NSF Award
1050627
This project focuses on three primary objectives, including: establishing effective professional learning communities, developing a long term plan to enhance mathematics teaching K-16, and closing achievement gaps among diverse student populations. The project accomplishes this via two phases involving a needs assessment during the first phase. For the second phase, the five working groups are designing the research project to address the issues identified during phase one, sharing findings, and communicating across working groups. The intellectual merit of this project lies in the comprehensive and ambitious plan to improve mathematics teaching and learning across the K-16 continuum and beyond. The broader impacts of the work are substantial and address the persistent problems of achievement gaps, of training highly-qualified new teachers and supporting in-service teachers, and of providing appropriate and challenging curricula for all students. The Professional Learning Communities that are being created will have an immediate effect on the teaching and learning of mathematics in both the K-12 school systems in Western Massachusetts and the higher education institutions participating in the Partnership as they build connections among teachers and administrators in many districts and college faculty and serve as a model for other regions. The research project in the second phase of the project will have a longer and substantial impact on mathematics education in western Massachusetts and the nation.
