1 / 58

Paul Cobb and the MIST Team Vanderbilt University University of Washington

A Provisional Agenda for Research on Improving the Quality of Mathematics Teaching on a Large Scale. Paul Cobb and the MIST Team Vanderbilt University University of Washington Michigan State University McGill University. Purpose.

rjerry
Download Presentation

Paul Cobb and the MIST Team Vanderbilt University University of Washington

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. A Provisional Agenda for Research on Improving the Quality of Mathematics Teaching on a Large Scale Paul Cobb and the MIST Team Vanderbilt University University of Washington Michigan State University McGill University

  2. Purpose • Outline a set of issues that need to be addressed if research is to provide adequate guidance for large-scale instructional improvement efforts in mathematics • Across a large urban district

  3. Overview • Preamble: what counts as high-quality instruction • Background: ongoing work as a setting for appreciating the limitations of current research • Proposal for issues that need to be addressed

  4. What Counts as Instructional Quality? • Has to be justified in terms of students’ learning of mathematics that is worth knowing • Conceptual understanding as well as procedural fluency • Justifying solutions, evaluating the reasonableness of solutions, generalizing from solutions, making connections among multiple representations of mathematical ideas

  5. Research on Students’ Mathematical Learning • Rigorous mathematical tasks • Individual or small group work • Whole class discussion • Teacher presses students to: • Explain and justify their reasoning • Make connections between different solutions

  6. Goals for Teachers Learning • High-leverage instructional practices • Planning and conducting productive whole class discussions • Setting up rigorous mathematical tasks • Specific types of knowledge implicated in the enactment of these practices • Mathematical knowledge for teaching • Vision of high-quality mathematics instruction • View of students’ mathematical capabilities

  7. Challenge for Districts • How to organize, support, and press for teacher learning across the entire system • What guidance can research provide?

  8. Background: MIST Project • Four-year collaboration with four large urban districts – 360,000 students – 2007-2011 • Continued collaboration with two districts – 180,000 students – 2011-2015 • Investigate (and support) the districts’ instructional improvement efforts in middle-grades mathematics

  9. Background: MIST Project • High proportion of students from traditionally underserved groups • Limited financial resources • High teacher turn over • High proportion of novice teachers • Atypical in one respect: • Aiming at ambitious goals for student learning and thus for teachers’ instructional practices

  10. District Participants • 30 middle-grades mathematics teachers in 6-10 schools in each district • Mathematics coaches • School leaders • Principals, assistant principals • District leaders • Across central office units that had a stake in mathematics teaching and learning

  11. Collaboration with Districts

  12. Collaboration with Districts

  13. Collaboration with Districts • District leaders attempt to act on our recommendations to a significant extent • Become co-designers of district improvement strategies • Participants in as well as observers of the districts’ instructional improvement efforts

  14. Collaboration with Districts • Formulating recommendations: Have to address concrete organizational design problems • Occasion to appreciate • The types of problems that district leaders have to address • Extent to which current research can provide guidance – hence this talk

  15. Research Goal • Develop an empirically grounded theory of action for instructional improvement at scale • Can inform other districts’ instructional improvement efforts

  16. Ongoing Analyses • Initial conjectures about supports and accountability relations • Drew on then available literature • Conjectures informed initial recommendations to districts • District leaders acted on recommendations – opportunity to test and revise conjectures

  17. Retrospective Analyses • On-line surveys for teachers, coaches, and school leaders • Video-recordings of two consecutive lessons in the 120 participating teachers’ classrooms • Coded using the Instructional Quality Assessment (IQA) • Assessments of teachers’ and coaches’ Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) • Video-recordings of select district teacher professional development • Audio-recordings of teacher collaborative planning time • Student achievement data

  18. Theory of Action for Instructional Improvement at Scale • A coherent instructional system: • Instructional materials + professional development + assessments to inform instruction + additional supports for struggling students • Mathematics coaches’ practices in providing job-embedded support for teachers’ learning

