Supporting Instructional Growth in Mathematics: Enhancing Urban Secondary Teachers' Professional Learning through Formative Feedback

This project will explore the potential of video-based formative feedback to enhance professional development around ambitious instruction for secondary teachers in urban schools.

Full Description

Research continues to show the benefits of ambitious instruction for student learning of mathematics, yet ambitious instruction continues to be rare in U.S. schools, particularly in schools that serve historically marginalized students. Secondary teachers' learning and enactment of ambitious instruction in mathematics requires conceptual change, and their development could benefit from adequate and timely feedback close to classroom instruction. For this reason, the project will explore the potential of video-based formative feedback to enhance professional development. The focus of the partnership between university researchers and a well-regarded professional development organization, Math for America Los Angeles (MfA LA) will be on career-long learning of secondary mathematics teachers in urban schools. Results from this project will provide a theory of mathematics teachers' learning that can inform other instructional improvement efforts, with ecological validity in the critical site of urban schools. The framework and theory will be detailed at the level of specific tools and concrete practices that are learnable by teachers, school leaders, or instructional coaches. This project is funded by the Discovery Research Pre-K-12 Program, which funds research and development of STEM innovations and approaches in assessment, teaching and learning.

The question the project will address is: How can the project use formative feedback to enhance mathematics teachers' professional learning environments that support their development of ambitious instruction in urban schools? Formative feedback refers to tools and processes that ascertain teachers' current understandings and responsively adapt learning activities to better guide them toward their learning goals. Professional learning environments refer to the multiple sites of teachers' learning, from formal professional development activities to their school workplace. Ambitious instruction is defined as teaching approaches that aim to provide all students with ample opportunities to develop conceptual understanding of key mathematical ideas, participate in mathematical argumentation, connect multiple mathematical representations, as well as become fluent with mathematical procedures and processes. The persistence of typical mathematics instruction is framed as, in large part, an issue of teacher learning. Using design-based implementation research and interpretive methods, the project team will co-develop video-based formative assessment processes to guide teachers' evolving classroom practice.

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