Recently, I conducted a training with a school district in West Virginia.  It was for new teachers (1st-3rd Year) in all subjects K-12. There were approximately 75 participants and 20 mentors. One of our activities dealt with Depth of Knowledge. I showed the typical D.O.K., but I wanted them to have a more meaningful experience with D.O.K. levels in mathematics.

The activity I created was inspired by the work of Robert Kaplinsky. I love his Tools to Distinguishing Between Depth of Knowledge Levels. I particularly like his example of sums of whole numbers:This is a simple and clear example of the D.O.K. progression. However, it does not show D.O.K. Level 4, so I contacted Robert and he directed me to this Problem Post of his, How Many Soda Combos are There on a Coke Freestyle Machine? 

Perfect! I compiled these four into one document, scrambling the order, and asked the teachers to discuss the problems in their table groups and to assign a D.O.K. level exclusively to each one. I was intrigued at how different their responses were compared to what Robert (and myself) considered the problems to be. I noted that the group was a broad range of grade levels and subject areas, so I thought I would conduct the same activity with a collection of high school math teachers that I was scheduled to train in California  the following week. I was very curious if math teachers would view the problems differently than non-math teachers. Indeed, they did. However, they also disagreed with Robert and me. Below, are the all responses from the groups at each training, as well as Robert’s determination. Notice the variety of responses that was generated within each training.

The choices that earned  the most votes looked like this.

Notice that there is not a single example in which all three parties agree. I have no profound analysis of these results; I am simply sharing this very curious experience. I am still pondering the outcomes and their meaning many times over. So much so, that whenever I hear the phrase “D.O.K.,” I smirk and scratch my head.