The Relationships Between Task Design, Anticipated Pedagogies, and Student Learning

This chapter describes the interplay between task design and student learning that informs teachers’ decisions about goals and pedagogies. Based on their mathematical goals for students, teachers face many choices: choosing or designing tasks and sequences of tasks; selecting media for presenting tasks to students and for students to communicate results; planning pedagogies to best realize opportunities afforded by tasks; determining the level of complexity of tasks for their students, including ways of adapting for them; and anticipating processes for assessing student learning. Each of these choices is influenced by teachers’ understanding of the relevant mathematics, by assessments of the preparedness of their students, by the teacher’s experience or creativity or access to resources, by their expectations for student engagement, and by their commitment to connecting learning with students’ lives. Decisions are also informed by teachers’ awareness and willingness to enact the relevant pedagogies.