This iteration of PATHWAYS continued the work started in a previous round of NSF funding for the project. The latest iteration of PATHWAYS supported a total of 26 undergraduate researchers. The undergraduates represented various institutions in the U.S., including Alma College, Ball State University, Benedictine College, Boston College, Miami University, Salisbury University, SUNY – Geneseo, Syracuse University, University of Maryland – College Park, and Wor-Wic Community College. In each case, PATHWAYS provided an introductory experience in conducting mathematics education research the undergraduates could not have readily attained otherwise. Undergraduates from the different institutions were placed into small groups in order to gain the experience of conducting collaborative research with one another. 

     The PATHWAYS program was designed to help undergraduates grow as teachers and as scholars. To achieve these goals, each summer, undergraduate groups worked closely with faculty mentors during a 10-week experience to design, test, and refine approaches for teaching mathematics. Undergraduates taught weekly mathematics lessons to small groups of children and carefully assessed the impact of their instruction by analyzing clinical interview results, lesson videos, and written work. Analyses of these artifacts informed the mathematics teaching strategies they used each week. At the conclusion of each summer experience, undergraduates worked together to construct posters, abstracts, and presentation slides to use at undergraduate research conferences and as outlines for scholarly publications. 

     PATHWAYS undergraduates presented their work in several venues, including the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, NSF’s REU Symposium, the Annual Conference of the National Association for Professional Development Schools, and student research conferences on the Salisbury University campus. In these presentations, undergraduates shared their research findings on the teaching and learning of mathematical topics such as multiplication, probability, word problems, fractions, and proportional relationships. For most PATHWAYS undergraduates, these presentations were the first they had given at a professional conference. Attending the conferences also provided opportunities for them to network with other teachers and scholars both locally and across the U.S. 

     In addition to generating conference presentations, PATHWAYS provided opportunities for undergraduates to collaborate with faculty mentors on publications. During the term of this grant (which was a continuation of a previous iteration of PATHWAYS), six articles with undergraduate co-authors were published or accepted for publication. Three of these were research articles, and the other three were practitioner-oriented journal articles. The three research articles were for the journals Mathematical Thinking and Learning, Mathematics Education Research Journal, and Statistics Education Research Journal. The research articles dealt with children’s learning of probability and best-fit lines. The practitioner-oriented articles offered teaching strategies to support the learning of probability and fractions. In each case, PATHWAYS undergraduates gained beginning experiences in navigating the world of publishing in scholarly journals. 

     PATHWAYS faculty mentors also collaborated with one another to present and publish research findings on both mathematics teacher education and children’s learning. Research on how PATHWAYS undergraduates took advantage of the opportunity to learn from mistakes was presented at the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators conference and published in Mathematics Teacher Education and Development. An article on the PATHWAYS approach to mathematics teacher education was published in Mathematics Teacher Educator. Studies of children’s learning of probability vocabulary and statistics were published in Journal for Research in Mathematics Education and Journal of Statistics Education. Some of these articles were produced during collaborations that started during the first round of funding for PATHWAYS and culminated during the second round.  

     Along with the scholarly products that came about because of PATHWAYS, the program also provided a valuable mathematics learning experience for children on the Lower Eastern Shore of Maryland. Opportunities such as these are especially vital in this geographic area, where median household income and bachelor’s degree attainment are lower than the Maryland average. The integrated teaching and research cycle model underlying PATHWAYS allowed us to foster children’s learning of vital mathematics concepts such as multiplication, fractions, proportional reasoning, statistics, and probability as research took place. Project activities were done over the summer months, when children often do not have extensive opportunities to maintain and continue to develop their mathematical thinking.

     PATHWAYS work from undergraduates and faculty mentors can be found on the project website: www.salisbury.edu/pathways. Posters, abstracts, and presentation slides for undergraduate research projects can be viewed there. The site also contains links to all PATHWAYS articles published in peer-reviewed venues and a list of undergraduate research conference presentations. These materials provide further information about how the PATHWAYS experience helped undergraduates become skilled mathematics teachers and aspiring scholars.

Last Modified: 04/10/2023
Modified by: Randall E Groth