GATEways 2013

Teaching Singapore Math: Evaluating Measures to Effectively Teach and Implement a New Mathematics Curriculum in 21 Elementary Schools

This study evaluates teach-ers’ fidelity of implement-ing the Singapore Math curriculum in 21 U.S. ele-mentary schools. Teachers’ perceptions and classroom practices are analyzed through multiple measures and fidelity is assessed

through O’Donnell’s (2008) conceptual frame-work. Findings compare data collected over two years to gauge differences in teaching practices, teacher and student atti-tudes, student achievement results, and discrepancies

between teachers’ stated claims of curriculum im-plementation and observed practices. The results consider teachers’ and administrators’ initiatives that positively impact the implementation of a new mathematics curriculum.

Don’t miss the back cover!

Special points of interest:

GATEways article submission requests

GATE 2013 Conference information

What are our “Scripts”? 2

Lesson Study in Elementary Social Studies Methods 16

Teaching Singapore Math 23

Inside this issue:

GA

TE

wa

ys t

o T

ea

che

r E

du

cati

on

GE

OR

GI

A A

SS

OC

IA

TI

ON

OF

TE

AC

HE

R E

DU

CA

TO

RS

Volume 14, Issue 1

October 2013 What are our “Scripts”? Examining the Narratives of Two Social Justice Teacher Educators This article examines the brief autobiographical narratives of two social justice teacher educators. The authors argue that teacher educators need to examine their own journeys toward social justice education in order to better

understand how to invite preservice teachers into social justice education. The examination of their narratives highlights the importance of having conversations with other teacher educators about how their own lives shaped

their social justice pedagogy. In addition, both authors find that sharing autobiographical experiences can help teach-er educators determine how to “share the space” of social justice education in meaningful ways.

Lesson Study in Elementary Social Studies Methods

This article reports on the use of lesson study with pre-service elementary social studies students. The Japanese art of lesson study involves a collabora-tive planning process requiring participants to plan and implement a lesson focused on a particular goal or objective. Working in groups, pre-

service teachers planned, adapted, researched, taught, and revised the same lesson in their different teaching contexts. For this initial exploration the focus was on how pre-service elementary majors would attend to the lesson study process and what benefits and challenges were as-sociated with the project.

Findings reveal students’ willingness to collaborate and revise lessons taught in the field, as well as their appreciation for the op-portunity to do so. The lesson study activity also highlights the connection between the research methods course / theoreti-cal foundation and the field.

GATEways to Teacher Education

A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators

VOLUME 14, ISSUE 1 PAGE 2

What are our “Scripts”? Examining the Autobiographical Narratives of two Social Justice Teacher Educators

Darling-Hammond and Garcia-Lopez (2002) stated, “Dealing with diversity is one of the central challenges of 21st century education” (p. 9). Teacher education programs continue to face the challenge of improving the preparation of teachers for diversity (McDonald, 2005), but over the last decade, the term “social justice” has become a popular catch phrase in addressing this concern (Cochran-Smith, Gleeson, & Mitchell, 2010). Although some critics argue that the concept is under-theorized (McDonald & Zeichner, 2009), others suggest that programs with a coherent focus in multicultural education and social justice would improve teacher candidates’ abilities to work with diverse students (Darling-Hammond, French, & Garcia-Lopez, 2002; Nieto, 2000; Villegas & Lucas, 2002).

Teaching social justice concepts in preservice education programs is, therefore, a critical responsibility teacher educators must address to ensure future teachers have the tools necessary to not only teach all students in equitable ways, but also be activists for their students (Marshall & Klein, 2009). Teacher educators must prepare preservice teachers who are aware of and ready to challenge the sociopolitical context within the field of education (Cochran-Smith, 2004). Teaching as a “political act” requires preservice teachers who

are willing to advocate for all of their students and weave social justice into the daily curricula (Katsarou, Picower, & Stovall, 2010).

Research suggests that certain factors such as dispositions, self-reflection, and prior experiences may affect preservice teachers’ attitudes and beliefs toward social justice issues (Garmon, 2005; Mills & Ballantyne, 2010). Social justice research in the field of teacher education tends to focus on the preservice teacher, yet social justice education occurs within a specific context that is also affected by the prior experiences, culture, gender, and theoretical orientations of the teacher educators. In any educational setting, the curriculum includes much more than the texts, standards, and lesson plans—the “curriculum” also encompasses the lived experiences, race, cultures, and so forth of each participant within the educational setting (Castenelle & Pinar, 1993; Henderson & Kesson, 2004; Pinar, 2004). According to Henderson and Kesson (2004), “The curriculum, in all its complexity, is the culture. Embedded in it are our values, our beliefs about human nature, our visions of the good life, and our hopes for the future” (pp. 206-207). The enacted curriculum in courses for preservice teachers is therefore heavily influenced by the culture, beliefs, and lived experiences of the teacher educators. Though

Maria Shaheen and Charlease Kelly-Jackson, Kennesaw State University




extensive research exists examining social justice with preservice and inservice teachers, few studies have autobiographically examined social justice from the viewpoint of the teacher educators. Using narrative methodology, this paper examines the autobiographical journeys of two social justice teacher educators.

