MSP LNC 2013

Focus on Mathematics is a targeted MSP funded by the National Science Foundation since 2003. As part of this work, we are developing a research program with the goal of understanding the connections between secondary teachers' mathematical habits of mind (MHoM) and students' mathematical understanding and achievement. We are developing tools to study the question: What are the MHoM that high school teachers use in their professional lives and how can we measure them? In this feedback session, we will share preliminary versions of our observation protocol and sample items from a paper and pencil assessment of MHoM. We will also share our working definition of MHoM.

AIM has developed a new classroom observation protocol based on the research presented in How People Learn for examining student opportunity to learn in science instruction. This session will introduce participants to the protocol and discuss how using such a protocol could help a project throughout its life cycle: from developing a common vision of effective instruction, to examining how teachers translate what they learn in professional development to the classroom (so mid-course adjustments to PD can be made), to examining impacts of the project on student opportunity to learn important science content.

In the United States, minorities are generally underrepresented in the STEM fields. There is considerable evidence that minority students benefit from early exposure to college-credit courses while in high school. In an effort to ameliorate the representation gap in the sciences, our MSP has implemented multiple early-college/dual-enrollment courses for high-school students, following different instructional models. One program is a full-time, residential, summer program, and the other is a school-year program with single courses that take place in the high schools. This ongoing study employs mixed methods to determine the effects of these different dual-enrollment programs on students' persistence in college and choice of major. Newly available data on college attendance patterns for student participants will be shared.

UTeachEngineering is expanding the national network of high schools offering its project-based engineering design and problem solving course, Engineer Your World. To inform the evolution and continuous improvement of the Engineer Your World curriculum, UTeachEngineering has commissioned an external evaluation. This will include an expert panel review to address the quality of the intended and enacted curriculum. Questions to be addressed in this interactive session include: (1) What are the essential components of the curriculum that experts should have at hand in order to provide meaningful formative feedback?; and (2) What kind of information would high school administrators and teachers need to have in order to determine whether Engineer Your World is appropriate for their school?

We evaluated a math teacher-leadership development project using a self-report pretest-posttest design including retrospective pretest ratings to control for response-shift bias. Math teachers from Cohort 1 took the pretest, posttest and gave retrospective pretest ratings. Pretest-posttest comparisons indicated that the project was not generally effective. However, a comparison of retrospective pretest ratings with posttest ratings indicated that the project significantly increased leadership development generally. Similar results were obtained when we used self-efficacy for teacher leadership as the dependent variable. This suggests that project effects were masked when only pretest-posttest comparisons were made. Self-efficacy change was the only predictor of increase in teacher-leadership activities. We outline changes in research and project design made for Cohort 2 based on these findings.

In order to improve the impact of professional development programs for pre and in-service teachers, university STEM faculty need to be able to deliver pedagogically sound instruction for teachers. However this is rarely an identified area for research and change. In this presentation we share how we used pre and post concepts mapping activities to assess the knowledge development of the teachers. We discuss the quantitative scoring system detailed by West et. al. (2000) to analyze the maps and the strengths and limitations of this method. Finally we discuss how we used the maps to provide feedback to the faculty on the knowledge change of the teachers in the summer session.

The WTMSMP's focus is deepening West Texas teachers' knowledge of fundamental mathematics. Because the region includes 84,000 square miles, evaluating participants' classroom integration of WTMSMP content is challenging. Classroom observations of purposely selected participants in the project's first two years led to concerns, including achieving adequate interrater reliability and determining the generalizability of results to participants' everyday practice. Due to the expansive region, conducting multiple observations was not possible, and a new strategy using student ratings of their teachers' practices was piloted in the third year. In this presentation, we present the pilot results and seek suggestions for observable teacher practices related to teaching mathematics conceptually that could be the basis for additional items for the recently developed measure.

Conventional professional development is used to prepare teachers to use a specified innovation, in the form of a program, approach or strategy. Most established models of the implementation of innovations also assume a specific program, approach or strategy. ESEA Title II, Part B MSP program participants in NY receive instruction in discipline content and supporting pedagogic practices and are expected to incorporate this information into their professional practice. In this session an evaluator and a project director present their experience in facing the challenges associated with evaluating a program where the teachers themselves are the innovation. And to discuss some of the evaluator's measurement solutions based on the data of nine years of MSP evaluation experience involving eleven programs.

