Administrators

This project was submitted to the Discovery Research K-12 (DRK-12) program that seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models, and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. The project will adapt and study a promising and replicable teacher professional development (PD) intervention, called Collaborative Math (CM), for use in early childhood programs. CM content will focus on nine topics emphasized in preschool mathematics, including sets, number sense, counting, number operations, pattern, measurement, data analysis, spatial relationships, and shape. These concepts are organized around Big Ideas familiar in early math, are developmentally appropriate and foundational to a young child's understanding of mathematics. The project addresses the urgent need for improving early math instruction for low-income children. Prepared as generalists, preschool teachers typically acquire less math knowledge in pre-service training than their colleagues in upper grades, which reduces their effectiveness in teaching math. To address teacher PD needs, the project will simultaneously develop teacher content knowledge, confidence, and classroom practice by using a whole teacher approach. Likewise, the project will involve teachers, teacher aides, and administrators through a whole school approach in PD, which research has shown is more effective than involving only lead teachers. Through several phases of development and research, the project will investigate the contributions of project components on increases in teacher knowledge and classroom practices, student math knowledge, and overall implementation. The project will impact approximately 200 Head Start (HS) teaching staff, better preparing them to provide quality early math experiences to more than 3,000 HS children during the project period. Upon the completion of the project, a range of well-tested CM materials such as resource books and teaching videos will be widely available for early math PD use. Assessment tools that look at math knowledge, attitudes, and teacher practice will also be available. 

The project builds on Erikson Institute research and development work in fields of early math PD and curriculum. Over a 4-year span, project development and research will be implemented in 4 phases: (1) adapting the existing CM and research measures for HS context; (2) conducting a limited field study of revised CM in terms of fidelity and director, teacher/aide, and student outcomes, and study of business as usual (BAU) comparison groups; (3) a study of the promise of the intervention promise with the phase 3 BAU group (who offered baseline in phase 2) and (4) a test of the 2nd year sustainability intervention with phase 3 treatment group. The teacher and student measures are all published, frequently used measures in early childhood education and will be piloted and refined prior to full implementation. The project is a partnership between Erikson, SRI, and Chicago Head Start programs. Project research and resources will be widely disseminated to policy makers, researchers, and practitioners.

Given the changes in instructional practices needed to support high quality mathematics teaching and learning based on college and career readiness standards, school districts need to provide professional learning opportunities for teachers that support those changes. The project will build a coherent and scalable plan for providing these opportunities in high school mathematics departments, a traditionally difficult unit of organizational change. Based on the TRUmath framework, characterizing the five essential dimensions of powerful mathematics classrooms, the project brings together a focus on curricular materials that support teaching, Lesson Study protocols and materials, and a professional learning community-based professional development model. The project will design and revise professional development and coaching guides and lesson study mathematical resources built around the curricular materials. The project will study changes in instructional practice and impact on student learning. By documenting the supports used in the Oakland Unified School District where the research and development will be conducted, the resources can be used by other districts and in similar work by other research-practice partnerships.

This project hypothesizes that the quality of classroom instruction can be defined by five dimensions - quality of the mathematics; cognitive demand of the tasks; access to mathematics content in the classroom; student agency, authority, and identity; and uses of assessment. The project will use an iterative design process to develop and refine a suite of tool, including a conversation guide to support productive dialogue between teachers and coaches, support materials for building site-based professional learning materials, and formative assessment lessons using Lesson Study as a mechanism to enact reforms of these dimensions. The study will use a pre-post design and natural variation to student the relationships between these dimensions, changes in teachers' instructional practice, and student learning using hierarchical linear modeling with random intercept models with covariates. Qualitative of the changes in teachers' instructional practices will be based on coding of observations based on the TRUmath framework. The study will also use qualitative analysis techniques to identify themes from surveys and interviews on factors that promote or hinder the effectiveness of the intervention.

