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Academic Areas & Divisions
Curriculum & Instruction
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Ilana HornAffiliate Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education University of Washington |
My work arises out of a concern about the underperformance of American secondary students in school mathematics. My research centers on ways to make rigorous mathematics accessible to students, particularly those who have historically been disenfranchised in our educational system.
One line of my research seeks to specify the practices of ambitious and equitable teaching. What exactly do teachers need to do to teach their students effectively? Of course, identifying these practices is not enough. Teachers need support in incorporating these into their classrooms. Thus, a second line of work inquires into preservice and inservice teacher learning, with an eye toward making teacher education at both levels more effective for teachers and their students.
Education
University of California, Berkeley, Mathematics Education, Ph.D.
University of California, Berkeley, Mathematics Education, MA
Swarthmore College, Mathematics, BA with Distinction
Publications
Horn, I.S. (2008). The Inherent Interdependence of Teachers. Phi Delta Kappan.
Horn, I.S. (In press). Teaching replays, teaching rehearsals, and re-visions of practice: Learning from colleagues in a mathematics teacher community. Teachers College Record.
Horn, I.S. (2008). Turnaround Students in High School Mathematics: Constructing Identities of Competence through Mathematical Worlds. Mathematical Thinking & Learning.
Horn, I.S., Nolen, S.B., Ward, C.J. & Campbell, S.S. (2008). Developing Practices in Multiple Worlds: The Role of Identity in Learning to Teach. Teacher Education Quarterly.
Horn, I.S. (2008). Accountable argumentation as a participation structure to support mathematical learning through disagreement. A. Schoenfeld (Ed.) A Study of Teaching: Multiple Lenses, Multiple Views. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education monograph series. Reston, VA.
Little, J.W. & Horn, I.S. (2007). 'Normalizing' problems of practice: Converting routine conversation into a resource for learning in professional communities. In L. Stoll & K. Seashore (Eds.) Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas. London: Open University Press.
Horn, I.S. (2007). Fast kids, slow kids, lazy kids: Framing the mismatch problem in mathematics teachers' conversations. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 16(1), 37-79.
Horn, I.S. (2006). Lessons learned from detracked mathematics departments. Theory Into Practice, 45(1), 72-81.
Horn, I.S. (2005). Learning on the Job: A situated account of teacher learning in high school mathematics departments. Cognition and Instruction, 23(2). 207 - 236.
Horn, I.S. (2004, November). Why do students drop advanced mathematics? Educational Leadership, 61-64.
Current Research Projects
Recontextualizing practices: Learning to teach rigorous and accessible mathematics in the high school
Educational innovations require tremendous work to be implemented successfully. I conceptualize the problem of implementation as a problem of teacher learning and seek to describe the process of that learning in fine-grained detail. Using a comparative case study design, I will examine how 8 high school mathematics teachers learn to use equitable teaching practices as they move from formal training into their school and classroom settings. The research builds on data from two longitudinal ethnographic studies, one focused on the pre-service teachers' learning and another on in-service teachers' learning. Although differently structured, the formal training for both groups focuses on practices known to increase students' mathematical achievement. The varied success of the teachers allows for analysis of the individual and contextual factors that support the implementation of novel and complex teaching practices. This study will contribute to educational research by specifying the different outcomes for the teachers in both their understanding and application of these practices, and by detailing the way teachers transform the practices as they move from formal educational settings into their school and classroom contexts. A close analysis of this process will contribute to our theoretical understanding of adult learning and inform the design of professional education.
Funded by a Spencer/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship
Adaptive Professional Development for High School Mathematics Teachers
In this project, I have pursued a design experiment around principles for improving teacher learning and instructional practice by engaging teachers in ongoing inquiry into practice through teacher communities. By deriving design principles based on my dissertation work and applying them to a new context, I am examining two questions. The first one is: What are the practical and conceptual obstacles for high school teachers seeking to create more equitable classrooms? Second, What kinds of resources help them overcome these obstacles? Through a National Science Foundation Mathematics/Science Partnership grant, I have been engaging with high school mathematics teachers in local urban schools, attending closely to the conceptual infrastructure of teachers’ workplace communities. I have worked to support them in new kinds of collegial practices, introduced new instructional practices, provided them with language and concepts through which to interpret teaching, and given them structures to deprivatize their teaching so that they may collaborate more effectively. Using a variety of qualitative methods, I have been tracking the teachers’ development over the past four years, as they work to make sense of new teaching practices. The emerging findings from this study are promising: the teachers’ discourse about their teaching and collective work has noticeably deepened, and they have reduced the failure rate in their freshmen mathematics classes substantially, while nearly doubling pass rates on state achievement tests for students in underrepresented groups.
