Min Sun

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.

Research increasingly provides insights into the magnitude of mathematics teacher turnover, but has identified only a limited number of factors that influence teachers' career decisions and often fails to capture the complexity of the teacher labor market. This project will address these issues, building evidence-based theories of ways to improve the quality and equity of the distribution of the mathematics teaching workforce. 

This RAPID project is a cross-national comparative study of U.S. and Chinese instructional support systems, building from earlier data about mathematics teaching and learning in large urban school districts of both the United States and the People's Republic of China. The study uses quantitative methods to compare and contrast the effectiveness of supports (e.g., professional development, teacher networks, school leadership) in improving teachers' instructional practices and student achievement using comparable instrumentation.

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.