Conceptual Framework Critical sociocultural theory (Engeström &

Miettinen, 1999; Giroux, 1988; Giroux & Mclaren, 1996) informed this study. Critical pedagogy in teacher education is imperative in preparing preservice teachers to be agents of change in a democratic society. Critical theorists suggest that education should be examined through a broad lens—taking into account the ways culture, politics, and power shape the lives of both educators and students (Brookfield, 2005; Giroux, 2004). In teacher education, critical theory plays an important role in helping preservice teachers examine their stereotypes and assumptions regarding minority students, English language learners, and other student populations that might be different from them (Bartolome, 2004). Teacher educators must also critically examine their own biases and assumptions related to culture in order to be effective social justice educators (Ukpokodu, 2007).

Narrative Research Methodology We, the authors of this narrative, support

Palmer’s notion that “we teach who we are” (Palmer, 2007) and as we worked with the preservice teachers in social justice courses, we realized that our personal life narratives became interwoven within the course curricula. Narrative has played an important role in educational research due to the focus on rich, complex views of educators’ lives within multiple contexts (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006; Elbaz-Luwisch, 2005; Florio-Ruane, 2001; Jalongo & Isenberg, 1995). Ritchie and Wilson (2000) noted that there are multiple ideologies

that “script” who teachers are (narratives from the media, personal narratives, societal narratives, etc.). Ritchie and Wilson (2000) stated:

The development of a professional identity is inextricable from personal identity and . . . when personal and professional development are brought into dialogue, when teachers are given opportunity to compose and reflect on their own stories of learning and of selfhood within a supportive and challenging community, then teachers can begin to resist and revise the scripting narratives of the culture and begin to compose new narratives of identity and practice. (p. 1)

Since knowledge, culture, and identity are all intertwined to create teachers’ multiple identities (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999; Schaafsma & Vinz, 2011), narrative can be a helpful tool for helping all educators examine their personal and professional “scripts” through a critical lens. Giroux (2004) discussed the importance of examining culture in educational theory and practice and stated, “Culture now plays a central role in producing narratives, metaphors, and images that exercise a powerful pedagogical force over how people think of themselves and their relationship to others” (p. 62).

Though social justice teacher educators may all share the same teaching “space” at the university level, they likely traveled varied paths to arrive in this shared space. Pinar’s method of currere (1975) allows teacher educators to engage in the complex self-examination of autobiography while still considering the past, present, and future simultaneously. These brief narratives are part of much larger autobiographical narratives. To guide our autobiographical narratives, we asked ourselves to examine how our current social justice “scripts” were informed by our past life experience. For the purposes of this paper, we each answered four questions. First, what




experiences in our lives led us to social justice education? Next, how did those life experience frame “who we are” as social justice educators? Third, what is our current role within social justice education and how do we define it? Finally, to what extent do our past experiences affect how we envision and approach social justice education?

Course Context and Participants This narrative began as part of a larger

study that involved 4 methods course professors and 14 preservice teachers (1 male and 13 females). One of the course objectives/goals was to develop social-justice-oriented citizens who are able to actively participate in and contribute to a democratic society. Activities in each course were designed to engage students in discourse about various social issues that may appear in the classroom and to share and recognize students’ feelings, attitudes, and prejudices.

This reflective narrative involves two participants: Dr. Charlease Kelly-Jackson, an African American female Assistant Professor of science education who was raised and educated in the southeastern United States, and Dr. Maria Shaheen, an Assistant Professor of literacy and reading—a white female raised in the northeastern United States. Both were non-tenure track faculty who had previous teaching experience. Despite their drastically different life journeys, both participants ended up teaching in a social justice cohort, by choice, at a southeastern university. Darling-Hammond (2002) discussed the importance of “crossing boundaries” to increase our understanding of others and create a stronger common ground. The following narratives aim to cross boundaries as each professor shares her personal journey toward social justice education. The following two autobiographical narratives briefly outline how each participant ended up teaching social justice courses at the university level.

Narratives

The Science Professor It was not until I was in my graduate

program that I truly began to understand how influential my lived experiences were to my journey toward social justice. As I reflect on my teaching, I notice that I tend to tailor my instruction toward socioeconomic status, race, and gender issues, for these topics are truly ones to which I can relate and base my social justice foundation.

I was raised in rural South Carolina in a small town approximately 20 miles from the nearest hospital and grocery store. My parents, neither of whom graduated from high school, raised me and my four brothers in a single-wide mobile home on minimum wages. Our home did not have central heat and air; kerosene heaters provided warmth while plastic covered our windows to shield some of the cold wind. During the warmer months, screen doors, open windows, and fans allowed the breeze to circulate inside our home. When it rained, we used bowls and pots to catch the water. The various holes in our home’s floors and walls made rodents and roaches common pests. Even though we did not have name brand clothing, a home phone, or a nice car, I did not realize we were “poor” until fifth grade when one of my white classmates informed me. She mentioned that everyone who did not pay for lunch was poor. I did not feel embarrassed because many of my African American classmates were “poor” too, but I must admit I felt more confident when I got “reduced” lunch status in middle school.

