Structuring Retreats to Share F indings and Discuss Recommendations

1. Structuring Retreats to Share Findings and Discuss Recommendations Paul Cobb and the MIST Team

2. Collaboration with Districts

3. Collaboration with Districts

4. District Feedback Meetings • Two hours – conference room • 6-8 district leaders • Decision making authority • Mathematics expertise • Lead researchers + district specialist(s) • Talk from notes – no PowerPoint slides • Encourage open discussion

5. District Feedback Meetings • Setting norms • Design failure • For each district strategy: • ToA: Envisioned forms of practice that constitute the goal of the strategy + intended supports and accountability relations • Findings – how that strategy is being enacted in schools • Explain why this is the case • Recommendations for revising the strategy

6. District B(2011):General Framing of the Report • The district continues to make progress but two areas where there is room for improvement: • Depth of teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching has not improved and is still below the national average • Quality of teachers’ instructional practices have not improved • Description of findings about classroom instruction + why it matters for students’ learning

7. General Framing of the Feedback Report • District is implementing a number of initiatives • These initiatives as they are actually being implemented have not been effective in supporting instructional improvement • Instructional improvement and student achievement

8. District Initiatives • Supports for Middle-Grades Mathematics Teachers • Teacher professional development • Enhanced pacing guides and interim district assessments • Teacher collaboration • Mathematics coaches • School instructional leadership

9. Findings: School Instructional Leadership • School leaders and accountability • School leaders’ visions of high quality mathematics instruction • Monitoring classroom instruction • Professional development for school leaders

10. Recommendation: School Instructional Leadership • Professional development that: • Focuses on a small number of high-leverage instructional practices • Aims to support development of their visions of high quality instruction • Enable them to communicate appropriate instructional expectations • Aligned with teacher and coach PD • Focuses on the same instructional practices

11. Reflection: Negotiating an Instructional Improvement Agenda • Researchers have to go 90% of the way: • Take district’s current ToA as the primary point of reference • Explicate conjectures that underpin findings/recommendations and give them significance • Researchers’ role is advisory • Ethics – fragile/non-existent research base

12. District Leadership Institutes • 1 ½ days in summer • Leaders across district central office units • Co-planned with senior district leader(s) • Overall goal: Develop shared agenda for instructional improvement for the next school year across central office units

13. CCSS-M: Clarifying Mathematical Capabilities Students Need to Develop • Mathematics problems from old and new 7th grade state assessments • Apply taught procedures to familiar types of problems • Analyze novel problems to determine procedures to use / calculations to perform • Can all district 7th-grade students analyze and solve novel types of problems?

14. Implications for Instruction • Teachers should: • Pose high-level tasks • Clarify distinctions between the two sample problems • Maintain the challenge of such tasks throughout the lesson • Proceduralize the task from the new state assessment

15. District Teachers’ Current Practices • District mathematics experts • Choice of tasks + maintaining rigor of task • MIST data: IQA and MKT

16. Supports for Teachers’ Development of Needed Instructional Practices • Curricular resources: • To what extent and in what ways are teachers currently using district curriculum frameworks and adopted instructional program? • Mathematics experts + MIST data • Challenge: How can we work to ensure that teachers are making greater use of available resources? • Proposal: Focus teacher collaborative time on lesson planning using the curricular resources

17. Supports for Teachers’ Development of Needed Instructional Practices • Professional learning communities: • What should happen if teacher collaboration is to support instructional improvement? • What is currently happening when mathematics teachers work together? • Math experts + MIST data • Challenge: How to make PLCs more productive? • Proposal: Leadership + types of activities + protocol

18. Implications for School Leadership • School leaders’ current practices • Leadership directors + MIST data • To what extent are these practices likely to support instructional improvement? • Articulate a vision of: • School leadership • School capacity for improvement

19. Implications for District Leadership • Clarify the work of: • District mathematics coaches • District curriculum specialists • Leadership directors

20. Wrap Up • Review what we have accomplished: • Goals fro students’ mathematical learning • Teachers’ instructional practices • School instructional leadership • District leadership • Review resulting plan for moving forward: • Clarify how MIST can assist FWISD