At several points toward the conclusion of Phase I and during Phase II, the Greater Birmingham Mathematics Partnership (GBMP) had to re-evaluate its implementation strategy in the light of observational data on implementation of inquired-based learning (IBL) by teachers in the classroom. Without this observational data, self-evaluation by teachers of the extent of their implementing IBL methods would have been misleading. Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) were introduced at the end of Phase I, and formed a significant part of the intervention in Phase II, based upon observed and reported difficulties with teachers implementing. Again, based upon observation of PLCs and classroom implementation, PLC meetings were more highly structured and a modest amount of classroom coaching was introduced. There were measurable changes in teacher behavior, but not at the level predicted. The GBMP Theory of Action was confirmed as a set of necessary conditions for changing teacher behavior, but not as a set of sufficient conditions.

This session discusses preliminary results from a project to assess high school teachers' mathematical meanings for teaching secondary mathematics. Instead of assessing the extent to which teachers are able to answer questions correctly or possess correct mathematical understandings, the instrument reveals meanings teachers actually have for ideas that are foundational to the secondary curriculum. The ideas assessed are in the areas of variable, function, equation, rate, quantity, and structure. The assessment's items are designed so that teachers' interpretations of mathematical situations reveal the meanings they have for the mathematics entailed in them. The session invites discussion of this approach and of implications of a focus on meanings for teacher professional development and for teacher preparation programs.

A primary mission of the MainePSP is improving science teaching practice in rural settings by building and training a community of educators. The core mechanism for improving teaching practice has been formation of three teacher communities that enact common curricula materials across diverse, rural settings in grades 6-9. Consequently, study of the relationship between community participation and changes in teaching practice is a primary research focus. Social network analysis (SNA) is central to the research design. In this session we introduce key issues and questions that have emerged in application of SNA to the study of teacher communities, and we initiate an ongoing online conversation with participants to improve sharing of SNA know-how and research findings across MSP projects.

We have four goals in this session: 1) we describe the development and use of learning progressions to explore how students and teachers build environmental science literacy across four strands - carbon cycling, biodiversity, and water systems, cycles and quality, 2) we present results of assessments of student and teachers across the strands, 3) we present results of assessments of teacher goals for content and student learning, and 4) discuss how we have used our research and assessments to formulate models of Learning Progression-based Teaching Strategies for use in classroom instruction and teacher professional development.

NSF requires articulating theories of change and/or logic models (LM) for MSP proposal submission. Situated in three MSP targeted partnership programs, a panel of PI's, project directors, district leaders, and evaluators will share their journeys using LMs formatively for continuous improvement. This panel used a collaborative LM development (CLM) process for management, research, evaluation and professional development initiatives along with examples. Findings address the benefits and challenges of using CLM to: 1) help build consensus and foster collaboration across complex layers of networked partners, 2) strengthen program management, implementation, research and evaluation designs, and 3) identify and articulate negotiated theories of change. Panel members will help participants apply templates to explore how CLM can be adapted for their projects.

The Math TLC has designed a math teacher leadership program based on defining leadership as taking responsibility for what is important to you and on the recognition that the work of teacher leaders varies in scale and scope from mentoring a student teacher to holding an office in a national organization. This session highlights what that means for program and teacher leader development and provides information about the four focus areas of the program (exploring teacher leadership, working with teachers, impacting students' understanding of mathematics, and analyzing interactions among culture, mathematics teaching and learning).

How can engagement with research support classroom adoption of Common Core Math and Next Generation Science Standards? In this session we review three professional development approaches to engaging teachers with research related to STEM Practices, as espoused by the new standards. We highlight models that support classroom mathematics, classroom science, and informal science engineering instruction; stressing in particular how the plans and processes for engaging educators with research morphed over time, as questions, experiences and knowledge from practice encountered concepts and findings from research. This session will engage participants in dialogue about the reflexive relationship between research and practice in STEM educational improvement efforts, specifically focused on “the practice turn” that is being suggested for implementation of the new standards.

This presentation will discuss, through the lens of the Project Manager, challenges faced and viable solutions used to address changes during the implementation phase. The session will be framed by examining the original ISEP implementation plan that was envisioned during the proposal phase and first year of the grant, and the current revised plan. A detailed analysis of key changes will be explored. Attendees will engage in a discussion of how best to anticipate and navigate change, how to be aware of potential disturbances and how best to address the anticipated /unanticipated disturbances and finally, leverage the experiences into creating a stronger implementation plan.