Sponsor |
NSF
($9,000,000
over five years) |
Objectives |
1. To address problems of the USA capacity for mathematics education
leadership 2. To address problems of the
quality of K-12
mathematics
teacher education. |
|
Mission |
To design and
operate an innovative program of doctoral and postdoctoral education for
specialists in mathematics teacher education, curriculum development,
policy leadership, and mathematics education research. To develop,
evaluate, and disseminate models for the mathematical education of
pre-service teachers and professional development of in-service
mathematics teachers in elementary, middle, and high
schools. |
|
Partners |
Three
research universities and three school systems (Delaware; Maryland;
Pennsylvania State University) |
Guiding Principles |
Goal for students:
deep, broad, and connected
understanding of math. Goal for educators:
core knowledge that integrates the domains of mathematics, student
thinking, pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment. Educators need
adaptive expertise to transform their knowledge into decisions and actions
appropriate to specific contexts. Professional
programs require collaboration among various institutions.
Schools must provide high quality
mathematical education for all students. Resources for
teaching, learning, and professional development must include technologies
that allow new conceptions of what is most important to learn.
Effective change in
education requires reculturing schools. The prototype for a
new form of educator preparation must be one that learns from its own
experience. |
|
Doctoral and
Postdoctoral Education for Specialists |
Task
1: Recruiting, Admission, and
Support of Students
Task 2: Defining Program Course
Requirements Task 3: Establishing Research
Participation, School Field Experiences, Task 4: Establishing Standards for
Dissertations Task 6: Placing doctoral fellows in professional positions
|
Improving Teacher Preparation and Professional Development |
1: Improving Pre-service Preparation
of Elem. and Middle School Teachers
2: Improving Pre-service Preparation
of Secondary Mathematics Teachers 3: Developing Teacher Leaders for
Elem. and Middle School
Mathematics 4: Developing Strategies for
Secondary Mathematics Teacher Professional development |
Expanding Professional Communities |
Demonstrate
effective ways to engage faculty, graduate students, and classroom
teachers in larger, more stimulating professional
communities. Conduct a regular
series of colloquia, research meetings, and workshops (both face-to-face
and through video-conferencing or on-line conferencing) for sharing of
on-going work at each site. |
Project Management Plan |
The project needs the
guiding hand of a senior professional leader, Director, who will stimulate
and coordinate the range of Center activities. The Director will be
advised on a regular basis by an executive committee with representatives
from each partner institution. |
|
Formative Evaluation Plans |
Study the Centres own
operation and usethat research to continually improve its practices over
time The advisory board members will be critical to this study of the Center operation. |
|
Timeline of Project Activities |
Year 1: Develop and pilot test various
component activities of the project. Year 2: (1) Initiate courses, research
participation for doctoral fellows; (2) Initiate courses and professional
development institutes for in-service teacher leaders;
Year 3: The primary activities of Year
3 will focus on the specialist fellows and scaling up of courses for
pre-service teachers Year 4: The primary focus of year 4
activities will be scaling up and establishing permanent status of the
teacher preparation, professional development, and specialist programs at
the partner institutions Year 5: Focus on evaluation and
reporting of findings from the initiatives of the project: (1) Reports on research on the
various teacher preparation initiatives; (2) Reports on the professional
development initiatives; (3)
Continue collaborative offering of doctoral courses.
|
|
Comments |
Two thirds of budget
devoted to Doctoral studies |