This session addresses challenges related to supporting teachers’ use of curriculum materials to address the challenging features of the CCSSM.
The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) offer an opportunity for districts to push teachers to enact ambitious practices around instruction and curriculum use. However, taking up ambitious practices entails a number of challenges, some of which were evident during the NCTM Standards reform movement in the 1990s and early 2000s, and some of which reflect new approaches and new policy contexts. In this session, the presenters discuss the implementation of curriculum and instruction consistent with the more ambitious features of the CCSSM in middle school mathematics, particularly the mathematical practices and the conceptual orientation espoused in the CCSSM framework, and address the following challenges:
- Increasing school/district capacity to support teachers
- Understanding of features of curriculum materials that depart from mastery learning perspective
- Viewing the CCSSM as more than an articulation of content—seeing the CCSSM as embodying a philosophy of mathematics instruction akin to what was articulated in the 1989 and 2000 NCTM Standards (e.g., mathematics as a process-oriented subject area in which problem solving, exploration, and communication are integral to development of conceptual understanding)
- Meeting the needs of diverse learners