:: Conference Agenda

Meeting Agenda – Draft (7 17 08)

Conference activity will occur in plenary and workshop sessions that address important aspects of mathematics curriculum, teaching, assessment, and teacher development at the high school level. All sessions will be designed to provide informative reviews of the case for new directions in high school mathematics and significant opportunities for participants to critique the new ideas and analyze prospects for their implementation.

Thursday Evening, September 25 — The Case for Innovation in High School Mathematics

The opening session will include plenary presentations about the challenges confronting those who seek to prepare high school students well for future work and post-secondary study and to transform innovative ideas into standard practice of schools nationwide. 

5:00 – 7:00 pm   Conference Check-in and Reception with Light Buffet Supper

7:00 – 9:00 pm   Welcome and Conference Keynote Addresses:

Overview of Conference Goals by Sol Garfunkel

Garfunkel is Executive Director of COMAP where he has been active in a series of projects to develop curriculum and professional development materials for high school and collegiate mathematics that emphasize applications of the subject to scientific, technical, business, and everyday problem solving.  He is convener of Math Is More and a member of the conference core planning group.

Keynote Address by David Mumford

Mumford is University Professor in Brown University’s Division of Applied Mathematics.  His research has made fundamental contributions in algebraic geometry, computer vision, pattern theory, and neurobiology.  That work has been recognized by award of the Fields Medal, a MacArthur “genius” grant, the 2008 Wolf Foundation Prize in Mathematics, and numerous other prizes.  In addition to his research contributions, he has developed and taught a Brown course Modeling the World with Mathematics that seeks to bridge the gap between a mathematically literate minority of physical, computer and mathematical scientists, engineers and economists and an alienated majority with a sense that mathematics is abstruse, too hard to use, or just plain “fuzzy”.

Keynote Address by Suzanne Wilson

Wilson is a Professor and Chair of the Michigan State University Department of Teacher Education and Director of the College of Education’s Center for the Scholarship of Teaching. Her work spans several domains, including teacher learning, teacher knowledge, and the connection between educational policy and teachers’ practice. She has conducted research on mathematics teaching and authored the 2003 book California Dreaming:  Reforming Mathematics Education that examines the myths used to explain the failure of reforms, the actual reasons for failure, and the importance of taking multiple perspectives into account when planning and implementing reform.

Friday, September 26 — Critical Issues Forum

The Critical Issues Forum has two overarching objectives:

• To identify curriculum, teaching, and assessment practices that offer greatest promise of improving the high school mathematics learning by all students.

• To formulate strategies for collaborative action by K-12 educators, collegiate mathematicians, curriculum developers and researchers, teacher educators, and leaders of education policy that will lead to implementation of desirable changes in high school mathematics.

The day’s activities will include three breakout sessions focused on content, teaching, and assessment issues and a closing plenary session focused on strategies for collaborative work on innovative research, development, and implementation activities.  Discussions in the breakout and plenary sessions will address specific questions like these: 

1. What curricular and instructional practices enable successful entry to high school study for students with diverse prior learning experiences, achievement, aptitudes, and interests in mathematics?
2. How can high school mathematics effectively prepare students for transition to the diverse challenges of post-secondary study and work? 
3. What are the potential advantages of organizing topics in the high school mathematics curriculum into integrated courses rather than the U. S. tradition of separate years for algebra, geometry, and advanced algebra? 
4. What curriculum materials and teaching methods have proven effective in school settings with large numbers of students from groups that are poorly served by traditional approaches to mathematics and what is appropriate content and teaching for highly talented students? 
5. How do the high-stakes tests for school accountability, college admission, and college placement advance and/or constrain innovation in high school mathematics curricula and teaching?
6. What have the past two decades of curriculum research and development taught us about what works in high school mathematics and what are the most important questions for further study?
7. What is the appropriate role for topics from probability, statistics, and discrete mathematics in the high school curriculum? 
8. How should available calculator and computer technologies be used to enhance mathematics teaching and how does nearly universal access to those tools change curriculum content priorities?  
9. What changes in teacher preparation and professional development are required to support needed innovation in high school mathematics curricula, teaching, and assessment?

7:00 – 8:30 am  Continental breakfast

8:30 – 8:50 am  Overview of Goals and Schedule for the Day by Dan Chazan

Chazan is Director of the University of Maryland Center for Mathematics Education and a member of the faculty in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University.  He is Co-Director of the THEMAT research project investigating challenges in algebra teaching and a principal investigator in the Mid-Atlantic Center for Mathematics Teaching and Learning leading a research group investigating algebra teaching in urban school settings.

9:00 – 10:30 am  Breakout Session 1

The Future of High School Mathematics Curricula

Traditional conceptions of high school mathematics reflected expectations that a relatively small number of students should be prepared for mathematics-intensive collegiate study in physical science or engineering and that most students needed only modest mathematical preparation for the limited demands of work and daily life.  However, the rapid mathematization of work in almost all areas of business, industry, personal decision-making, and the social and life sciences has made the case that all high school students need to learn more and possibly different mathematics than what traditional curricula provide.
 
The question is: ‘What mathematical content will best serve the diverse talents and interests of contemporary high school students?’  The first major breakout session of the Critical Issues Forum will address recent thinking about and experimentation with the content and organization of high school mathematics, including prominent proposals for change in curriculum practice.

