Steve Best University of Michigan

Judith Flowers University of Michigan-Dearborn

•  Introduction and Background •  Goals / Program for Teachers Leaders •  Instructional Focus and Resources for

Mathematics – Tasks, Cases, and Analysis of work – Findings

•  Instructional Focus and Resources for Science – Addressing PCK and Leadership – Findings

•  Focus on developing teacher leaders in high needs schools

•  Partnerships with local Math/Science Centers and STEM Faculty

•  Incorporates building/district administrators in PD and team planning

•  Centralized PD from Collaborative plus release time for localized and personal PD and implementation of support for colleagues

•  Develops capacity to support teachers locally

4 4

Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative

High Needs Schools

Throughout Michigan

Focus on Middle Grades to Address Greatest Problems

and Allow for Adaptation

Cadre 1 8 teams, 55 participants

12 teams, 96 participants

Cadre 2

•  Make participants aware of leadership roles for instructional support and policy

•  Focus on partnerships and networking to enhance learning across the state

•  Requires development of general leadership skills and content specific considerations of mathematics and science to support colleagues

•  Teachers must decide “what aspects of a task to highlight, how to organize and orchestrate the work of the students, what questions to ask to challenge those with varied levels of expertise, and how to support students without taking over the process of thinking for them and thus eliminating the challenge.” NCTM, 2000,

p.19

•  Tasks - complex mathematical tasks that provoke examination of underlying mathematical meanings and concepts

•  Cases - – accounts of mathematics instructional

episodes that depict interactions that occur when a teacher uses a complex mathematical problem in the classroom

– samples of student work that reflect student thinking.

•  Classroom instruction is generally organized and orchestrated around mathematical tasks.

•  The tasks with which students engage determine what mathematics they learn.

•  Teachers’ facilitation of tasks determine how students learn it.

•  The inability to enact challenging tasks well is what distinguished teaching in the U. S. from teaching in other countries that had better student performance on TIMSS.

•  Emerge from the activity of classrooms •  Provide opportunities for teachers to

become involved in critical discussions of actual teaching situations "(Loucks-Horsley, 1998)

•  Promote reexamining our assumptions about what “understanding mathematics” really means "(Schifter, Russell, & Bastable, in press)

•  The candy jar shown contains 5 Jolly Ranchers (the rectangles) and 13

Jawbreakers (the circles).

Suppose you have an even larger candy jar with the same ratio of Jolly Ranchers to Jawbreakers as shown in the candy jar above. If the jar contains 720 candies, how many of each kind of candy are in the jar?

•  How do each of these approaches support students’ understanding of proportionality?

•  Are some representations or approaches more helpful than others in promoting an understanding of proportional patterns and relationships?

•  What connections can be made among the different strategies and representations?

•  What do you think are the mathematical goals of the lesson? How does the mathematics connect to the GLECs?

•  What inferences can you draw about students’ understanding or misunderstanding?

•  Identify instructional decisions that engage students in high level tasks.

• To focus attention on a core challenge in mathematics classroom instruction: maintaining high-level cognitive demand when using complex mathematics tasks.

•  LMT items--Proportionality • Modest increase between pre- and post-test

total scores (27 items) •  Increase between pre-and post-test scores

on 19 of 24 item scores (average increase of 18%) • No change in scores for 3 items (100% on

pre- and post-test scores)

•  Full content of test not appropriate to PD focus

•  Broad overview is inquiry-based learning and developing teacher leaders’ pedagogical content knowledge

•  Critical issues in middle grades science education (based on research and data): •  Student-designed investigation •  Models in Science •  Data Collection and Analysis •  Assessment of understanding

•  Content had to vary to address the range of middle grades content standards

•  Lessons and samples of student work from NSF curriculum projects focusing on inquiry-based learning (LeTUS, IQWST)

•  Content targets critical misconceptions for students and teachers, and is framed by the PCK focus

•  Emphasis on reflection and incorporation of classroom artifacts of learning from their own instruction

•  PD focuses on one or two content topics, but products extend to others

Student learning

Curriculum Teachers Enactment Understanding

Method 2 Method 1

•  Significant (.05) gains in content knowledge across science topics and on inquiry skills

•  8% increase in content knowledge assessment (46 to 52 out of 62)

•  Very significant increases in perception of knowledge/skills about science instruction, and ability to guide other science teachers in content and inquiry process skill topics

•  Item specific increases in content with high misconception rates and focus on explanation and use of models

•  More information about the project is available on our informational site: •  http://mmstlc.net

•  The instructional practices and assessments discussed or shown in these presentations are not intended as an endorsement by the U. S. Department of Education.