Working Across Disciplinary Boundaries in Pre-service Teacher Education

Merrilyn Goos, Judy Anderson, Jo Balatti, Kim Beswick, Tricia Forrester, & Jenni WayIn Australia, a suite of national projects has been funded by the Australian government to promote strategic change in mathematics and science pre-service teacher education. This round table session will share some of the interdisciplinary strategies being trialled in one project, Inspiring Mathematics and Science in Teacher Education (IMSITE), and invite feedback from participants on the transferability of strategies to other institutional contexts and the sustainability of these strategies over time. The specific objectives of the IMSITE project are: • to develop and validate a repertoire of strategies for combining knowledge of content and pedagogy in mathematics and science; and • to connect academics from different communities of practice – mathematics, science, education – in order to collaboratively design and implement these new teacher education approaches. Six universities and 23 investigators – mathematicians, scientists, and mathematics and science teacher educators – are the core participants in the project, with more universities to be added in 2015. The first half of the round table session will showcase interdisciplinary strategies such as: • Collaborative development and delivery of new content and pedagogy courses by mathematicians and mathematics educators; • Reciprocal tutoring by mathematicians and mathematics educators into each other’s courses; • Peer observation by mathematicians and mathematics educators of each other’s teaching; • Development of a mathematics specialisation in primary pre-service programs. The remainder of the session will invite discussion of challenges to interdisciplinary collaboration (“siloing” of disciplines, inflexible workload and course funding models, cultural differences between the disciplines) and ways to overcome these.

Reviewing of research papers

Research papers will be blind reviewed by a panel of peers approved by the conference committee. The main purpose of the refereeing process is to contribute to the growth and development of quality practice in mathematics education research. Thus reviewers are asked to assist authors by providing helpful feedback and to comment on the suitability of papers for presentation at the conference. Accordingly, it will not be assumed that published papers presented at the conference will be as polished as articles in scholarly journals. Referees will be asked to assess papers being reviewed against the accepted norms for scholarly works presented at MERGA conferences, as set out above.

Each conference proceedings’ Editorial Team will exercise discretion over the reviewing process.

Reviewers’ comments will be returned to the authors. Authors whose papers are not accepted for publication may be invited by the editorial panel to present their paper at the conference, with an abstract (only) being published in the proceedings. Papers may be rejected outright, with no opportunity for presentation at the conference in an alternative form.

The MERGA website has detailed advice about criteria for reviewing of MERGA papers, review forms, and examples of strong and poor reviews of different types.

Working Across Disciplinary Boundaries in Pre-service Teacher Education

Working Across Disciplinary Boundaries in Pre-service Teacher Education

Short Communications

Presentation of short communications

Beth Southwell Practical Implications Award

Recent Winners

Applying for entry into the BSPIA

Judging of the BSPIA

History of the Award

Research Papers

Research papers can take two major forms:

i. Empirical investigations

ii. Theoretical or position papers

Originality

Reviewing of research papers

Presentation of research papers

Research Symposia

Early Career Research Award

Recent Winners

Applying for the Award

Early Bird Review Process