Group T4 Action Plans– Virginia C Room, Lobby Level, Facilitated by Alejandro Uribe

Group T4 Action Plans

Team Name		National Council of Teachers of Mathematics - A
Team Leader & Members		James M. Rubillo - jrubillo@nctm.org Vena M. Long Monique Lynch
Area & Recs		Teachers and Teacher Education 18, 20, 19

NCTM will:

Produce additional publications that focus on the content outlined in the NMP report (CFPs). These documents can serve as resources for teacher education programs and school district professional development efforts.
Consider a position statement on the widespread deployment of elementary mathematics specialists.
Provide workshops for institutions preparing for the NCATE review process for accrediting mathematics education programs. These workshops will focus on approaches to increasing prospective teachers’ mathematical knowledge and teaching skills as called for in the National Math Panel report.
Incorporate the NMP’s content recommendations, as appropriate, in the upcoming revision of the NCATE mathematics program requirements (middle school, high school, and elementary specialist programs). Particularly NCTM will work with ACEI to ensure that the elementary program requirements reflect appropriate mathematics content requirements.
Continue providing professional development programs and resources (online, Web-based, and print) that districts, teacher educators, and individuals can utilize in providing teachers with opportunities to enhance both their knowledge of the content and the pedagogies outlined in the NMP recommendations.

Team Name		American Mathematical Society
Team Leader & Members		Scott Baldridge - sbaldrid@math.lsu.edu Kristen Umland Sam Rankin
Area & Recs		Teachers and Teacher Education 19

Our goal: Disseminate information to AMS members. Get everyone on the same page on the core ideas.

1. Write an article, “A mathematician’s perspective on the math panel report” for the Notices (circulation: 33,000 and available free on the web) updating the membership on the NMP recommendations. This article will:

a. Summarize relevant parts of the report.

b. Answer the question: What does it mean for the mathematical research community and mathematics?

2. Write another paper for the Notices; “What can a mathematician do to help improve math education?”

a. Work on math for prospective teachers (elementary, UTeach, etc).

b. Get grants to put math grad students in K-12 settings.

c. Get familiar with relevant education research (yes, there is some! We’ll give examples).

d. Think about what we can do with departmental policy right now (e.g. put tenure-stream faculty to work on math for elementary teachers).

e. Suggest that we position ourselves to influence policy (which must be research-based) down the line by partnering with education researchers.

3. Presentation to the committee on education

a. Suggest they take a role in supporting on-going work relating to the NMP report.

b. Initiate a conversation about the fact that there is a body of professional knowledge and scholarly work in mathematics education that mathematicians should become aware of if they want to become involved.

4. Special session at JMM

a. Begin an ongoing discussion of our role in the work proposed by the NMP report.

b. Maybe have one that focuses on scholarly work in the mathematical preparation of teachers

These mechanisms can e used over a long period of time. As more people become involved, these mechanisms will also evolve.

Team Name		Union College (NE)
Team Leader & Members		Larry Ray - laray@ucollege.edu Joe Allison
Area & Recs		Teachers and Teacher Education 19, 18

Our action plans include the following:

1) Continue offering a summer course/workshop for K-12 teachers in our region. For the summer of 2009, Union College will contact the private schools in Lincoln to establish a date and arrangements for how this course/workshop can be delivered.

2) We will conduct a research project to survey K-8 teachers to determine the benefits of the recent summer course/workshops on their math abilities and attitude toward mathematics. Also, we will survey 9-12 teachers regarding the benefits of working with K-8 teachers in the summer course/workshop.

3) Currently we are using Parker and Baldridge’s Elementary Mathematics for Teachers text and ancillaries for our elementary education content math course. We will conduct a research project to survey preservice and practicing teachers to determine the benefits of using these materials to enhance the teaching of mathematics.

4) Research the possibility of funding and providing an elementary math specialist to teacher in a local K-8 school.

Team Name		American Statistical Association
Team Leader & Members		Jerry Moreno - moreno@jcu.edu Martha Aliaga
Area & Recs		Teachers and Teacher Education 19

Background: The American Statistical Association (ASA) believes that working with data provides excellent motivation for the learning of and becoming proficient in pre-algebraic skills. Its GAISE Report: Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education: A PreK-12 Curriculum Framework defines ASA’s coherent picture of statistics education in the overall school mathematics curriculum while complementing the data analysis recommendations in the NCTM Principles and Standards in School Mathematics.

The GAISE Report – Six Recommendations:

Emphasize statistical literacy and develop statistical thinking.
Use real data.
Stress conceptual understanding rather than mere knowledge of procedures.
Foster active learning in the classroom.
Use technology for developing conceptual understanding and analyzing data.
Integrate assessments that are aligned with course goals to improve as well as evaluate student learning.

The ASA/NCTM Joint Committee on Curriculum in Statistics and Probability for Grades K-12 will be responsible for implementing the following research project.

Hypothesis: Incorporating data driven activities in pre-algebra material enables students to be better prepared for algebra.

