Mathematical Research: A Multiple Methods Approach

Sarah Simmons
In Partial Fulfillment for ERES 800

Dr. Shaun Murphy

ERES 800
June 25th, 2018
 Personal Narrative
I haven’t always loved school and all that it entailed. As a child, I remember being
forced to sit at the kitchen table and try to finish my work. My father was a teacher and
would sit with my brother and I to help us with our homework as he marked student
work. The biggest thorn in my side would always be mathematics. The endless
computations, algorithms, and silly nonsense would drag me down into an epic pit of
despair. My father, who apparently had the patience of a saint, would guide me through
my work whenever I got stuck. If it was help I needed with computations, my mom was
the number wizard. I’m lucky that I had supportive parents that would help me, push
me, and be my champions throughout my years in the educational system. The greatest
challenge for me was trying to make sense of the word problems. What were they
asking me to do? How was I supposed to figure out what strategy or operation to use?
And honestly, did anyone care about the answers? These questions haunted me for
years and it has only since I became a teacher myself that I have discovered that
underneath all that angst and confusion was a learner who was just looking for an
engaging and stimulating math problem.

Once I started to guide students through the many intricacies and challenges
associated with mathematics I began to see how challenging and confusing this work
can be for students. I promised my first class of grade 5 and 6 students that they would
love math by the time the year was up. I worked myself to the bone and I think I could
confidently say that they tolerated, maybe even enjoyed, math by the end of the year. It
made me start to question how we teach students the language of mathematics. Do we
provide them with the same skills, supports, and guidance that we do our kindergarten
students as they first begin to read and develop their phonemic awareness of language. I
have come back to the thought that students don’t understand many of the word
problems that we give them because we haven’t taught them the language skills that
they need for mathematics.

My journey in my graduate work so far has been looking at maker education and
task design. I am highly engaged with learning more about how we can support students
with developing the skills they need to be active, engaged, and strong learners,
specifically with mathematics. One of the other things I have realized over the years is
that there are both very good and very bad math tasks for students and that there is
little consensus on how to best teach math. How do we create a culture where students
have the skills and drive to delve into challenging math tasks?

Literature Search

I began searching on EricOvid with the search terms of mathematics,

problem-solving and teaching methods. While the initial searches provided a fair bit of
information, once I was able to apply the OR function with search terms of critical
thinking and elementary education, I was left with a collection of 31 articles. I was
specifically hoping for articles that would support a deeper understanding of critical
thinking, collaborative, and visual thinking skills that would be necessary for
mathematics.

Maher, Martino, and Friel (1992) outlined examples of collaborative problem-

solving between students and some of the benefits and challenges. The article focused
on how teachers can support students with visualization techniques as it relates to
problem solving. “The teacher withheld giving a correct solution and encouraged free
exploration. Her judgment was to listen to the students and to accept their reason” (pp
37). Maher et al (1992) note that mathematics instruction of past years might have been
more focused on all of the attainable answers being given, while the current focus
allowed the teacher to pause and focus on the students as individuals. “It affords
opportunities to regulate instruction to maximize the individual student's growth while
sustaining higher levels of motivation and interest” (pp 37). The work we do with
students must be responsive to their individual needs.
 I have a number of educational sites listed on my computer that I regularly visit
for problem-solving inspiration with my students. One of the sites that we often visit is
Ted Ed, although we normally visit to find tough problems that challenge us to think
critically. Meyer(2010) is a high school math teacher that is featured on Ted Ed
speaking about the necessity of math class getting a makeover. He discusses many of the
problems associated with math instruction and textbooks being used these days and
draws an analogy between the way students are being taught and the length of a sitcom.
Students are expecting problems to be simple to explain and solve. Meyer(2010) states,
“​ ​You're impatient with things that don't resolve quickly. You expect sitcom-sized
problems that wrap up in 22 minutes, three commercial breaks and a laugh track. And
I'll put it to all of you, what you already know, that no problem worth solving is that
simple”. Meyer(2010) goes onto explain how problems can be changed to become
challenging tasks where students are required to explore and acquire information and
skills as needed while working collaboratively.

Rowlett (2011) highlights the necessity of failure in math class and how it is
helping students to achieve greatness and how questions need to be changed. “Posing
problems requires the teacher to think of relevant, real-world problems that require
synthesizing prior knowledge in a new situation” (pp 37). The focus shifts from the rote
memorization of the mathematical knowledge to one where students have the skills and
strategies to more fully interact with the mathematical concepts. Rowlett (2011) argues,
“To pose problems and foster creativity, teachers must encourage students to work
through their failures and correct their thinking” (pp 38). The development of this
growth mindset allows students to develop skills and resilience in their work.