The Discovery Research K-12 (DRK-12) program supports projects that enhance learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics by preK-12 students, teachers, administrators, and parents. This project will contribute to that mission by developing resources for teachers and administrators that will provide instructional guidance for teaching about the Ebola virus and other epidemics of infectious diseases that may arise. The resources to be developed will include guidelines for administrators and teachers, and these resources will be distributed both in print form and through the Web portals of project partners, including the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the National Science Education Leadership Association (NSELA), and the Council of State Science Supervisors (CSSS). Policy briefs related to teaching and learning about Ebola and will be tailored for specific organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Education Association. The informational needs of teachers and administrators will be determined through large-scale surveys of teachers and science supervisors of school districts and states. The resources developed by the project are expected to have broad impacts nationwide in helping schoolteachers and administrators respond constructively to the spread of misinformation that often accompanies outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as Ebola.

To determine the informational needs of teachers and administrators, the project will develop and administer three surveys: a teacher survey, a survey for school district science supervisors, and a survey for state science supervisors. The surveys will probe knowledge about Ebola and infectious diseases, where respondents get their information, how such information is incorporated into instruction, and what factors affect their responses. Survey items will be validated through expert review and follow-up cognitive interviews with a subset of responders. The project intends to survey 3,000 teachers and all members of NSELA and CSSS. Findings from the surveys and related interviews will be used to develop informational materials and policy briefs that can be used by teachers and districts to guide instructional practices and policies related to teaching about Ebola and related epidemics. Science teachers are uniquely positioned to counteract the spread of misinformation that often accompanies quickly emerging, science-related issues, and this project has the potential to provide much-needed guidance in providing reasoned, constructive responses.

There is increased demand for K-12 teacher professional development that yields improvements in student learning and achievement. This need is particularly high given widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in mathematics which challenges teachers to incorporate mathematical thinking and problem solving into their instruction. The professional development challenge is exacerbated as our nation's demographics continue to shift, increasing the number of English language learners in school districts throughout the U.S. To meet this demand, the educational community must develop large-scale, system-level professional development programs aligned with the CCSS that are scalable and sustainable. The project team from Stanford University will work with middle school mathematics teachers in San Francisco Unified School District to develop their capacity to conduct professional development for the teachers in their schools. A central goal of this project is to develop models and resources for effective professional development and preparation of professional development leaders in mathematics with special attention to students who are English language learners. These models and resources will: provide school districts with the tools to build local capacity and provide sustainable professional development to all middle school mathematics teachers; improve the quality of teaching and, in turn, make important progress toward ensuring that all students in middle school can achieve the mathematical skills and understandings identified in the new standards; and meet the needs of English language learners. In addition, the Stanford team will contribute to the knowledge base in mathematics education, professional development and English language learners.

In previous work, the team developed two interconnected models--the Problem-Solving Cycle (PSC) and the Mathematics Leadership Preparation (MLP) models for preparing professional development leaders. The PSC model consists of a series of interconnected workshops organized around a problem that can be solved using multiple representations and solutions and can be adapted for multiple grade levels. Each cycle focuses on a different math problem. During the first cycle, teachers collaboratively solve the focal math problem and develop plans for teaching it to their students. Teachers then teach the lesson in their classes and the lessons are videotaped. Subsequent workshops focus on participants' classroom experiences teaching the problem. The goals of these workshops are to help teachers learn how to build on student thinking and to explore a variety of instructional practices. They rely heavily on video clips from the PSC lesson to foster productive conversations and situate the conversations in teachers' classroom instruction. The MLP model is designed to prepare Math Leaders to facilitate the PSC. The MLP prepares teachers to lead professional development for their colleagues. These models showed promise of effectiveness in improving middle school mathematics teachers' knowledge and practice, developing math professional development leaders, and improving student achievement. Investigators intend to refine and test the design of the PSC and MLP models and develop resources that can be used by other schools and districts, as well as conduct an evaluation of the work.