of Mathematics Educational Leadership, 18(2), 28-46.
• Gibbons, L., Kazemi, E.,  & Lewis. R. (2017). Developing collective capacity to improve mathematics instruction: Coaching as a lever for school-wide improvement. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 46, 231-250.
• Lomax, K., Alfonzo, K., Dietz, S., Kleyman, E., & Kazemi, E. (2017). Trying three-act-tasks with primary students. Teaching Children Mathematics, 24, 112-119.
• Kazemi, E., Gibbons, L., Lomax, K., & Franke, M. (2016). Listening to and learning from student thinking: An assessment approach to guide instructional decisions. Teaching Children Mathematics, 23, 182-190.

LTP: Learning in, from, and for teaching practice

LTP is a collaboration with colleagues at UCLA and the University of Michigan to redesign mathematics teacher preparation and development.  We are experimenting with focusing teacher preparation on a suite of strategically designed and structured instructional activities that can help novices learn to teach ambitiously.  Our teacher education courses will be designed around intense study, rehearsal, and enactment of these activities.  We think that this focus will allow us to better support teacher learning of content, pedagogy, and children’s thinking towards the aim of engaging all students in authentic and rigorous mathematics instruction.

Related papers:

• Kazemi, E., Ghousseini, H., Cunard, A., Turrou, A. (2016). Getting inside rehearsals: Insights from teacher educators to support work on complex practice. Journal of Teacher Education, 67, 18-31.
• Kazemi, E., & Kjersti Wæge. (2015). Learning to teach within practice-based methods courses.  Mathematics Teacher Education and Development, 17, 125-145.
• Lampert, M., Franke, M., Kazemi, E., Ghousseini, H., Turrou, A.C., Beasley, H., Cunard, A., & Crowe, K. (2013).  Keeping it complex: Using rehearsals to support novice teacher learning of ambitious teaching in elementary mathematics.  Journal of Teacher Education, 64, 226-243.
• Kazemi, E., Lampert, M., & Ghousseini, H. (2007). Conceptualizing and using routines of practice in mathematics teaching to advance professional education. Report to the Spencer Foundation, Chicago.
• Lampert, M., Beasley, H., Ghousseini, H., Kazemi, E., Franke, M. (2010) Using designed instructional activities to enable novices to manage ambitious mathematics teaching (pp. 129-141). In M.K. Stein & L. Kucan (Eds.) Instructional explanations in the discipline. New York: Springer.
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RMLL: Researching Mathematics Leader Learning

In this NSF-funded project, I worked with with Rebekah Elliott at Oregan State University and Judy Mumme and Cathy Carroll at West Ed to think more purposefully about how professional educators learn to lead professional development (PD) with teachers.   We were interested in what happens during PD when teachers do mathematics together and are supporting leaders to be more strategic in developing facilitation practices to develop teachers’ specialized mathematical knowledge.

Related Papers:

• Lesseig, K., Elliott, R., Kazemi, E., Kelley-Petersen, M., Campbell, M., Mumme, J., Carroll, C. (2016). Using videocases to prepare leaders of mathematics professional development. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 20, 591-619.
• Kazemi, E., Elliott, R., Mumme, J., Carroll, C., Lesseig, K., Kelley-Petersen, M. (2011). Noticing leaders’ interactions with videocases of teachers engaged in mathematics tasks in professional development.  In M. Sherin, V. Jacobs, R. Phillipp (Eds.) Mathematics teacher noticing: Seeing through teachers' eyes (pp. 188-203). New York: Routledge.
• Elliott, R., Kazemi, E., Lesseig, K., Mumme, J., Carroll, C., & Kelley-Petersen, M. (2009). Conceptualizing the work of leading mathematical tasks in professional development. Journal of Teacher Education, 60, 364-379.
• Kazemi, E., & Elliott, R., Mumme, J., Carroll, C., & Hubbard, A. (2007, October). Doing mathematics in professional developing: Theorizing leader learning with and through sociomathematical norms  (pp. 796-803).  In T. Lamberg, T. &  L. R. Wiest (Eds.), Proceedings of the annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Stateline (Lake Tahoe), NV: University of Nevada, Reno.
• Elliott, R., & Kazemi, E. (2007, October). Researching mathematics leader learning: Investigating the mediation of math knowledge needed for teaching on leaders’ collective work in mathematics (pp. 819-826).  In T. Lamberg, T. &  L. R. Wiest (Eds.), Proceedings of the annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Stateline (Lake Tahoe), NV: University of Nevada, Reno.

Stories Count: Students’ Experiences Across Mathematics & Literacy

I worked with Elizabeth Dutro at UC Boulder and a public school teacher, Ruth Balf, to follow children in one fifth grade classroom across two years. Funded by a Royalty Research grant, this study examined how children are intellectually and socially positioned in the classroom across the subject areas of mathematics and literacy. We also examined questions about children’s competence and what is learned by examining their participation in classroom activities versus their performance on formal measures of achievement. The participating classroom was in an urban district and served racially and linguistically diverse children, including children who are often labeled “at risk” of failure in both of these subject areas. One of our goals in this project was to explore the resources that children bring to their work across these subject areas. This project has allowed me to continue to ask questions about mathematics instruction, while also broadening the focus of questions to include children’s multiple identities and how those “ways of being” in classrooms impact children’s success in school, both academically and socially.