Materials: The ASA/NCTM Joint Committee has and will develop appropriate GAISE materials of the investigative process to bridge the gap between the GAISE Report and the classroom. One such document in preparation is Making Sense of Statistical Studies (MSSS) that consists of fifteen extensive investigations involving surveys, observational studies, and experiments. Although written as a high school data analysis offering, the activities could be used to develop, reinforce, or assess fractional and decimal arithmetic along with proportional reasoning at the middle school level. In addition, specific activities are being written that effect levels A, B, and C of the GAISE Report.

Plan: To conduct professional development workshops in the summers of 2009 and 2010 for middle school teachers in the Fairfax County, Virginia school district. The methodology we plan to use is a randomized comparative experiment comparing instruction of certain pre-algebra topics (to be determined) by traditional best practice versus teaching those topics from a data-driven point of view. Randomized field trials regarding students will take place in the fall of 2009. Follow-up will occur on a monthly basis with visitations to the classrooms and through webinars. Consultation will be conducted with a mathematics educator to ensure that the mathematics that we are measuring is appropriate in testing our hypothesis. We will follow the ASA report on Using statistics effectively in mathematics education research. www.amstat.org/research_grants/pdfs/SMERReport.pdf

Team Name		Association for Symbolic Logic
Team Leader & Members		Charles Steinhorn steinhorn@vassar.edu John Baldwin
Area & Recs		Teachers and Teacher Education 21, 18, 19

The ASL will familiarize its membership with the content and recommendations of the NMAP report. This will include reports to the ASL Council and its standing Committee on Education, planned activities at North American ASL meetings, and items in the quarterly ASL Newsletter and on the Association’s website . The efforts to reach out to its membership are aimed at encouraging engagement at the local level, both within members’ home institutions and the states and communities in which they live. The ASL also will continue to collaborate with the other CBMS member organizations on continued efforts issuing from the report.

The ASL will stress several key aspects of the report in its communications with its members, including the findings that the mathematical content knowledge of teachers is of paramount importance, that student effort matters, and that formative assessment must be well integrated with lesson planning . Here is more detail on the issue of content knowledge. While it is agreed that development of sufficient mathematical content knowledge requires more mathematics courses at the preservice level, as the report notes the precise notion of mathematical content for teaching is a subject for continuing research. Members will be urged to support collaboration with mathematics educators in evaluating the effect of coursework on teacher knowledge. They also will be urged to involve themselves and their departments in more intensive work with (future) teachers. We note that the development of math specialists credentials in the various states may be an economical way to address the need for greater teacher knowledge. Further work on in-service also will be discussed.

Team Name		Educational Testing Service (ETS)
Team Leader & Members		Gloria Dion - gdion@ets.org Kelly Denson
Area & Recs		Teachers and Teacher Education 18, 19, 21

The recommendations presented in the National Math Panel report are related to many facets of ETS’s products and services, including a wide variety of mathematics assessments, products and services to support teacher preparation and professional development, and products and services to support student learning.

As a result of our participation in this forum, we will initiate discussions among mathematics staff, researchers, policy analysts, and other interested staff based on the recommendations of the panel’s report and the conversations during the breakout sessions. Government analysts will follow up with federal, state, and local governments on issues related to curriculum, teacher preparation, assessment, and research needs..

Work related to the panel’s Recommendation 19 on strengthening the mathematics preparation of elementary and middle school teachers includes the planned review and revision of the Praxis mathematics assessments, current work on educator performance assessments, and research on professional development for teachers in underperforming districts (using teams of preservice teachers, inservice teachers, and teacher educators) focusing on a combination of content knowledge for teaching mathematics and strategies for changing and improving instruction.

Team Name		Pennsylvania Department of Education
Team Leader & Members		Jim Bohan, jim_bohan@iu13.org
Area & Recs		Teachers and Teacher Education

Background:	The Pennsylvania Department of Education has initiated the process of creating Standards Aligned Systems in all 12 Standard Content areas in K-12 education in the Commonwealth. The purpose of each system is to provide integrated and targets resources for all students in Pennsylvania and to provide focus on the important topics and processes that should motivate K-12 education in each Standards area. Each system will include aligned and connected resources in Standards, Assessment, Curriculum Framework, Instruction, Materials and Interventions. Each system will include a significant professional development component.
Proposed Plans:	1. Preservice Component: Develop a concise list of mathematical topics that are consistent with the Standards Aligned System Curriculum Framework in mathematics and the National Mathematics Panel Critical Foundations. This listing will be disseminated to all teacher preparation institutions and to the Bureau of Certification to be considered in the certification of teacher preparation institutions. 2. Inservice Component: Develop an application process for proposed professional development programs for application as a Standards Aligned System in Mathematics approved offering. In addition, develop a rubric that will be utilized to evaluate the merits of the program relative to its consistency with the Standards Aligned System Curriculum Framework and the National Mathematics Panel Critical Foundations. This process and evaluation will implemented for all professional development programs including those funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Education as well as those programs from other sources.
Proposed Timeline:	1. Preservice Component: March 1, 2009 2. Inservice Component: January 1, 2009
Responsibility:	The Core Team of the Standards Aligned System will submit draft documents to the Bureau of Teaching and Learning of Pennsylvania Department of Education as outlined above.