Mathematics

Professional development (PD) is more effective when it involves more than lead classroom teachers. Collaborative Math is a year-long professional development program designed to bring together preschool center leadership and all teaching staff for an in-depth study of early mathematics teaching and learning. We implemented the program in a total of 15 Head Start centers across two years. We found positive shifts in teacher confidence and knowledge as well as child math achievement.

The goal of the design and development study, Proof in Secondary Classrooms (PISC), is to develop an innovative intervention to support the teaching and learning of mathematical proof in secondary geometry. PISC made use of features of lesson study and continuous improvement. Findings featured in the poster involve quantitative assessment results from pre-tests and post-tests administered over three years. Overall, the PISC curriculum had a statistically significant, positive impact on students' end-of-year results.

The main issue our project addresses is how students' reasoning about mathematics concepts that are not new to them (e.g., linear functions) changes when learning about a new concept (e.g., quadratic functions), and we call this phenomenon backward transfer. We specifically focus on mathematics, but believe our backward transfer research is highly relevant within and across STEM content domains more broadly.

Young Mathematicians (YM) is a design and development project that aims to broaden participation by addressing the need to provide young children with early mathematics experiences. In the coming year, we will test an intervention, developed in collaboration with teachers and families, that provides learning experiences and materials for teachers and families to support adult-child interaction and engagement in mathematics, promote school-home connections in mathematics, and address adult attitudes toward mathematics, while promoting childrens mathematical knowledge.

The SDLC project has developed and studied curriculum modules for non-AP high school statistics to promote interest and skills in statistical thinking and data analysis among diverse high school populations. Modules engage students with social-justice-themed data investigations using large-scale socioeconomic data from the U.S. Census Bureau and student-friendly online data visualization tools. Current study findings show growth in student interest and skills in statistical thinking and data analysis following module use.

Streams of Data is pursuing early stage research to address: How can the use of professionally collected, scientific data support the development of data literacy skills in elementary students, and what types of scaffolds are necessary to realize this potential? In the first year, baseline research examined the analytical thinking approaches children intuitively use when making meaning from different types of data with minimal scaffolding? We explored commonplace scenarios of data and conventional data representations.