Mathematics

Over the last five years, the Responsive Math Teaching Project has developed and refined a sustainable model for the development of mathematics instructional leadership through a research-practice partnership with a network of 14 urban under-resourced K-8 schools. Teacher instructional capacity is built through developing new visions of mathematics teaching and learning, practice-based pedagogies of enactment and reflection, and mentored engagement in collaborative lesson design and enactment.

Our work focuses on developing teacher knowledge within a PLC that uses the AIM-TRU learning cycle to support teachers’ engagement with mathematical tasks and video cases. The learning cycle is grounded in the Teaching for Robust Understanding (TRU) framework (Schoenfeld, 2014) and utilizes Charles’s (2005) Big Mathematical Ideas within Formative Assessment Lesson (FAL) content. Teacher conversations were analyzed with respect to congenial and collegial characteristics with the latter resulting in greater alignment with TRU.

Boosting Data Science Teaching and Learning in STEM (aka “Data Fluency”) is a project that seeks to improve teachers’ and students’ “data fluency,” which includes understanding sources of data, structuring data for analysis, interpreting representations of data, inferring meaning from data, and explaining data and findings to diverse audiences. We will accomplish this goal by iteratively developing research-based professional learning that prepares teachers to offer next generation data-rich learning.

This project aims to examine how teachers' beliefs about the origins of mathematical excellence, which might be attributed to genetic, social, or personal characteristics, affect racial and gender equity in their classrooms. A three-part study will create, validate, and apply the Attributions of Mathematical Excellence Scale (AMES), correlating scores with race, gender, and achievement equity.

In this design-based research project, we are refining a model for mathematics professional development. We engage middle grades teachers in playful, discussion-based exploration of fractions and proportions through tasks and dynamic "toys” as well as planning for classroom implementation. We are now adding “Connections”, designed to support participants in transitioning from learners to teachers during the PD. For one group, Connections are reflection on paper, for the other, they are part of the PD discussion.

We present a framework for using scenario-based assessments (SBAs) to measure middle school students' ability to formulate written arguments around socio-scientific issues. We present data showing both the current strengths and limitations of these SBAs. We also present data which shows that, through the process of writing over a 2-week time span, the students showed significant improvements in their ability to make a claim, locate evidence, use reasoning, and use scientific vocabulary in their arguments.

Advancing Equity and Strengthening Teaching with Elementary Mathematical Modeling is a teacher PD project focused on strengthening K-5 teaching with mathematics modeling. Building on previous foundational work around mathematics modeling and equity, this project will bring together equity-oriented teaching practices and mathematical modeling to design and research the impact of a blended PD program on teacher practice.

A three year, mixed-methods, critical participatory action research project to develop a culturally sustaining self-report measure of Black and Latina/o student math engagement, called the Adapted Measure of Math Engagement (AM-ME).

Young children’s mathematics development underpins cognitive development, building brain architecture, fostering problem-solving, puzzling, and persevering, and strongly impacting and predicting future success in school – but systemic opportunity gaps have created unequal access to high-quality mathematics learning experiences, with differences in children’s math knowledge beginning before kindergarten entry.