:: RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

:: Mid-Atlantic Center for Mathematics Teaching and Learning   
Since 2000, faculty in the Center for Mathematics Education, in concert with colleagues at the University of Delaware and at the Pennsylvania State University, have developed the Mid-Atlantic Center for Mathematics Teaching and Learning (MAC-MTL) with support from a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). When it was funded, MAC-MTL was one of only two such Centers for the Teaching and Learning funded by NSF; it is now one of only ten such centers in science and mathematics across the country. The original grant supported reexamination of doctoral education in mathematics education and the development of revised programs within and across the three campuses. This grant renewal involves a change in emphasis for the MAC-MTL, supporting related research projects addressing teacher knowledge. There are three central research questions that MAC-MTL is addressing:

• How do pre-service teachers develop mathematical and pedagogical knowledge from content and methods courses and internship experiences?
• How do practicing teachers draw on and continue to develop mathematical and pedagogical knowledge in the course of their professional work?
• What is the relationship between teachers’ mathematical and pedagogical knowledge and student achievement?

Within this research framework, the University of Maryland is working on efforts that address practicing teachers’ use of knowledge during teaching as well as the relationship between teacher knowledge and student achievement.

 :: Case Studies of Algebra I Urban Teachers   
Dr. Daniel Chazan and Dr. Whitney Johnson are conducting research for the case studies project, supported by the MAC-MTL grant. The case studies project seeks to understand how teachers utilize and develop their mathematical knowledge for teaching. In the context of large-size, high poverty urban schools, the researchers seek to understand how teachers of high stakes mathematics courses communicate a sense of purpose to students for engaging with school mathematics. In this context teachers' ability to connect students to critical mathematical ideas is especially challenging. The researchers are interested in how such teachers use their knowledge of data analysis and algebra to teach state mandated Algebra 1 content. This project will result in case studies of up to 12 teachers, as well as studies of their algebra knowledge and statistical knowledge as it is utilized in and developed from instruction.

 :: Quantitative Study of Teacher Knowledge and Student Achievement   
Dr. Patricia Campbell and Dr. Anna Graeber are conducting research for the quantitative study project, which is supported by the MAC-MTL grant. The project will assess the mathematical and pedagogical knowledge of 175 upper elementary and 175 middle school teachers who are in their first 5 years of teaching, spacing data collection over three consecutive school years. In each study year, the researchers will also collect data indicating mathematics achievement by students of the participating teachers. Analysis of the data will allow the researchers to statistically model the effects of teacher knowledge on student achievement, while also considering possible effects of teacher preparation programs and student and school demographic characteristics.

For more detail on MAC-MTL research, see http://www.education.umd.edu/mac-mtl/whatwedo.htm

 :: Connected Mathematics Project      
Dr. James Fey serves as the Co-Principal Investigator on the Connected Mathematics Project (CMP). CMP is a standards-based middle school curriculum that emphasizes investigation of mathematical ideas through collaborative problem solving. The Project is currently in the final year of development, field-testing, and support for implementation of a major revision.

 :: Core-Plus Mathematics Project   
Dr. James Fey serves as the Co-Principal Investigator on the Core-Plus Mathematics Project, an NSF-funded curriculum project. The Core-Plus Mathematics Project is in the fourth year of development, field-testing, and support for implementation of a major revision to this standards-based high school curriculum that emphasizes investigation of mathematical ideas in the context of solving realistic quantitative problems.

 :: High Quality Teaching Study   
Dr. Anna Graeber is a senior researcher on the High-Quality Teaching Study (HQT), which is supported by a grant from the Interagency Education Research Initiative. The HQT is a four-year study of teaching quality that focuses on what teachers do to help struggling 4th and 5th grade students succeed in reading and mathematics, as well as how various education policies and organizational factors influence the ability of teachers to scale up and sustain effective pedagogy over time.

 :: Mathematics Specialists in K-5 Schools   
Dr. Patricia Campbell serves as Co-Principal Investigator of an NSF-funded program examining the impact of elementary mathematics specialists in cooperating schools in Virginia. Investigators at the University of Maryland are responsible for the research component associated with the program, investigating the program’s effectiveness in terms of teacher change and student achievement in mathematics.

 :: Thought Experiments in Mathematics Teaching   
Dr. Daniel Chazan and Dr. Patricio Herbst of the University of Michigan serve as the Principal Investigators for the Thought Experiments in Mathematics Teaching project. This five-year NSF-funded research project, awarded in May 2004, proposes four linked studies focused on secondary mathematics teachers of algebra and geometry. The researchers seek to understand how the practice of secondary mathematics teaching shapes teachers' actions and ways of conceiving their role as they meet subject-specific goals of the teaching of algebra and geometry. The project pushes theoretical discussions about teaching into refined, situated ways of understanding action in context. And, it seeks to develop innovations in techniques for the study of mathematics teaching by allowing the building of empirically based models of teachers' implicit thinking in action and about action. A central aspect of the study is the development of animations and comic strips of real and possible episodes of algebra and geometry teaching. These animations and comic strips will be used in study groups and summer academies as a research tool to elicit how teachers think about teaching.

 :: Examining the Statistical Understanding of Pre-service Teachers   
Dr. Aisling Leavy is involved in several projects investigating the development of pre-service teachers’ understandings of distribution as expressed in the measures and representations used to communicate aspects of a given distribution. Other work, in conjunction with Dr. Lisa Boté, examines the strategies used by pre-service elementary teachers to describe and index distributions of data and investigates the influence of representational form on the nature of representative values constructed.

Please see the Doctoral Students page for information about the research activities of doctoral and postdoctoral students in the Center for Mathematics Education.

Please see the Theses and Dissertations page for links to the papers of former Master’s and Doctoral students in the Center for Mathematics Education that are available in the University of Maryland’s DRUM database.