  19. Theory of Action for Instructional Improvement at Scale • School leaders’ practices as instructional leaders in mathematics • District leaders’ practices in supporting the development of school-level capacity for instructional improvement

  20. Research Team Paul Cobb Tom Smith Kara Jackson Erin Henrick Ilana Horn Ken Frank

  21. Research Team Jessica RigbyMollie Appelgate Jonee Wilson Adrian Larbi-CherifBrooks Rosenquist Charlotte Munoz Britnie Kane Jason Brasel Brette Garner Seth Hunter Emily Kern Megan Webster MahtabNazemi I-Chien Chen

  22. Vision of high-quality instruction: • Small set of high-leverage practices that are potentially learnable in the context of high-quality professional development • Explicit goals for students’ learning • Vision of high-quality instruction • Instructional materials • Component 1: Coherent Instructional System • Instructional materials: • Grounded in student learning trajectories that aim at significant mathematical ideas

  23. Teacher professional development • Pull-out Professional Development (PD): • Specific PD designs – promising findings • Grounded in classroom practice – pedagogies of investigation and enactment • Most work in pre-service – have extrapolate to in-service • Teacher Collaborative Time (TCT) • Most researcher-led – potentially productive types of activities • Naturally occurring – characteristics of productive teacher groups • Component 1: Coherent Instructional System

  24. Formative assessment systems • Aligned with ambitious goals for students’ learning • Grounded in trajectories of students’ learning • Component 1: Coherent Instructional System • Assessments to inform instruction

  25. Goal: support struggling students to participate effectively in mainstream instruction • Component 1: Coherent Instructional System • Additional supports for struggling students

  26. Coherent Instructional System • Collaborating districts: fragments of a coherent instructional system • Strengths: explicit goals for students’ learning, vision of high-quality instruction, instructional materials • Challenge: teacher professional development – district capacity • Challenge: TCT – expertise + leadership of meetings – district capacity • Weakness: additional supports for struggling students – not aligned with mainstream classroom instruction

  27. Needed Research: Developing District Capacity • Researchers typically assume full responsibility for “building” particular elements • The problem of scale involves supporting districts’ development of the capacity to create, coordinate, and sustain the elements of such a system

  28. Developing District Capacity: Sacrificial Offering • Example: co-designing and co-leading PD for coaches with district mathematics specialists • Support the development coaches’ capacity to design and lead high-quality teacher PD • Gradual hand over of responsibility to district mathematics specialists • Overall goal: Investigate how to support districts’ development of capacity to develop and sustain a cadre of mathematics coaches

  29. Needed Research: Interrelations Between Elements of the System • Current research typically focuses on the individual elements of a coherent instructional system • Also need to investigate interrelations between various the elements, and between elements and other components of ToA • Which are preconditions for the development of other elements/components?

  30. Developing District Capacity: Sacrificial Offering • Example: co-designing and co-leading PD for school leaders • School leaders press for instructional improvement • Coaches support teachers in meeting those expectations • Investigate development of aligned support and press for teachers’ improvement of their instructional practices

  31. Mathematics Coaching • Finding: Teachers’ improvement of their instructional practices depends crucially on their access to colleagues who have already developed accomplished practices • Three of our four districts: Small proportion of accomplished teachers • Critical role of coaches as more accomplished colleagues

  32. Mathematics Coaching • Design and lead pull-out PD • Work with groups of teachers during TCT • Current research + our findings indicate importance of leadership/expertise in TCT • Support teachers one-on-one in their classrooms • Build on pull-out PD and work in TCT

  33. Current Research on Coaching • Provides little guidance on: • Types of activities in which coaches might engage teachers • Coaches practices as they enact these activities • Supporting the development of a cadre of accomplished mathematics coaches • One of the collaborating districts: four years of sustained professional development for coaches • Only slightly ahead of the teachers they were expected to support