I attended the same predominately white public school as my father. Because we lived on a dirt road approximately 20 miles from the school, we had to board the bus around 6:30 each morning. The school was in the middle of a racially segregated town. I remember some of the stories my father told about his schooling experience in the 1960s and how similar the




experiences were in the 1980s. The town had an underlying agenda to keep racial segregation alive and the town’s active organization of Klu Klux Klan (KKK) helped in that regard.

The majority of my teachers were white females who lived in or near the school’s town. It was obvious that they were passionate about teaching, but also evident were their prejudices toward African American students—males in particular. It was not until middle/high school that I began recognizing and reacting to the racial comments and/or actions from some of my peers and teachers. Although these comments/actions were reported, most times they were excused without any disciplinary actions. On the contrary, African American students received more severe punishments for the same offenses. I never understood this and knew that it was not fair, but as a child I was taught to never question an adult, especially a teacher or school administrator. What I found even more disturbing was my parents and other African American parents’ acceptance of this type of treatment toward their children.

Although my mother was from the North and my father was raised in the South, they both had similar attitudes toward whites. They displayed a sense of inferiority when it came to school administrators and teachers. My parents, as well as other parents, would simply accept the punishment and never challenge the actions of the teachers or administrators. I recall asking my parents to question the disciplinary actions given to my eldest brother, but neither felt it would be in their best interest to challenge school authorities. They would say things like “don’t worry about it” or “just let it go” and drop the issue like it never existed. Even though this type of situation never happened to me, I did see this type of behavior several times with my brothers and other African American students, and it really shaped my attitude toward whites.

Not only were racial inequalities present in the school, it was overwhelmingly visible in the

town. The KKK members would have parades down Main Street on Saturday mornings. Although I never witnessed these parades, I would hear from my peers that they were not allowed to go downtown because of them. There were rumors that a few of our teachers’ husbands and some of our white male peers were members of the Klan. Stories about the KKK hanging African American males really frightened me, but I was more afraid for my four brothers. Interracial dating was frowned upon in the town and school, but that did not stop my brothers or many of my peers from sneaking around. I did not want to believe all the stories, but in the back of my mind, I always wondered if there was some truth to them. Consequently, my feelings of fear grew into feelings of hatred, especially toward adult white males. I was not fearful nor did I feel threatened by white females, but I did believe most of them felt superior to African Americans. I was embarrassed by my feelings and only revealed them to family members and close friends, and I was not surprised that many of them shared similar feelings. I remember my mother explaining to me on several occasions that being angry about racial inequalities was not going to get me anywhere and to use my education to make a difference. Unlike my African American peers who openly expressed their feelings, sometimes in combative ways, I chose to suppress mine and use the way I felt as a motivational tool. I did not allow my inner feelings to negatively affect me academically; instead, I used my academic success to show “them” that African Americans had the same capability to succeed. As a result, I graduated in the top 10% of my class and felt that I made a difference even though I could not see it in the big scheme of things. Being educated in a school where racial inequalities existed, the presence of African Americans was absent from the literature, and the majority of my teachers and peers was white, I decided to attend an




Historically Black College and University (HBCU) for my college experience.

I chose to attend a private four-year liberal arts institution in the southeastern United States where I majored in Biology with a minor in Chemistry. I felt that attending an HBCU would give me the foundation I needed to be a more confident African American female.

I grew up in a house where it was the woman’s role to take care of the family and the household duties while the man of the house provided financially. Women were to be seen and not heard. As the only girl of four siblings, I played the part for many years.

Having the liberal arts experience in college gave me a new outlook on life; I began to let my voice be heard. Taking classes like African American Heritage and Honors Leadership helped me to understand how and why some of the racial inequalities I observed in middle and high school flourished and persisted throughout the years. These courses also allowed me to see women in a more dominating role. Being an African American woman pursuing a degree in one of the sciences, a field where there were few women during this time, was very liberating and powerful.

Several of my professors were “anti-white,” but the majority of them taught me how to recognize and appreciate history and use it as a springboard to make my future brighter than my past or lived experiences. It was not until the end of my sophomore year that I realized I could no longer allow hatred or my past experiences with racial inequalities to keep me from appreciating the beauty in all races and cultures. Nor could I allow it to hinder me from excelling in a male-dominant field. My undergraduate experience really changed my life and I credit it for shaping me into the woman, educator, and social justice activist I am today.

Social justice influences Social justice . . . I had no clue that many

of the inequalities I experienced fell under the umbrella of social justice. I was introduced to the term social justice as a first-year doctoral student at a major research one university in the southeastern United States. Graduate courses like Race, Class and Gender and Social Class and Diversity completely disrupted my way of thinking. My undergraduate liberal arts courses had only wet the surface, but after reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Freire and works by Ladson-Billings (2000); Darling-Hammond, French, and Garcia-Lopez (2002); Nieto (2000); Villegas and Lucas (2002), I was even more motivated to make a difference, to let my voice be heard. As I began preparing future educators, I used my lived experiences to guide my instruction. I reflected on my past experiences and shared them without embarrassment or reservation. I realized that my experiences shaped who I was, but I was more grateful that they changed me.

I viewed social justice as an idea of creating a society that was based on fairness, honesty, and impartiality—equal rights for all individuals. I knew that not all would embrace or accept this as their way of thinking, but I felt it was my responsibility as an educator to be the change agent who would at least open their minds. My approach was that if I could just touch a few along the way, my teaching would not be in vain.

