Melissa Boston

This project will develop a technology platform that can streamline lesson planning and allow teachers to adapt resources to their students' needs. The project will design and investigate an AI-powered lesson plan tool for middle-grades mathematics teaching called Colleague. Using existing, open-access lesson plans that have been vetted in prior work, the project would refine the tool for generating math lesson plans and supporting teachers to iteratively improve their instruction. Streamlining lesson planning would open more time for teacher creativity and reduce job stress. The study would explore how teachers use Colleague to plan and adapt lessons, the influence on teaching, and the students' learning.

Anxiety about math has increased for some students due to disruptions in their learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. This partnership development project involving Portland State University and the Tigard-Tualatin School District addresses pandemic-related learning challenges in middle school mathematics, with a focus on math anxiety. Across the yearlong project, the partners play equal roles in co-developing research, practice, and policy proposals aimed at enhancing math outcomes and reducing math anxiety among the district’s middle school students.

MIST is a five-year study of four large, urban districts implementing ambitious mathematics reform initiatives in the middle grades.  The study uses a mixed-methods research design to investigate how changes in the school and district settings in which mathematics teachers work influence their instructional practices, students' learning opportunities, and student achievement.  

The goals of this project are to 1) develop methods for analyzing data collected to document the institutional setting of mathematics teaching that are specific to equity and access for all middle school students to high quality mathematics instruction; and 2) develop an instrument for assessing the quality of mathematics instruction that focuses specifically on the extent to which all students are supported to substantially participate in academically rigorous mathematics.