A Model for Understanding Understanding in Mathematics

When I first began reading this article, it interested me right away because of its topic of “understanding understanding.” This is something that we talk a lot about in all of our classes as we progress through the education program, and something that I think a lot about in the actual classroom. A concept that was new to me in this article was talking about teachers using different “moves” while teaching, and how those moves can vary when teaching concepts and ideas. Another thing that I liked in the article was how it helped get this point across by giving examples of what kinds of questions a teacher will ask her students to check for understanding. In the closing of the article, they pose the questions: “Can effective instructional sequences be described in terms of moves? Do moves help structure knowledge in ways most readily grasped by the learner?” That is something that I would even like to research more on my own.