Samples from Awardees

Assistant Professors Eileen Murray and Joseph DiNapoli will be leading a team of researchers on a project funded by a four-year $1.7 million National Science Foundation (NSF) Discovery Research PreK-12 (DRK-12) grant.

Each year, the NSF awards a small number of DRK-12 grants to projects that have the potential to transform the education system. 麻豆传媒在线 researchers have received $532,224 for the project 鈥淏uilding a Teacher Knowledge Base for the Implementation of High-quality Instructional Resources through the Collaborative Investigation of Video Cases.鈥�

The prestigious DRK-12 grant was awarded to researchers at 麻豆传媒在线, the State University of New York at Buffalo and DePaul University, who will collaborate with Math for America, the New York State Master Teacher Program and the DePaul University STEM Center, on a Math of America teachers-based project.

Established in 2004, Math for America is committed to improving teacher retention by building and supporting communities of outstanding STEM educators. Its innovative video library, which features Math for America teachers using high-quality math lesson plans in their classrooms, is central to the team鈥檚 project.

The researchers will address the pressing national need to generate shared, classroom-based knowledge about how to implement freely available, quality instructional resources that can improve student learning outcomes.

The funding will also give teachers a unique window into one another鈥檚 classrooms by supporting teacher-leaders in different U.S. cities as they execute lesson plans, create new videos for the Math for America video library and seek to understand how to teach more effectively.

鈥淚n this innovative professional development model, teachers use videos to break down complex teaching situations and think about what can be improved,鈥� says Murray. 鈥淚t鈥檚 similar to how professional athletes use video to review what worked and what didn鈥檛 in games.鈥�

By studying what teachers learn and how they share that knowledge with others, the 麻豆传媒在线 team aims to learn how the model might ultimately be scaled nationwide.

In this project, we have iteratively refined an approach to professional development that is innovative because it is practice-based, incorporates video, and focuses on an open, high-quality instructional resource. Our project is called Analyzing Instruction in Mathematics Using the Teaching for Robust Understanding Framework (AIM-TRU).

In AIM-TRU, teachers collaboratively analyze video cases showing other teachers implementing lessons called Classroom Challenges. Classroom Challenges are 100 free, high-quality math lesson plans developed by the Shell Center for Mathematical Education to support teaching aligned to the Teaching for Robust Understanding (TRU) framework. A crucial element of these lessons is that they are built to foster rich classroom conversations on deep mathematical ideas, making them an ideal vehicle for video cases.

In order to create these video cases, our research team solicits teacher volunteers from the affiliated leadership programs to videotape Classroom Challenge lessons in their classrooms. Next, we identify episodes showing students engaged in rich mathematical activity, which we cut into a video case with associated case materials including the lesson plan, transcripts and context. These video cases form the backbone of our PD model, where teachers use these materials as well as sets of reflective questions based on the TRU framework. In developing the PD model, members of our research team have facilitated workshops based on the video cases with eight different groups of teachers in New York City, Buffalo, Chicago, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. We collected video data and/or field notes for these sessions to continue to refine the video cases and PD model.

While some work has been done to understand the benefits of supports for part-time instructors at the undergraduate level, this work has focused mostly on graduate teaching assistants rather than adjunct instructors. The proposed project will extend this work to adjunct instructors and will contribute to the research base regarding the adjunct instructor population. By building a model of adjunct instructor resources and support, the project will contribute to deeper understanding of how such efforts impact (1) adjunct instructor knowledge and instructional practices, (2) adjunct instructor job satisfaction, and (3) student academic success and retention in STEM majors. This understanding will help other departments and institutions with similar instructor populations to better support their adjunct faculty, with the goal of improving student learning and persistence in precalculus and beyond.

The project incorporates a novel Making experience into the preparation of prospective mathematics teachers (PMTs) that tasks them with digitally designing and fabricating new tools that support mathematics teaching and learning. Research objectives include: (1) describing the forms of knowledge invoked as the PMTs design and make new manipulatives to support mathematics teaching and learning, (2) tracing and elaborating the development of the PMTs鈥� technological, mathematical, pedagogical, and curricular knowledge as they engage in this work, (3) documenting what the PMTs鈥� discourse and design activity reveal about the nature and evolution of their identities as designers of mathematical instruction, and (4) employing an iterative design cycle to produce a curriculum module that will engage other PMTs in a similar Making experience.

Implementing the Making experience within a creative and collaborative design environment aims to demonstrate its influence on PMTs鈥� uses of knowledge during teacher education, to cultivate their identities as designers of mathematical instruction and as agents of curricular and pedagogical reform, and to alleviate the historic trend of anxiety that PMTs have suffered in relation to their understanding of mathematics and their acquisition of a student-centered model of mathematics pedagogy.