During my first year at Kennesaw State University, I was able to collaborate with several professors whose research focused on social justice issues. A mathematics education faculty member in the department proposed establishing a cohort with social justice as the backdrop for each methods course (mathematics, reading and literacy, social studies and science). I immediately jumped at the opportunity and began planning with three professors for the spring semester.




As the semester approached, I was extremely excited to be a member of the team, but I was even more anxious to share my experiences and illustrate ways social justice could be integrated into the science curriculum. The issues on which I planned to focus included poverty, race, gender, healthcare, sexual identity, and issues of environmental equity. As a team, we agreed that assignments such as individual lesson plans, pre- and post-teaching philosophy statements, and an integrated unit would be powerful artifacts to collect and document students’ understanding and application of social justice issues.

Although all the students were white, several had diverse cultural backgrounds. Immediately, I knew the semester was going to be productive and filled with interesting stories that connected several of the social justice topics I proposed in the syllabus. The first two weeks were what I expected; students were engaged in the “getting to know your students” activity. We talked about the cultural iceberg theory and how many of the values that shape who we are were the ones not seen directly. Students shared their feelings about creating a classroom for equity and social justice. It appeared that the majority of the class were on the same page as me, and so I began delving into more sensitive topics like race, poverty, sexual identity, health care, and gender issues.

That was when I noticed a transformation in the students’ attitudes. I would provide the class with a scenario that tied in a social justice topic, and students would give me limited feedback or none at all. Many used the excuse that the class they were assigned was not diverse, so the topic did not apply to them. Others would talk about their cooperating teacher or how social justice did not fit into the topic they were assigned for their five-day unit plan. One female student made a joke about the sexual identity of one of her male students and commented how her cooperating teacher

repeatedly joked about the male student in front of her. I attempted to address those comments but did not get serious responses.

I assigned social justice articles to help guide my instruction, but if it was not read in class, the students did not read it on their own. This lack of cooperation began to create some frustration in me. I was tired of all the complaining and lack of serious engagement and discourse during class. I could not understand why the majority of the students found excuses not to read the assigned articles, chose not to actively participate in class discussions, or did not take the social justice topics seriously.

Students began to complain to other faculty about the social justice cohort of courses. They were frustrated about the final project (integrated unit plan) and how it did not directly apply to their last five weeks in the field. Concerns ranged from the final assignment’s rubric to the length of time it would take to complete the assignment. I had attempted, during the first few weeks, to ease the tension on several occasions—allowing the students to provide input on the scoring rubric, revising and making the rubric accessible, and having an open forum with the other professors. These actions helped on a small scale, but the attitudes continued the entire 10 weeks.

By week six of the semester, I gave up teaching with a social justice framework. I simply focused on the methods of teaching science in an elementary setting and provided an extensive amount of time assisting students with their social justice unit plan project. I did not include any additional social justice articles, videos, or case studies into my instruction. I am not sure if the students could sense my frustration, but I was completely fed up with the group. Although we met weekly/bi-weekly to discuss topics and share articles, it was not until the last week of classes that I shared my concerns with two of my colleagues in the cohort. To my surprise, the mathematics




professor had a similar experience but the reading/literacy professor did not. We wondered if it was because the mathematics professor and I were new faculty members or if it was because we were women of color (Latino and African American). This was a question we pondered as the semester came to an end.

As I reflect on the semester, I am disappointed in myself for giving up on those students. It was definitely not my intention, but I was concerned about my reputation as an educator and new faculty member. I questioned how my course evaluations would look and how it would impact me in the tenure and promotion process. I even wondered if I was the “right” person to be teaching social justice especially to an audience who did not look like me or share any of the experiences with me. I questioned my preparation, teaching strategies, approach, and even my role as a social justice educator.

I believe my role as a social justice educator is to be a facilitator of learning and an agent for societal change that reflects equity over the spectrum. Initially, I felt that I failed and should rethink my position as one who teaches with a social justice backdrop. However, after attending a campus workshop with university faculty interested in social justice, I am once again convinced and motivated to stay in the game. I MUST press on; I must continue fighting for a democratic society whose principles are grounded in social justice and equity. As a new faculty, social justice educator, and African American woman, I plan to share my experience and seek ways to stay in the fight.

The Literacy Professor My journey toward social justice education

proves that higher education can be a powerful influence that can counteract prior experiences and change how a person thinks. As a social justice educator, I have often reflected upon my life to try to pinpoint that “one moment” in my

life that brought me to this point in time. I have yet to find a single, defining moment. Instead, I have highlighted many experiences in my past that have allowed me to embrace social justice ideals. My conflicted childhood and specific personal experiences are a few of those I discuss here.