Related papers:

• Dutro, E., Kazemi, E., Balf, R., Lin, Y. (2008). “What are you and where are you from?” Race, identity, and the vicissitudes of cultural relevance. Urban Education, 43, 269-300.
• Dutro, E., Kazemi, E., & Balf, R. (2006). Making Sense of “The Boy Who Died”: Tales of a struggling successful writer.  Reading and Writing Quarterly, 22, 325-356
• Dutro, E., Kazemi, E., Balf, R. (2005). The aftermath of ‘you’re only half’: Multiracial identities in the literacy classroom. Language Arts, 83, 96-106
• Kazemi, E., & Dutro, E. (2002, October).  Stories Count: Children’s experiences across mathematics and literacy.  Proceedings of the biannual meeting of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Seattle, WA.

Using Student Work In Collective Professional Inquiry

My dissertation examined how teachers’ professional inquiry outside of the classroom was linked to their learning inside the classroom and to opportunities for school change. I used multiple-case methodology to analyze teachers’ joint work in one urban elementary school as they discussed their own students’ work. Much is being said now about using artifacts of practice, such as student work, to organize professional development. The use of student work has the potential to influence professional discourse about teaching and learning, to engage teachers in a cycle of experimentation and reflection and to shift teachers’ focus from one of general pedagogy to one that is particularly connected to their own students. Whether these opportunities are realized depends on the actual use of student work in professional activity. However, as several recent reviews of professional development have repeatedly noted, the research on professional development lacks empirical data on how teachers engage in collective inquiry and what impact it has on their learning. The findings emerging from this work include: (1) teacher learning is enhanced when teachers learn to pay attention to the details of their students’ thinking, (2) the study of student work enables teachers to deepen both their subject matter knowledge and to improve their classroom practice, and (3) teachers’ classroom practice develops more substantially when their classroom experimentation is closely coupled to their engagement in professional development.

Related papers:

• Franke, M., Kazemi, E., Shih, J., Biagetti, S., & Battey, D. (2005). Changing teachers’ professional work in mathematics: One school’s journey. In T.A. Romberg,T.P. Carpenter, T. P., & F. Dremock (Eds.) Understanding mathematics and science matters (pp. 209-230). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. 
• Kazemi, E., & Franke, M.L. (2004). Teacher learning in mathematics: Using student work to promote collective inquiry. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 7, 203-235.
• Kazemi, E., & Franke, M.L. (2003). Using student work to support professional development in elementary mathematics.  Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, Working Paper, Seattle, WA.
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• Franke, M.L., & Kazemi, E. (2001). Learning to teach mathematics:  Developing a focus on students’ mathematical thinking.  Theory into Practice, 40, 102-109.
• Franke, M.L., & Kazemi, E. (2001).  Teaching as learning within a community of practice: Characterizing generative growth.  In T. Wood, B. Nelson, & J. Warfield (Eds.). Beyond classical pedagogy in elementary mathematics: The nature of facilitative teaching (pp. 47-74). Mahwah, NJ:  Erlbaum

Professional Development

Webinar, Head Start Center for Inclusion:  Engaging Young Children’s Mathematical Thinking by Mathematizing the World

In this presentation, I talk about how families and early childhood educators can support young children's interest and knowledge in early numeracy skills.  Informal and formal learning opportunities in early childhood mathematics abound.  This talk describes how to identify mathematical activity in everyday experiences and turn them into genuine math experiences. I show many examples of what doing mathematics means, the importance of working on early counting and problem solving skills. I also explore connections between mathematics and early literacy. 

http://depts.washington.edu/hscenter/embedded-math

Parent Map Video: How to support children's mathematical learning at home

http://www.parentmap.com/article/video-doing-the-math-solving-the-student-teacher-parent-equation

Mathematics Education Project

The Mathematics Education Project (MEP) is the outgrowth of three projects funded by the National Science Foundation—CCML (Creating a Community of Mathematics Learners), ECML (Expanding a Community of Mathematics Learners) and SOAR (Strategic organization, assistance and resources) for Washington mathematics. Through these projects, a community of educators from schools and the University of Washington gained extensive knowledge of research-based professional development resources, the art of facilitation, teacher leadership development, strategies for working with administrators and parents, and factors that contribute to sustainability of change. Through the MEP, this mathematics community intends to reach out to other communities in the state and region.

• Kazemi, E., Lenges, A., Stimpson, G. (2008).  Adapting cases from a Developing Mathematical Ideas seminar to closely examine the work of teaching.  Association of Mathematics Teacher Education Monograph, 4, 21-33
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• Kazemi, E., (2007). Supporting elementary mathematics through long-term professional education. Curriculum in Context, 34, 10-12. Download pdf»