Identity and Interest Development in Learning to Teach
What is the impact of teacher education on novice teachers' classroom practices? What role do their previous experiences and their eventual teaching contexts play in their implementation of desirable teaching practices? To examine these questions, we have conducted a longitudinal ethnographic study of the development-in-context of teachers‚ identities, motivations, and practices before and after the transition from preservice to inservice. In this study, we followed 8 secondary teacher interns through the multiple contexts of a progressive preservice teacher education program and into their first two years of full-time teaching. Although the gap between university and classroom is often viewed as problematic, we found that some of the best learning happened as interns worked to bridge those gaps. We studied the processes through which interns selected and integrated particular practices promoted by their university courses and field placements and uncovered relationships among interns’ emerging teaching identities, the contexts in which they taught, and their interests and motivations to learn about teaching. The initial findings from the inservice portion of this study have already had a tremendous influence on the revision of the University of Washington’s Secondary Teacher Education Program. This study contributes to our understanding of teacher education, as well as adult and out-of-school learning.
Funded by a Teachers for a New Era grant through the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Annenberg Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.
Courses
EDTEP 582 & 583 Teaching Mathematics in the Secondary School
This is the two-quarter methods sequence for prospective middle and high school teachers in the Teacher Preparation program at the College of Education. Success in mathematics is critical for students' future educational opportunities. At the same time, mathematics is a subject that is notoriously difficult for many people. The goal of this course is to help students learn to teach mathematics in a way that makes the content both rigorous and accessible. This course is intended to help students: Understand how students learn mathematics and relate that understanding to your instruction and class activities; and develop the skills and resources necessary to plan effective, standards-based math lessons. The class meetings take place in the University as well as in a local urban high school to provide students a better understanding of the issues and practices we study.
EDC&I 576/577 Seminar in Mathematics Education: Classroom Discourse
When people compare the mathematics in various classrooms and schools, they often focus on the curriculum in use. However, empirical studies have shown that, while curriculum matters, classroom organization and discourse shape much of what students actually learn. In this course, we will examine ways of looking at discourse in mathematics classrooms as it relates to teaching practice and student learning. We will read both seminal and cutting-edge works in the study of discourse in the mathematics classroom, looking at multiple school contexts and across grade levels. In addition, we will watch videotapes of K-12 classrooms to apply the analytic tools from the readings.
This course is intended to help students gain a better understanding of research on the role of discourse in learning in mathematics classrooms; and develop a familiarity through readings with some of the concepts used in and issued addressed through the study of classroom discourse. Course readings, discussions, and other activities are meant to help students get a sense of the kinds of questions one might ask about the role of classroom discourse in math teaching and learning; the key concepts that have been developed to examine learning in this way; and the educational issues that have been investigated from this perspective.
EDC&I 505 Seminar in Curriculum & Instruction: Inside Teacher Communities
When people envision teachers’ work, they often imagine an individual teacher working with a group of students in a classroom. This individualistic view of teaching can be found widely in popular culture representations, as well in sociological and historical analyses of teachers’ work. At the same time, research on teachers’ professional community suggests that interactions and relationships among teachers play an important role in shaping curriculum and instruction. Decades of educational research show that improvement-oriented and equitable schools consistently co-occur with strong teacher communities. What is it about teacher communities that might account for this relationship? In this course, we read sociocultural and philosophical work to frame different notions of community. The heart of the course will examine studies from the sociology of education that describe and locate teacher communities, as well as studies from more psychological traditions that try to account for their potential contribution to professional learning. This course will be of interest to students studying school improvement, equitable schools, teacher professional development, or informal learning. Course readings, discussions, and other activities are meant to help you get a sense of the kinds of questions one might ask about teacher communities; the key concepts that have been developed to examine them; and the educational issues that have been investigated from these frameworks.
Curriculum & Instruction