My childhood was the antithesis of what social justice represents. I was raised in the northern United States in a rural, segregated (all white) farm community. My childhood was conflicted in many ways. First, my parents rarely agreed on anything and I was therefore able to hear multiple perspectives on all topics, including race. My father, a working-class laborer for the steel mill, had been exposed to minority violence throughout his life. As a child, his parents owned a small store in the inner-city and many violent incidents occurred in the store and around the area, all allegedly involving African Americans. In one such incident, my father was shot in the arm by an African-American man attempting to steal his car. Instead of placing these crimes in the context of the inner-city, my father blamed the entire African American race and often had negative comments about all members of the race. Conversely, my mother wanted to take a more “Christian stance” and often scolded my father for saying racial slurs in front of her children. As a result of my father’s stories, I feared African American males as a child. My father was also brought up in a sexist household where women had specific duties and he extended this sexism to our home. In his eyes, women were the homemakers and I therefore had to do all the “indoor chores” while my brothers relaxed and played games. As a child, I vividly remember being extremely upset that I had to do extra work simply because I was a female. I wanted equality and fairness, but because I was female I was not entitled.

Second, though we were raised mostly working-class, our family income fluctuated




over the years. When the steel mills closed, my father lost his job and had to get government assistance. Living in the country, we were able to grow our own produce and already were used to hand-me-downs and being frugal, so I would not really have noticed the lack of income had it not been for a few specific negative experiences. For example, I vividly remember standing at the grocery store checkout with my mother holding her food stamps while a Caucasian lady scolded her for choosing foods she did not feel we “deserved” because “she was paying for it” (meaning her taxes were paying for our food stamps). I remember how humiliated my mother was and how sad I felt, even though I really had no idea at the time what exactly had transpired. I also remember having to get the “special” government-issued cheese, milk, and so forth, and though they tasted terrible, my parents forced me to eat them unless I “wanted to starve.” As I got older, having to get clothing from the thrift shop while peers wore designer clothing was an embarrassment. Finally, we were raised in the Catholic faith and I was required to go to Sunday school. I was very literal as a child and when the Nuns said, “God loves all His people,” I certainly believed that meant all people. I remember being puzzled about that and asking my father how black people could be “bad” if God loved everyone. He did not have an answer.

In sum, as a child I grew up with zero actual interaction with people who were different from myself. I had to rely on others (my family, school, and Sunday school) for knowledge about the world. The information I did receive was either very homogenized or conflicting. Being a naturally inquisitive person, those contradictions always stuck with me and became the catalyst that later allowed me to embrace social justice concepts as an adult.

During my teen years, we eventually moved to a more suburban area where I was exposed to more races and cultures. I had

classes with African Americans for the first time in 9th grade, though there were still fewer than five in my entire graduating class, and my older brother began coming home with friends of other races (when my father was not home). In addition, my oldest brother became engaged to a wonderful girl who happened to be biracial (Caucasian and Latina). I learned quickly that none of these people were “bad” or were anyone to be afraid of (as my father had taught me). Though these experiences were important parts of my journey, college is truly what opened the door to a new way of thinking.

My parents never went to college and their career ladders were limited. They therefore never had money to send me to college and the only way I was going to get there was to join the military. In the U.S. Army, I met people from all over the country and world, and many of the people I trained with daily were minorities. We had to act as a team to accomplish our missions and we had to treat everyone with respect. Every one of my drill sergeants was an African American and I had the utmost respect for many of them because of their passion for their recruits. Though this was a great experience, it still did not “teach” me anything about the way the world worked or why inequality seemed impossible to overcome, but the university setting would soon accomplish this. As an undergraduate, I took an elective that ignited the beginning of my social justice career: Gender Studies. As I sat in the course learning about feminism and issues involving women’s rights, I thought about the sexism in my childhood. I could not read the textbooks fast enough. I was enlightened and absolutely on fire . . . ready to conquer the world! I talked to the professor and she recommended some additional courses in the Pan-African Studies department so I started with a course titled Black Experience I. Though the gender studies course had ignited the critical theorist within, it was this that interested me in social justice education.




Social justice influences In my Black Experience I course, I was the

only white person in the class and I was clearly unwelcome. Many of the students made negative comments toward me in each class session, often calling me names like “Cracker” or “Whitebread,” but luckily the professor was extremely supportive of being inclusive. I briefly felt what it was like to be surrounded by people who were unlike myself, and it was uncomfortable but also a valuable learning experience for me. It was the first time in my life I had ever been forced to think of my whiteness and the heavy historical burden that was placed upon my shoulders for being part of the culture of power. I learned a lot about American history that had never been taught in my homogenized, all-white schools and I distinctly remember angrily asking the professor one day, “Why didn’t they ever teach this version of history in school?” He simply laughed and turned the question back onto the class, asking us “Why do you think you were never taught this information in school?” I was angered that my supposed “education” had ignored so many important stories involving people of color throughout history. Why had I never been taught about Medgar Evars, Malcolm X, the Tuskeegee Airmen, Emmitt Till, and many others? Who decided that these people were not important enough for me to learn about? Who made the decision that the only people I would ever hear about in my K-12 schooling would be Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. (and even then, only for one day in February)? I wanted answers, so I went on to take Black Experience II, Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies, and many other workshops and courses about multicultural education and other critical social issues. This is where my truly budding critical theorist began to emerge and I finally felt like I was beginning to shed the chains of ignorance that had bound me so tightly during my childhood. Yet, it was not until my

graduate (MEd and PhD) work that I really began to see how society plays a larger role in institutionalizing social status and racism in our country. These courses ignited a passion for social justice education because I wanted to ensure that when I was a teacher, I taught from a critical lens. I wanted to ensure that all children were able to not only learn content from multiple perspectives but also learn that they should be critical of everything they read and hear.

