Teacher Development and Seventh Graders’ Achievement on Representing and Solving Equations

We analyze the impact of a teacher development program based on a functions approach to algebra on 7th graders understanding of equations and examine how students’ score gains during the academic year relate to their teachers’ initial level of mathematical knowledge of algebra, functions, and graphs. Students from participating teachers’ and their control peers completed a mathematics assessment at the start and at the end of the school year the teachers were taking the program. We determined teachers’ initial levels of mathematics knowledge through a written assessment given at the start of the program. Although both groups of students improved from the start to the end of the school year, the students from participating teachers showed significantly greater improvement. Moreover, among control students’, improvement in creating, solving, and interpreting equations was positively correlated with their teachers’ initial levels of mathematical knowledge. Improvement among students of cohort teachers in the same items was high regardless of their teachers’ initial performance in the assessment, with students of teachers in the low level group showing the highest gains

Examining the Characteristics of High Schools in Which Black Students Achieve in Mathematics

Black students’ performance in mathematics on standardized examinations compared to White students is dismal; however, previous research has shown that there are highly effective high schools for Black students as defined by high levels of mathematics performance. Underachievement in upper-level high-school mathematics courses is a barrier for Black students’ access to many postsecondary education opportunities and contributes to an underrepresentation of Black students in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics college majors and related careers. This dissertation examines the multilevel characteristics (student, teacher, department, and school factors) of high school mathematics programs as measured by Black students’ performance on standardized tests in 12th grade. The data for this study were taken from the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) of 2002 from the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education. Results indicated that the 12th grade achievement in mathematics of Black students is positively related to prior mathematics achievement, family SES, and the interaction between the teaching practices of mathematics teachers and students’ collective sense of safety. A surprising interaction effect indicated that in schools where there is collective sense about lack of safety and where students report low-quality mathematics teaching practices, Blacks are more likely to exhibit high student-achievement in mathematics than schools where the collective sense about safety is mixed (or where it is high) or where there is student consensus of good quality teaching practices

Evaluating mathematics teachers' professional development motivations and needs

While there is widespread agreement that one-size-fits-all professional development (PD) initiatives have limited potential to foster teacher learning, much existing PD is still designed without attention to teachers’ motivations and needs. This paper shows that the strengths and weaknesses of middle school mathematics teachers that engage in PD may significantly vary. We present three representative cases that illustrate this diversity. The cases were selected from a cohort of 54 grades 5-9 mathematics teachers in the northeastern United States. The results show that: 1) these three teachers dramatically differed in their motivations and self-perceived needs regarding mathematical content, classroom instruction, and student thinking; 2) their perceptions were closely aligned with the results of our own assessments; and 3) the motivations and needs of these three teachers reflected the general trends identified in the cohort of 54 teachers. We conclude that “giving teachers voice” is essential when designing and implementing PD