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In-service program documentation
Participants' final reflections (D8.2)
Logistics and scheduling information (by Raffaella Borasi)

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Choices of focus and format for the participants' final reflection

Scheduling of the final reflection

Incentives for encouraging participants to comply with this task

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Choice of format and focus for the participants' final reflection

We chose to ask the participants, towards the end of their program, to try to reflect in writing on their experiences during the year -- and especially the innovative classroom experiences they had developed -- so as to take stock of their growth in the program. Although we knew that there would be some resistance to the writing component of this assignment, we believed that it was important to assign such a task, since a written reflection was likely to be much more comprehensive and deep than simply ask participants to "think about" their experiences in the program and then share these reflections in a discussion.

Since we also realized that most teachers would be new to this kind of written reflection, we tried to provide some guidance by articulating the following set of questions:

• What surprised you most about teaching the units? About the mathematics you were able to address? About what the students could or could not do? About the effects of specific activities? About your own reactions to certain events or activities?
• What AHA experiences did you have during the year?
• What unexpected/unplanned benefits resulted from your teaching and/or planning of the units? What unexpected/unplanned drawbacks resulted?
• What unexpected/unplanned benefits resulted from the documentation of the units? What unexpected/unplanned drawbacks resulted?
• In what ways do you think you actually did change in instructional practices and/or philosophy?
• What were the most significant student learnings this year? How do you know? What else could they learn from the units if some things were changed?
• What do your students believe is significant mathematics? How do they feel about themselves as mathematics students? as mathematicians? Has your teaching affected their thinking on these issues?
• Did certain students do better than others during the units? Which ones and why?
• What classroom experiences during the year were crucial to your understanding of learning disabilities?
• Do you feel that the inquiry approach to teaching mathematics is good for students? What specific instructional ideas will you continue? Why do you think each is valuable for all students? Can you point to any of the instructional ideas that are particularly valuable for learning disabled students? Are there any parts of the inquiry approach that concern you? For all students? For learning disabled students in particular?

Note, however, that in the text of this assignment (as reported in the Instructional materials for this activity) we made clear that participants were not expected to respond directly to any of these questions in their writing; rather, these questions were simply intended to stimulate and focus their reflection.

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Scheduling of the final reflection

Although a written final reflection had been listed among the field experiences expectations from the very beginning, a detailed description of this task (as reported in the Instructional materials for this activity) was mailed to the participants a few weeks prior to the last project-wide meeting, with the request that they bring their final reflection to the meeting.

Unfortunately, few of the participants complied with this request. As we continue to encourage individual participants to complete the task, final reflections continued to be turned in at various points after the conclusion of the program.

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Incentives for encouraging participants to comply with this task

Even more than we expected, participants found it very difficult to find the time and energy to write their final reflections -- even if those who did complete the task invariably recognized its value. This was especially the case when participants volunteered their time in the project (as in Implementations B and C), and therefore we had no way to enforce this requirement. In contrast, when participants received a stipend (as it was the case in Implementation A) it was possible to make this pay contingent to completing tasks that had been identified in the participants' contract; as this final reflection was one of these tasks, in this Implementation a higher percentage of the participants turned in their written reflections.

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