I attended graduate school at Kent State University, and the education program I attended had a very strong social justice emphasis. The professors were firmly committed to social justice education and the majority of our education courses wove in social justice concepts. During my master’s program, I did several pilot studies examining race and the perceptions of teachers who worked with a majority of low-income, minority students. I was shocked to hear African American teachers and Caucasian teachers alike calling their young preschool students “animals” and referring to them as “strippers” and “future drug dealers.” I was particularly shocked when a high-level administrator (who happened to also be a minority) of a chain of preschools serving low-income students commented that “these kids” could not do much of anything.

In my doctoral program, many of the readings helped me understand the past events in my life as well as the current realities of racism in the United States. It would be impossible to list all of the influential readings in this short narrative, so I mention only a select few here. Many works such as those by Ladson-Billings (1997) helped frame the political, social, and economic factors that contribute to the educational inequalities that exist for minorities. Lisa Delpit’s (1995) work addressed the culture of power and caused me to reflect upon the fact that white teachers needed to carefully examine our pedagogy to ensure minority students were




not being treated as incapable of the same high achievements as nonwhites. Paulo Freire’s (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, particularly the notions of hope and social action, added a necessary dimension of action to the otherwise purely theoretical works I had been reading. In the area of curriculum in a democratic society, I have been enlightened by the work of Henderson and Kesson’s (2004) notion of democratic curriculum leadership, Apple’s (2001) notion of critically analyzing school curricula, and Gutmann’s (1987) idea of the importance of deliberative democratic education. Finally, I was introduced to various female scholars who approached curricula from a different viewpoint than had previously been done by the traditional white males. Valenzuela (1999) and Noddings (1999) addressed the importance of having educators who were caring, while Doll, Wear, and Whitaker (2006) discussed the many non-neutral, gendered, cultured, religious “selves” we bring with us to the curriculum on a daily basis.

Pinar’s (2004) work of curriculum as a “complicated conversation” sums up my experiences in my graduate work. Though my undergraduate work had opened my eyes to the many multicultural concepts I had never previously learned in my K-12 “education,” it was my graduate work that led me to a greater understanding of the larger political, societal, and economic factors contributing to the inequalities in society. I also became keenly aware of my whiteness and the privilege that went along with being a part of the culture of power. All of these prior readings, along with those that have come since, have helped me see the value of “outing one’s self” in regards to each of our roles within the sociopolitical educational environment. What biases and stereotypes do we hold? How do those shape how we teach? Who benefits from our beliefs? Who suffers? These are questions I regularly tell my students to ask themselves. My social justice

teaching emphasis has therefore been highly autobiographical and focuses on recognizing the biases and stereotypes each one of us holds. I also focus on helping preservice teachers learn about the larger power structures in place within society and how they contribute to how society views teaching and learning.

As mentioned in the first narrative, I also had the opportunity to participate in a social justice cohort with three other professors. As the literacy methods professor, I used two texts as springboards for common understandings: Creating Critical Classrooms: K-8 Reading and Writing with an Edge by Lewison, Leland, Harste, and Christensen (2007) and Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education by Sensoy and Diangelo (2011). Additional readings were added and used as a catalyst for rich discussion regarding social justice issues. Students in the class hit the “break-point” (Willis & Meacham, 1996) by week four. They had been having rich discussions but finally began to partially set aside the polite, politically correct discussion and dig into deeper content regarding race, class, homelessness, and so forth. Students began to open up and share personal accounts of racism and sexism in their own lives, particularly when reading Sensoy and Diangelo’s book. However, when my fellow colleagues and I got together to discuss the social justice concepts being addressed in their courses, they reported not being able to engage the students at this level. As the only white professor, I asked if they thought it might be because I shared the same culture as the students. Howard (1999) discussed the notion that white teachers often have difficulty relating to students who are different, so was this the case with our cohort of preservice teachers? We cannot assume this was the case, but it was a working theory. It was disappointing to see my colleagues unable to connect with the students at the same depth that I did regarding social justice discussions. As we




reflected upon our courses, I also thought about other factors that may have added to the increased discussion in my course. First, I used Socratic Seminars as a means of engaging in rich discussion. Second, we sat in circles with no other texts, computers, or other devices in our way. Finally, participation was a heavily weighted part of the course grade. Several of these factors, including race, may have played a part in the richer discussions in my course versus the course of my peers.

Unfortunately, at this point I have more questions than answers and more struggles than successes. Though we have had some success with our social justice cohort, it was not without its own uphill battles. Both minority and non-minority colleagues have questioned the “need’ for a social justice cohort within the curriculum. I also question field placements—while I understand the need for diverse placements for student teachers to help broaden their experience with diverse populations, I wonder how beneficial it is to place preservice teachers with minority students before they are prepared to work with these populations? For example, would having social justice courses prior to being placed in diverse placements make more sense? And while the Caucasian preservice teachers may allegedly benefit from these diverse placements, do the minority students benefit as well? Would spending time in affluent, white-majority classrooms teaching social justice concepts make a difference in future generations’ views of race and social status?

