Award Abstract # 1119122
Investigating and Supporting the Development of Ambitious and Equitable Mathematics Instruction at Scale

NSF Org: DRL
Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL)
Recipient: VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
Initial Amendment Date: July 21, 2011
Latest Amendment Date: June 25, 2015
Award Number: 1119122
Award Instrument: Continuing Grant
Program Manager: Karen King
DRL
 Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL)
EDU
 Directorate for STEM Education
Start Date: August 15, 2011
End Date: July 31, 2017 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $4,533,868.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $4,721,282.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2011 = $789,684.00
FY 2012 = $2,285,656.00

FY 2013 = $1,132,186.00

FY 2015 = $513,756.00
History of Investigator:
  • Paul Cobb (Principal Investigator)
    paul.cobb@vanderbilt.edu
  • Thomas Smith (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Kara Jackson (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Ilana Horn (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Ken Frank (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Vanderbilt University
110 21ST AVE S
NASHVILLE
TN  US  37203-2416
(615)322-2631
Sponsor Congressional District: 05
Primary Place of Performance: Vanderbilt University
110 21ST AVE S
NASHVILLE
TN  US  37203-2416
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
05
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): GTNBNWXJ12D5
Parent UEI: K9AHBDTKCB55
NSF Program(s): Discovery Research K-12
Primary Program Source: 04001112DB NSF Education & Human Resource
04001213DB NSF Education & Human Resource

04001314DB NSF Education & Human Resource

04001516DB NSF Education & Human Resource
Program Reference Code(s): 7645, 9150, 9177, SMET
Program Element Code(s): 764500
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.076

ABSTRACT

The Development of Ambitious and Equitable Mathematics Instruction project is supporting and investigating the implementation of reformed mathematics instruction at the middle school level in two large school districts. Project researchers are asking: What does it take to support mathematics teachers' development of ambitious and equitable instructional practices on a large scale? The project has built on what was learned in a previous, successful project studying the implementation of a middle school mathematics curriculum. The primary goal of the new project is to develop an empirically grounded theory of action for implementing reform at school and district levels. The researchers are investigating reform within a coherent system that focuses on leadership and school-based professional development. In addition, they are facilitating a longitudinal study of the curriculum implementation by continuing the data collection from the original study.

In order to build a theory of action, the project team is synthesizing data from a variety of domains including instructional systems (e.g., curriculum, materials, professional development, support for struggling students, and learning communities), mathematics coaching, networks of teachers, school leadership, and district leadership. Investigators are using a variety of analytic techniques to successfully integrate both quantitative and qualitative data as they seek to understand how school district strategies are playing out in schools and classrooms and how those strategies can be revised in order to improve student learning of mathematics.

An empirically grounded theory of action for implementing reform will help the mathematics education community to implement and to understand the process of reforming mathematics instruction at the middle school level. Many advances in mathematics instruction have been documented within a limited context, but researchers and practitioners need to understand the full range of action necessary to achieve similar successes at a district-wide level. The model developed from this project, in conjunction with longitudinal data, has the potential to guide future reform efforts that seek to provide ambitious and equitable mathematics instruction.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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(Showing: 1 - 10 of 78)
Andrews-Larson, C., Wilson, J., & Larbi-Cherif, A. "Instructional Improvement and Teachers' Collaborative Conversations: The Role of Focus & Facilitation" Teachers College Record , 2017
Berebitsky, D., & Andrews-Larson, C. "Teacher Advice Seeking: Relating Centrality and Expertise in Middle School Mathematics Social Networks." Teachers College Record , v.119 , 2017 , p.1
Boston, M. D., Henrick, E., Gibbons, L. K., Berebitsky, D. & Colby, G. T "Investigating how to support principals as instructional leaders in mathematics" Journal of Research on Leadership Education , 2016
Boston, M. & Wilhelm, A. G "Middle school mathematics instruction in instructionally focused urban districts" Urban Education , 2015
Boston, M., & Wilhelm, A. G. "Middle school mathematics instruction in instructionally focused urban districts" Urban Education , 2015
Boston, M., & Wilhelm, A. G. "Middle school mathematics instruction in instructionally-focused urban districts" Urban Education , 2015
Brasel, J "Coach-mediated opportunities for teachers' professional learning" Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education , 2013 , p.741
Brasel, J. Garner, B. & Horn, I "Scaffolding into ambitious teaching: Representations of practice in teacher workgroups" 12th International Conference of the Learning Sciences , 2016 , p.1
Brasel, J., Garner, B., Kane, B. D. & Horn, I. S. "Getting to the Why and How" Educational Leadership Online , v.73 , 2015
Cobb, P. & Jackson, K "Analyzing educational policies: A learning design perspective" The Journal of the Learning Sciences , v.21 , 2012 , p.487
Cobb, P. & Jackson, K. "Towards an empirically grounded theory of action for improving the quality of mathematics teaching at scale." Mathematics Teacher Education and Development , v.13 , 2011
(Showing: 1 - 10 of 78)

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

Schools and districts across the U.S. face the challenge of supporting increasingly diverse groups of students to attain increasingly rigorous learning goals across multiple subject matter areas including mathematics. Not surprisingly, the proportion of students judged to be proficient in mathematics has dropped significantly in most districts when more rigorous assessments of student learning were implemented. The Middle School Mathematics and the Institutional Setting of Teaching (MIST) project addressed this issue by establishing genuine partnerships with two large urban school districts for four year and additional two districts for eight years.  In these partnerships, we investigated what it takes to improve the quality of mathematics teaching and student learning on a large scale by doing research with rather than on the districts. 

Our district partnerships had had both pragmatic and research goals.  We addressed our pragmatic goal of adding value to the districts’ instructional improvement efforts by collecting and analyzing data each year to document how each district’s instructional improvement strategies were actually playing out in schools and classrooms.  We then shared our findings with leaders of each district each year and made actionable recommendations about how they might revise their current improvement strategies to make them more effective. The districts found our finding relevant because they focused directly on the problems on which they working, and they took up 67% of our recommendations.

In the course of our collaboration with the four districts, we compiled a longitudinal data set that spans from the classroom to district instructional leadership. The analyses that we conducted of these data enabled us to address our primary research question: what does it take to improve the quality of math teaching and student learning on a large scale? The empirically grounded improvement strategies that we identified constitute a coherent theory of action for instructional improvement that bridges the traditional divide between research on teaching and learning, and research on policy and leadership. The ToA consists of three top-level components: a coherent instructional system for supporting teachers’ improvement of their instructional practices,  school leaders' practices as instructional leaders in mathematics, and district leaders' practices in supporting the development of school-level capacity for instructional improvement.

The first of these components, a coherent instructional system, comprises four elements:

  • Goals for students’ mathematics learning and vision of high-quality mathematics instruction
  • A subsystem of supports for teachers’ learning that includes pull-out professional development, school-based teacher collaborative meetings, and mathematics coaching, as well as teachers' advice networks
  • Instructional materials and assessments
  • Supplemental supports for currently struggling students 

This ToA provides actionable, research-based guidance on the types of improvement strategies that schools and districts can implement to address the challenge of supporting all students in attaining increasingly rigorous learning goals.  Although our work focused on mathematics in the middle grades, one of our partner district’s efforts to apply our findings to other grade levels and to other core subject matter areas suggests that the findings are relevant to instructional improvement efforts that aim at rigorous learning goals more generally.

 


Last Modified: 10/30/2017
Modified by: Erin Henrick

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