Session leaders will be: 

• Karen King, New York University
• Joseph Malkevitch, York College of CUNY
• Mike Shaughnessy, Portand State University
• Dan Teague, North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics

10:30 – 11:00 am   Break

11:00 – 12:30 pm   Breakout Session 2

The Future of High School Mathematics Teaching

Reflecting widespread belief in the proposition that what you learn depends in important ways on how you are taught, the history of mathematics education has included a persistent strand of proposals to change the common paradigm of U. S. mathematics teaching.  Most development projects in the Standards-based era have designed student and teacher curriculum materials to support specific changes in the well-known classroom routine of teacher explanation and demonstration followed by student practice.
  
The second major breakout session of the Critical Issues Forum will focus on recent thinking about and experimentation with alternative approaches to high school mathematics teaching.  Numerous advisory and research reports have expressed a variety of proposals for transformation of standard teaching practice, and those proposals will be analyzed in session discussions.

Session leaders will be:

• Lawrence Clark, University of Maryland
• Bill Haver, Virginia Commonwealth University
• Gary Martin, Auburn University
• Faith Muirhead, Hunter College and MSPinNYC

12:30 – 2:00 pm   Buffet Lunch

2:00 – 3:30 pm  Breakout Session 3

The Future of High School Mathematics Assessment

The best laid plans for transformation of curriculum content and teaching will make little headway in schools unless success of innovations is evaluated using data from assessments that are aligned with the new goals.  Most of the curriculum materials produced by projects in the Standards-based era have included specific proposals for change in traditional strategies for assessing student learning.
  
The third major breakout session of the Critical Issues Forum will focus on new thinking about and experimentation with alternative approaches to assessment in high school mathematics.  Numerous recent advisory and research reports have expressed a variety of proposals for change in assessment practice.

Session leaders will be:

• Jere Confrey, North Carolina State University
• Christine Franklin, University of Georgia
• Bernie Madison, University of Arkansas
• Kathleen Snook, U. S. Military Academy at West Point (retired)

3:30 – 4:00 pm  Break

4:00 – 5:30 pm  Plenary Session on Strategies for Organizing Research, Development, and Policy Action to Support Promising Innovations.

This plenary session will feature presentations by two leaders from the school and collegiate mathematics communities who will analyze, from their perspectives, the actions that are required to develop and implement high priority innovations in high school mathematics.  Their remarks will reflect their experiences in dealing with educational policy and practice issues and the ideas that will have been expressed in the breakout sessions during the day. 

The expert commentators in this session will be Cathy Seeley and David Bressoud.

Seeley is a senior fellow at the Charles A. Dana Center working on state and national policy and improvement efforts in mathematics education. A past-president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, she is a veteran mathematics educator and change facilitator with 35 years of experience at the local, state, and national levels, including teaching mathematics at the middle school and high school levels, working as a K-12 district mathematics supervisor, and serving for eight years as Director of Mathematics for the Texas Education Agency.

Bressoud is DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Macalester College and president-elect of the Mathematical Association of America. An expert in analytic number theory, he is co-author of A Course in Computational Number Theory. He is also the author of Proofs and Confirmations: The Story of the Alternating Sign Matrix Conjecture and A Radical Approach to Real Analysis and is widely recognized for his work in improving secondary and undergraduate mathematics education.  

Saturday (8 am – 2:00 pm) — Showcase of Promising Programs

The third major segment of the meeting will feature presentations and in-depth discussion of the ways that innovative curriculum, instruction, and assessment principles are embodied in materials produced by active curriculum development projects and the evidence about effects of those programs in school trials. 

7:00 – 8:30 am  Continental Breakfast

8:30 – 8:45 am   Overview of Goals and Schedule for the Day by Eric Robinson

Robinson is Professor of Mathematics at Ithaca College. In addition to his mathematical research in topology, he has been active in developing and promoting innovative approaches to mathematics curriculum and teaching at the high school and collegiate levels. Since 1997 he has been Director of the COMPASS Center for dissemination of innovative curriculum ideas and materials.  He is a member of the core planning group for this conference.

9:00 – 10:30 am  Breakout Session 1 will feature presentations by four innovative curriculum projects.  Meeting participants will choose one presentation to attend from among:

Core-Plus Mathematics Project (CPMP)

University of Chicago School Mathematics Project (UCSMP)

MATH Connections:  A Secondary Mathematics Core Curriculum

Mathematics:  Modeling Our World (ARISE)

           
10:30 – 11:00 am   Break

11:00 – 12:30 pm   Breakout Session 2 will feature presentations by three innovative curriculum projects.  Meeting participants will choose one presentation to attend from among:

Interactive Mathematics Project (IMP)

Center for Mathematics Education Project from EDC (CME)

Integrated Mathematics:  An Approach Using Technology (SIMMS IM)

12:30 – 2:00 pm   Buffet Lunch and Closing plenary session Remarks by Steve Rasmussen on Future Prospects for Curriculum Materials

Rasmussen is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Key Curriculum Press, a major publisher of innovative curriculum materials and teaching/learning software like the Geometer’s Sketchpad, Fathom, and Tinkerplots. In 2007 the California Mathematics Council recognized Rasmussen’s contributions to mathematics education with the Walter Denham Memorial Award for Advocacy for Mathematics Education. His remarks at the close of the Future of High School Mathematics conference will address emerging developments in production and delivery of curriculum materials and software tools for teaching and learning.