I would like to end by commenting on my current status in relation to social justice education. Social justice education is a constant struggle that is about life-long learning. My approach to social justice includes an examination of the larger economic, social, and racial power structures and inequalities that exist in society. However, more importantly, for me social justice is about looking inward—using

autobiography with white preservice teachers is a critical component of social justice education. If we do not understand ourselves (our beliefs, our culture, our biases, our “place” within the power structure) then how can we ever teach anyone else in a just manner? I invite my students into this space of self-examination and hope they will share the journey with me.

Closing Thoughts Prior to engaging in social justice education

with our preservice teachers, it is important to examine our own autobiographical scripts. Our ultimate goal in examining our own social justice journeys was to make explicit “who we are” as social justice educators and examine how this knowledge might inform our practice. In doing so, we realized that crossing boundaries, engaging in regular conversations, and searching for commonalities were all critically important in our search to improve our practice as social justice educators.

Crossing Boundaries As we examined our own narratives, as

well as each other’s, we became aware of the vastly different paths we traversed on the road toward social justice education. Both of us were motivated by different things—Dr. Charlease Kelly-Jackson was motivated to become actively engaged in social justice due to the injustices she and her family members personally experienced in her daily life as a child. Dr. Maria Shaheen, on the other hand, was not personally affected by racial oppression as a child but advanced education ignited a passion to learn more about social justice education. Examining these diverse experiences is important because doing so will allow teacher educators to work together to approach social justice education from different perspectives. Each can have a different goal within the social justice educational process. For example, Dr. Kelly-Jackson, having personally experienced prejudice and discrimination, can share these valuable




experiences with preservice teachers. Dr. Shaheen, being a member of the culture of power, can discuss social justice issues from a frame of whiteness. Crossing those boundaries as colleagues allowed us to open up the conversation and explore how each of us can use parts of our personal experiences to help our preservice teachers enter the social justice conversation.

Conversations Just as Ness, George, Turner, and Bolgatz

(2010) and her colleagues were able to improve their own social justice practice through collaborative professional development exchanges, we were able to use autobiography to enhance ours. The autobiographies became critical conversation starting points for us and allowed us to engage in deep conversations regarding how social justice education “should be taught” and what parts of our lives “qualified” us to teach these important issues. Additionally, presenting at several national and local conferences allowed us to broaden the conversation within the educational community and gain additional insights that were helpful in our own practice. For example, Dr. Kelly-Jackson met many other teacher educators who shared similar experiences and offered their encouragement as well as examples of how they overcame the challenge of being a minority teacher educator engaging white preservice teachers into social justice. This is merely a beginning—the conversation must continue. We must continue to encourage other social justice teacher educators to share their journeys to social justice and examine how that influences the ways they currently teach social justice concepts.

Commonalities and Differences Though both of us had different journeys in

life, we ended up in the same “space” teaching social justice education. Both of us were high-achieving females inspired at some point in our

lives to become agents of change. As we share the role of social justice teacher educators, we have had many conversations about how our differences offer our students a unique perspective on social justice education. Both of our voices are important and need to be heard and the differences are critical to highlight and share with our preservice teachers.

Implications for Social Justice Educators Learning from the combined experiences of

social justice colleagues can only serve to help us all enhance our own practice. It will allow us to challenge and reflect upon our teaching, thereby transforming our ways of thinking. Teacher educators must critically examine and recognize how their lived experiences shape them as a social justice educator. Becoming more self-aware in our teaching will create a more meaningful experience as well as strengthen the connection with our students’ emergent understandings (Freedman, Bullock, & Duque, 2005).

References Apple, M. (2001). Educating the ‘right’ way:

Markets, standards, God, and inequality. New York, NY: Routledge Falmer.

Bartolome, L. I. (2004). Critical pedagogy and teacher education: Radicalizing prospective teachers. Teacher Education Quarterly, 31(1), 97-122.

Brookfield, S. D. (2005). The power of critical theory: Liberating adult learning and teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Castenelle, L., & Pinar, W. (1993). Understanding curriculum as a racial text: Representations of identity and difference in education. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Cochran-Smith, M. (2004). Walking the road: Race, diversity, and social justice in teacher education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Cochran-Smith, M., Gleeson, A., & Mitchell, K. (2010). Teacher education for social justice: What’s pupil learning got to do with it? Berkeley Review of Education, 1(1), 35-61.

Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1999). Shaping a professional identity: Stories of educational practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.




Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin D. J. (2006). Narrative inquiry. In J. Green, G. Camili, & P. Elmore (Eds.), Handbook of complementary methods in education research (3rd ed., pp. 477-487). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2002). Learning to teach for social justice. In L. Darling-Hammond, J. French, & S. P. Garcia-Lopez (Eds.), Learning to teach for social justice (pp.1-8). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Darling-Hammond, L., French, J., & Garcia-Lopez, S. P. (2002). Learning to teach for social justice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Darling-Hammond, L., & Garcia-Lopez, S. P. (2002). What is diversity? In L. Darling-Hammond, J. French, & S. P. Garcia-Lopez (Eds.), Learning to teach for social justice (pp. 9-12). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Delpit, L. (1995). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York, NY: The New Press.