  34. Needed Research: Delineating Goals for Coaches’ Learning • Develop testableconjectures about potentially productive coaching practices • Working with groups of teachers: • Draw on studies of researcher-led and naturally occurring PLCs • Kazemiand Franke: Potentially productive activities • Horn: Press teachers of key issues

  35. Needed Research: Delineating Goals for Coaches’ Learning • Working with teachers in their classrooms: • Draw on research on teacher learning and professional development • Points to importance of modeling and especially co-teaching • Observation/feedback at specific points in teachers’ development • e.g., Tuning their enactment specific practices

  36. Needed Research: Delineating Goals for Coaches’ Learning • Important to explicate the forms of knowledgeabilityimplicated in the enactment of proposed practices • Researchers do not typically report what they needed to know

  37. Needed Research: Specifying Forms of Knowledgeability • Mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) • Additional candidate: an envisioned trajectory for teachers’ learning • Classroom management • Student engagement • Teacher questioning • Informs decisions about which aspects of practice to work on with teachers

  38. Needed Research: Designs for Supporting Coaches’ Learning • Both settings: • Draw on very limited literature on coach PD • Extrapolate from work on teacher learning and teacher PD

  39. Needed Research: Test and Revise Designs for Coaches’ Learning • Design experiments to: • Test and refine conjectures about supports for coaches’ development of target practices • Assess in terms of improvements in: • Coaches’ practices • Quality of teachers’ classroom instruction • Student learning

  40. Coach PD: A Sacrificial Offering • MIST & District Math Leaders collaboratively plan for upcoming session Coach PD Session • MIST views video-recording of pilot PD in light of goals for coaches’ learning • Coaches lead PD with pilot group

  41. School Instructional Leadership • Standards-based reform: Principals and assistant principals increasingly expected to act as instructional leaders in specific content areas • Manage instruction rather than manage around instruction

  42. Current Research School Instructional Leadership • No consensus on what school leaders need to know and be able to do in order to be effective instructional leaders in mathematics • General content-independent characteristics of high-quality instruction • Observe instruction and provide feedback • MKT, student mathematical learning, high-quality mathematics instruction, teacher learning • Coach mathematics teachers

  43. Findings • Interviews – vision of high-quality mathematics instruction (VHQMI) • Form rather than function views • Consistent with teachers’ accounts of the feedback they receive from school leaders • Extensive professional development • Focused on general, content-independent characteristics of high-quality instruction

  44. Initial Findings • General characteristics of high-quality inquiry-oriented instruction • Too abstract – not able to connect to concrete instructional practices • MKT, student mathematical learning, high-quality mathematics instruction, teacher learning • Beyond the capacity of most districts

  45. Needed Research: Delineating Goals for School Leaders’ Learning • Develop testable conjectures about potentially productive school leadership practices • Justify in terms of: • Direct support/press for teachers’ learning • Indirect support – developing conditions for teacher learning

  46. Current Bets • Identify and capitalize on instructional expertise in the school • Observe mathematics instruction and provide feedback • Participate in teacher collaborative time (TCT) • Support coach to support teachers’ learning

  47. School Leadership Routine School Leader And Coach: Quality of Individual Teachers’ Instruction + How to Support Instructional Improvement + Jointly Plan for Teacher Collaborative Time Attend Teacher Collaborative Time Observe Classroom Instruction Meet with Mathematics Coach

  48. Needed Research: Delineating Goals for School Leaders’ Learning • Important to explicate the forms of knowledgeabilityimplicated in the enactment of the proposed practices • Vision of high-quality mathematics instruction • Observing instruction and giving feedback • Identifying and leveraging instructional expertise

  49. Needed Research: Designs for Supporting School Leaders’ Learning • Extrapolate from work on teacher learning and teacher PD • Vision of high-quality mathematics instruction • Distinguish between high- and low-rigor tasks • Distinguish between strong and weak enactments of specific high-leverage instructional practices

More Related