Investigations into an elementary school teacher's strategies of advancing children’s mathematical thinking

This is an interpretive study. The participating teacher “Chin” was a grade 1 teacher in a public elementary school in Taipei city. This co-operative intervention research lasted for one school year. The researcher played the roles of a facilitator and an investigator. We had weekly meetings to discuss her teaching. Chin progressed to the top level (Franke et al., 2001). Her action research showed that she had advanced the cognition levels of students. This paper documents how Chin advanced children’s mathematical thinking. We focused on Chin’s strategies of problem posing and teaching. We found that Chin investigated children’s thinking through conjecturing and experimenting. She posed problems and formed teaching strategies to detect, scaffold and advance children’s mathematical thinking on the basis of her knowledge of children’s cognition in mathematics. As a result, instructional reform does not succeed without sufficient knowledge of children’s mathematics cognition. This study contributes to the plan of teacher education and reform-oriented teaching.