Seminar with Sean Delaney

Thursday and Friday last week, we had an interesting seminar at University of Stavanger with Seán Delaney from Marino Institute of Education, Ireland. The seminar had four themes, all within the topic of mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT):

1. Overview of research on teacher knowledge, with reference to pupil attainment
   
2. Studying the mathematical work of teaching in order to evaluate construct equivalence of the teacher knowledge measures in new settings
3. Using the mathematical quality of instruction to validate the multiple-choice measures of teacher knowledge
4. Issues related to translation and cultural adaptation of measures

Seán Delaney has been part of the Learning Mathematics for Teaching (LMT) Project at University of Michigan, and he finished his PhD earlier this year. His thesis was entitled Adapting and using U.S. measures to study Irish teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching, and he had Deborah Ball as his main supervisor. In the June issue of Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, an article about the pilot phase of Delaney's study was published:

Delaney, S., Ball, D., Hill, H., Schilling, S., and Zopf, D. (2008). “Mathematical knowledge for teaching”: adapting U.S. measures for use in Ireland. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 1(3):171-197.