Developing Effective Mathematics Teachers through National Science Foundation Funded Math and Science Partnership Grants

Every year the National Science Foundation (NSF) gathers together leadership teams of funded Math and Science Partnership programs (MSP) at a Learning Network Conference in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the annual conference is to bring together teams of MSP leaders who represent institution higher education (IHE) faculty from STEM disciplines, IHE education faculty, school partners, and project evaluators, to give them an opportunity to learn across projects, and provide opportunities for individual projects to reflect on their progress. For the last two years, 2011 and 2012, we were part of the conference’s organizing committee. During the two‐day conference, project teams were invited to articulate their theories of action for preparing teachers to be effective STEM teachers and to describe in broad strokes or in fine grain detail what was happening within their projects’ professional development opportunities. Projects also had the opportunity to share within a public forum the preliminary, incomplete, or final results emerging from projects’ evaluations or research efforts aiming to determine whether the MSP projects were deepening teachers’ content and pedagogical knowledge, changing teachers’ practices, and, ultimately, positively impacting students’ success

Creating Interdisciplinary Collaborations to Support and Understand Mathematics Teaching and Learning

Teaching mathematics is a complex endeavor and requires a deep understanding of content and pedagogy. Helping teachers learn what they need to know requires the expertise of disciplinary area faculty as well as those with pedagogical expertise. Similarly, understanding the learning of teachers or their students requires complex analyses of messy data by teams of researchers representing differing but complementary perspectives. Cases describing the nature and process of interdisciplinary teaching and research collaborations in mathematics education will be presented and analyzed for lessons learned

ENSURING MATHEMATICAL LEARNING IN RURAL SCHOOLS Investing in Teacher Knowledge

In this research article we share our vision of how to improve student mathematics success in rural districts. Good teaching matters. We have found two recurring features that can support teachers\u27 success in effectively teaching students mathematics: high-quality, longitudinal professional development and professional connections. We partner with rural districts and master teachers to offer local high-quality professional development for mathematics teachers to strengthen their mathematical knowledge for teaching. We have substantial evidence that participation in longitudinal, high-quality professional development significantly increases teachers\u27 mathematical knowledge for teaching, as well as improves their confidence in teaching. Bringing teachers together for professional development helps teachers develop professional connections. Such connections are necessary for teachers to have regular conversations about mathematics teaching and learning with peers. University-district partnerships can provide infrastructure to allow teachers to develop connections with each other, to collectively support each other, and to collaborate in teaching mathematics more effectively. Investing in professional development for rural teachers and supporting professional connections among teachers will help us achieve the common goal of increasing student success in mathematics

Infrastructure Redesign and Instructional Reform in Mathematics: Formal Structure and Teacher Leadership

Designing infrastructures to support instruction remains a challenge in educational reform. This article reports on a study of one school system\u27s efforts to redesign its infrastructure for mathematics instruction by promoting teacher leadership. Using social network and interview data from 12 elementary schools, we explore how the district\u27s infrastructure redesign efforts were internally coherent with and built upon existing infrastructure components. We then explore relations between infrastructure and school practice as captured in the instructional advice- and information-seeking interactions among school staff, finding that teacher leaders emerged as central actors and brokers of advice and information about mathematics within and between schools. Further, changes in school advice and information networks were associated with shifts in teachers\u27 beliefs about and practices in mathematics toward inquiry-oriented approaches consistent with district curriculum. We argue that the district\u27s redesign efforts to support teacher leadership coupled district curriculum and school and classroom practice in mathematics

Infrastructure Redesign and Instructional Reform in Mathematics: Formal Structure and Teacher Leadership

Designing infrastructures to support instruction remains a challenge in educational reform. This article reports on a study of one school system\u27s efforts to redesign its infrastructure for mathematics instruction by promoting teacher leadership. Using social network and interview data from 12 elementary schools, we explore how the district\u27s infrastructure redesign efforts were internally coherent with and built upon existing infrastructure components. We then explore relations between infrastructure and school practice as captured in the instructional advice- and information-seeking interactions among school staff, finding that teacher leaders emerged as central actors and brokers of advice and information about mathematics within and between schools. Further, changes in school advice and information networks were associated with shifts in teachers\u27 beliefs about and practices in mathematics toward inquiry-oriented approaches consistent with district curriculum. We argue that the district\u27s redesign efforts to support teacher leadership coupled district curriculum and school and classroom practice in mathematics

Interrogating two schedules of the AKT inhibitor MK-2206 in patients with advanced solid tumors incorporating novel pharmacodynamic and functional imaging biomarkers.

PURPOSE: Multiple cancers harbor genetic aberrations that impact AKT signaling. MK-2206 is a potent pan-AKT inhibitor with a maximum tolerated dose (MTD) previously established at 60 mg on alternate days (QOD). Due to a long half-life (60-80 hours), a weekly (QW) MK-2206 schedule was pursued to compare intermittent QW and continuous QOD dosing. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Patients with advanced cancers were enrolled in a QW dose-escalation phase I study to investigate the safety and pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic profiles of tumor and platelet-rich plasma (PRP). The QOD MTD of MK-2206 was also assessed in patients with ovarian and castration-resistant prostate cancers and patients with advanced cancers undergoing multiparametric functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies, including dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI, diffusion-weighted imaging, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and intrinsic susceptibility-weighted MRI. RESULTS: A total of 71 patients were enrolled; 38 patients had 60 mg MK-2206 QOD, whereas 33 received MK-2206 at 90, 135, 150, 200, 250, and 300 mg QW. The QW MK-2206 MTD was established at 200 mg following dose-limiting rash at 250 and 300 mg. QW dosing appeared to be similarly tolerated to QOD, with toxicities including rash, gastrointestinal symptoms, fatigue, and hyperglycemia. Significant AKT pathway blockade was observed with both continuous QOD and intermittent QW dosing of MK-2206 in serially obtained tumor and PRP specimens. The functional imaging studies demonstrated that complex multiparametric MRI protocols may be effectively implemented in a phase I trial. CONCLUSIONS: Treatment with MK-2206 safely results in significant AKT pathway blockade in QOD and QW schedules. The intermittent dose of 200 mg QW is currently used in phase II MK-2206 monotherapy and combination studies (NCT00670488).This study was supported by Merck & Co., Inc. The Drug Development Unit of the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research is supported in part by a program grant from Cancer Research U.K. Support was also provided by the Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (to The Institute of Cancer Research), the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre (jointly to the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research), the NIHR Clinical Research Facility (to the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust) and the Cancer Research UK and EPSRC Cancer Imaging Centre. T.A. Yap is the recipient of the 2011 Rebecca and Nathan Milikowsky – PCF Young Investigator Award and is supported by the NIHR. M.O. Leach is an NIHR Senior Investigator.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from AACR at http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2014/09/19/1078-0432.CCR-14-0868