MMSTLC Presentation at the 2009 Math and Science Partnership Conference in Chicago

1. Steve Best
University of Michigan
Judith Flowers
University of Michigan-Dearborn

2. • Introduction and Background
• Goals / Program for Teachers Leaders
• Instructional Focus and Resources for
Mathematics
– Tasks, Cases, and Analysis of work
– Findings
• Instructional Focus and Resources for
Science
– Addressing PCK and Leadership
– Findings

3. • Focus on developing teacher leaders in high
needs schools
Partnerships with local Math/Science
•
Centers and STEM Faculty
Incorporates building/district administrators
•
in PD and team planning
Centralized PD from Collaborative plus
•
release time for localized and personal PD
and implementation of support for colleagues
Develops capacity to support teachers locally
•

4. Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership
Collaborative
Cadre 1
8 teams, 55 participants
Cadre 2
12 teams, 96 participants
High Needs
Schools
Throughout
Michigan
Focus on Middle
Grades to Address
Greatest Problems
and Allow for
Adaptation
4

5. • Make participants aware of leadership roles
for instructional support and policy
• Focus on partnerships and networking to
enhance learning across the state
• Requires development of general leadership
skills and content specific considerations of
mathematics and science to support
colleagues

6. • Teachers must decide “what aspects of
a task to highlight, how to organize and
orchestrate the work of the students,
what questions to ask to challenge
those with varied levels of expertise,
and how to support students without
taking over the process of thinking for
them and thus eliminating the
challenge.”
NCTM, 2000,
p.19

7. • Tasks - complex mathematical tasks that
provoke examination of underlying
mathematical meanings and concepts
• Cases -
– accounts of mathematics instructional
episodes that depict interactions that
occur when a teacher uses a complex
mathematical problem in the
classroom
– samples of student work that reflect
student thinking.

8. • Classroom instruction is generally organized
and orchestrated around mathematical
tasks.
• The tasks with which students engage
determine what mathematics they learn.
• Teachers’ facilitation of tasks determine
how students learn it.
• The inability to enact challenging tasks well
is what distinguished teaching in the U. S.
from teaching in other countries that had
better student performance on TIMSS.

9. • Emerge from the activity of classrooms
• Provide opportunities for teachers to
become involved in critical discussions
of actual teaching situations quot;
(Loucks-Horsley, 1998)
• Promote reexamining our assumptions
about what “understanding
mathematics” really means quot;
(Schifter, Russell, & Bastable, in press)

10. • The candy jar shown contains 5 Jolly
Ranchers (the rectangles) and 13
Jawbreakers (the circles).
Suppose you have an even larger candy jar with the
same ratio of Jolly Ranchers to Jawbreakers as shown in
the candy jar above. If the jar contains 720 candies, how
many of each kind of candy are in the jar?

12. • How do each of these approaches
support students’ understanding of
proportionality?
• Are some representations or approaches
more helpful than others in promoting an
understanding of proportional patterns
and relationships?
• What connections can be made among
the different strategies and
representations?

13. • What do you think are the
mathematical goals of the lesson?
How does the mathematics connect
to the GLECs?
• What inferences can you draw about
students’ understanding or
misunderstanding?
• Identify instructional decisions that
engage students in high level tasks.

14. • To focus attention on a core
challenge in mathematics
classroom instruction:
maintaining high-level cognitive
demand when using complex
mathematics tasks.

15. • LMT items--Proportionality
• Modest increase between pre- and post-test
total scores (27 items)
• Increase between pre-and post-test scores
on 19 of 24 item scores (average increase of
18%)
• No change in scores for 3 items (100% on
pre- and post-test scores)
• Full content of test not appropriate
to PD focus

16. • Broad overview is inquiry-based learning
and developing teacher leaders’
pedagogical content knowledge
• Critical issues in middle grades science
education (based on research and data):
• Student-designed investigation
• Models in Science
• Data Collection and Analysis
• Assessment of understanding
• Content had to vary to address the range
of middle grades content standards

17. • Lessons and samples of student work from
NSF curriculum projects focusing on inquiry-
based learning (LeTUS, IQWST)
• Content targets critical misconceptions for
students and teachers, and is framed by the
PCK focus
• Emphasis on reflection and incorporation of
classroom artifacts of learning from their
own instruction
• PD focuses on one or two content topics,
but products extend to others

18. Student
learning
Method 2 Method 1
Curriculum Teachers Enactment Understanding

20. • Significant (.05) gains in content knowledge
across science topics and on inquiry skills
• 8% increase in content knowledge
assessment (46 to 52 out of 62)
• Very significant increases in perception of
knowledge/skills about science instruction,
and ability to guide other science teachers in
content and inquiry process skill topics
• Item specific increases in content with high
misconception rates and focus on
explanation and use of models

21. • More information about the project is
available on our informational site:
• http://mmstlc.net
• The instructional practices and assessments
discussed or shown in these presentations
are not intended as an endorsement by the
U. S. Department of Education.