Casey Hord

Project researchers are training pre-service teachers to tutor students with learning disabilities in Algebra 1, combining principles from special education, mathematics education, and cognitive psychology. The trainings emphasize the use of gestures and strategic questioning to support students with learning disabilities and to build students’ understanding in Algebra 1. These trainings will prepare tutors to address the challenges that students with learning disabilities often face—especially challenges related to working memory and processing—and to build on students’ strengths as they engage with Algebra 1.

Tutoring programs that are jointly supported by schools and universities can offer benefits to both parties. The programs, however, are only helpful to the extent they respond to the needs and interests of the students and schools they serve. This project will establish a partnership between a large, urban university and a small, rural high school to collaboratively create a tutoring program to support the mathematics learning of students with learning disabilities.

The purpose of this project is to create a research-based model of how students with learning disabilities (LDs) develop multiplicative reasoning via reform-oriented pedagogy; convert the model into a computer system that dynamically models every students’ evolving conceptions and recommends tasks to promote their advancement to higher level, standard-based multiplicative structures and operations; and study how this tool impacts student outcomes.

This project will develop and evaluate a module for use in a 7th grade classroom that promotes student development of 21st Century skills with a particular focus on student development of scientific reasoning. The technology-enhanced curriculum will be designed to engage learners in deep and meaningful investigations to promote student learning of content in parallel with 21st century skills.