Research Methodology

When considering the research methods for this project, I would need to take a
number of thoughts into consideration. Never having completed a research project like
this, I feel as though the most logical place to begin would be with the questions I was
most curious to answer. How do students best learn the fundamentals of mathematics?
How can we develop questions that are engaging, collaborative, and challenging? How
do we create a culture where students are challenged by the work, fulfilled by the task,
adept at dealing with failure and consistently looking for more? Meyer (2010) believes
that we want to get to the point where “The math serves the conversation, the
conversation doesn't serve the math”. This research proposal would focus on students
of the same age level and their teachers.

When I consider the research questions that need to be addressed I find myself
considering a research methodology that can meet a vast number of needs. The research
method will need to be responsive to answering a variety of questions, over an
extensive period of time, with an undetermined number of subjects. Ideally, many of the
research questions could be answered with an extensive mixed methodology approach
to the research. I have chosen this method as I do not believe my questions could be
answered with one specialized research method. While mixed methods can be
contentious in the research world, I believe that it offers the greatest flexibility to being
able to answer the questions that have been posed with qualitative and quantitative
data that will be rich in scope.

Smith(2006) outlines Multiple Methods as, “studies or projects that employ at

least one quantitative and one qualitative method to produce knowledge claims” (pp
458-459). Flipp (2014) outlines qualitative data as “more exploratory in nature...and
explores the meaning of people’s experiences, culture, or particular issue/case” (1:01).
The qualitative data that could be available in this project would be incredibly
important. As qualitative data is more often captured through words as seen in
interviews, documents, and observations, this would be critical when considering
studying how students access mathematical questions and challenges.

Interviews would be considered one of the facets of this research. It would be

critical to interview both the teachers and the students as they work through
predetermined challenges and problems. There would need to be a great deal of thought
put into the questions to ensure that the questions were free of bias and were not
leading in any way. Brenner (2006) states that, “Part of the art of interviewing is
encouraging the informant to open up and expand on his or her responses in a way that
is distinctive from normal conversations” (pp 363). Guiding students and teachers to
elaborate upon their observations and inferences while working on the challenges
would be a critical facet of the research.

Observations and personal journal reflections would also remain a important

part of this research. It would offer the researcher a wealth of information to have the
recordings of teacher and students after they have finished working. Answering
questions in a personal reflection could offer deep insight into how students and
teachers approached and managed themselves while working. Having these to reflect
back on would allow me to try and focus on some of the themes that might present
themselves between the teacher research groups. I would be curious to see if the
themes were consistent between the groups.

Providing students and teachers with surveys would also be a important facet of
the research as it would allow responders the time necessary to fully collect their
thoughts. This step could be critical for students needing a little more time to figure out
what they needed to say. Surveys would also allow for research to be collected over an
extended period of time as well. Giving a survey at the beginning of the work would
allow for some baseline data to be established to refer and compare against at the end of
the research. Berends (2006) states, “Through surveys, we can find out specific
characteristics of a well-defined group as it passes through the educational system over
time”(pp 624). It would be important to collect the data as it relates to the challenges
themselves. How many students completed the task and found the answers over time
would lend itself to extrapolating data as well.

I believe that, through a combination of observations, interviews, personalized

journals there would be a wealth of qualitative data to support and answer the
questions being posed. Through surveys and data collection, I believe quantitative data
will support the themes that develop from the qualitative data. Through this multiple
methodology approach to the research questions I believe the questions will be
answered and we can focus on identifying some of the strategies, tools, and ideas that
will support students with finding success with challenging math tasks.
 References

Berends, M. (2006). Survey methods in educational research. In J. Green, G. Camilli & P.

Elmore (Eds.), ​Handbook of complementary methods in education research​ (pp.
623-640). New York, NY: Routledge.

Brenner, M. E. (2006). Interviewing in educational research. In J. Green, G. Camilli, & P.

Elmore (Eds.), Handbook of complementary methods in education research (pp.
357-370). New York, NY: Routledge.

Flipp, C. (chrisflipp). (2014, January 15). ​Qualitative vs Quantitative​ [video-file].

Retrieved from: ​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X-QSU6-hPU

Maher, C.A., Martino, A.M., & Friel, S.N. (1992). Implementing the “Professional
standards for teaching mathematics: Teachers building on students’ thinking.
The Arithmetic Teacher. 39​(7). 32-37. Retrieved from
https://www-jstor-org.cyber.usask.ca/stable/pdf/41195138.pdf?refreqid=excel
sior%3A898c6873e00e764731a00d02fed07609

Meyer, D. (2010, March). ​Math class needs a makeover​ [video-file]. Retrieved from
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover

Rowlett, J. E. (2011). Constructive FAILURE in mathematics classes.​ Principal

Leadership, 11(​ 8), 36-39. Retrieved from
http://cyber.usask.ca/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.cyber.usask.ca/do
cview/859017011?accountid=14739

Smith, M. (2006) Multiple Methodology in Educational Research In J. Green, G. Camilli &

P. Elmore (Eds.), Handbook of complementary methods in education research.
(pp. 457-475) New York, NY: Routledge.