Doll, M. A., Wear, D., & Whitaker, M. L. (2006). Triple takes on curricular worlds. New York, NY: State University of New York Press.

Elbaz-Luwisch, F. (2005). Teachers’ voices: Storytelling and possibility. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

Engeström, Y., & Miettinen, R. (1999). Activity theory: A well-kept secret. In Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen, & R. L. Punamaki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 1-38). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Florio-Ruane, S. (2001). Teacher education and the cultural imagination: Autobiography, conversation, and narrative. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Freedman, D., Bullock, P., & Duque, G. (2005). Teacher educators’ reflections on moments in a secondary teacher education course: Thinking forward by challenging our teaching practices. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 11(6), 591-602.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.

Garmon, M. A. (2005). Six key factors for changing preservice teachers’ attitudes/beliefs about diversity. Educational Studies, 38(3), 275-286.

Giroux, H. A. (1988). Teachers as intellectuals: Toward a critical pedagogy of learning. New York, NY: Bergin & Garvey.

Giroux, H. A. (2004). Cultural studies, public pedagogy, and the responsibility of intellectuals. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 1(1), 59-79.

Giroux, H. A., & Mclaren, P. (1996). Teacher education and the politics of engagement: The case for democratic schooling. Harvard Educational Review, 56(3), 213-238.

Gutmann, A. (1987). Democratic education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Henderson, J. G., & Kesson, K. R. (2004). Curriculum wisdom: Educational decisions in democratic societies. Columbus, OH: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.

Howard, G. R. (1999). We can’t teach what we don’t know: White teachers, multiracial schools. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Jalongo, M. R., & Isenberg, J. P. (1995). Teachers’ stories: From personal narrative to professional insight. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.

Katsarou, E., Picower, B., & Stovall, D. (2010). Acts of solidarity: Developing urban social justice educators in the struggle for quality public education. Teacher Education Quarterly, pp.137-153.

Ladson-Billings, G. J. (1997). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African-American children. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2000). Racialized discourses and ethnic epistemologies. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 257-277). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Lewison, M., Leland, C., Harste, J., & Christensen, L. (2007). Creating critical classrooms: K-8 reading and writing with an edge. New York, NY: Routledge.

Marshall, J., & Klein, A.M. (2009). Lessons in social action: Equipping and inspiring students to improve their world. The Social Studies, pp. 218-221.

McDonald, M. (2005). The integration of social justice in teacher education: Dimensions of prospective teachers’ opportunities to learn. Journal of Teacher Education, 56(5), 418-435.

McDonald, M., & Zeichner, K. (2009). Social justice teacher education. In W. Ayers, T. Quinn, & D. Stovall (Eds.), Handbook of social justice in education (pp. 595-610). Philadelphia, PA: Taylor and Francis.

Mills, C., & Ballantyne, J. (2010). Pre-service teachers’ dispositions towards diversity: Arguing for a developmental hierarchy of change. Teaching & Teacher Education, 26(3), 447-454.

Ness, M., George, M., Turner, K., & Bolgatz, J. (2010). The growth of teacher educators for social justice: Collaborative professional




development in higher education. InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching, 5, 86-105.

Nieto, S. (2000). Placing equity front and center: Some thoughts on transforming teacher education for a new century. Journal of Teacher Education, 51, 180-187.

Noddings, N. (1999). Justice and caring: The search for common ground in education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Oakes, J., & Lipton, M. (1999). Teaching to change the world. Boston, MA: McGraw Hill Publishers.

Palmer, P. (2007). The heart of a teacher. Change Magazine, 29(6), 14-21.

Pinar, W. (1975). The method of currere. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Research Association (Washington, D.C., April, 1975).

Pinar, W. (2004). What is curriculum theory? Mahway, NJ: Erlbaum.

Schaafsma, D., & Vinz, R. (2011). On narrative inquiry: Approaches to language and literacy research. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Sensoy, O., & DiAngelo, R. (2011). Is everyone really equal? An Introduction to key concepts in social justice education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Ukpokodu, O. N. (2007). Preparing socially conscious teacher: A social justice-oriented teacher education. Multicultural Education, 15(1), 8-15.

Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive schooling: U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Villegas, A., & Lucas, T. (2002). Preparing culturally responsive teachers: A coherent approach. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Willis, A., & Meacham, S. (1996). Complexities and challenges of teacher educators: Teaching preservice multicultural education courses. Journals for the Assembly on Expanded Perspectives on Learning, 40-49.

About the Authors

Maria Shaheen, PhD Dr. Maria Shaheen is an Assistant Professor of Literacy in the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education at Kennesaw State University. She earned her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Literacy from Kent State University. Dr. Shaheen’s research areas include teachers’ critical self-reflection, social justice in elementary education, and innovative practices in P-16 education. Charlease Kelly-Jackson, EdD Dr. Charlease Kelly-Jackson is an Assistant Professor of Science Education in the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education at Kennesaw State University. She earned her EdD in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Science from the University of South Carolina. Dr. Kelly-Jackson's research includes teacher professional development, specifically focusing on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, and teacher preparation with emphasis on diversity issues (i.e. social justice, English language learners, and culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy).




Lesson Study in Elementary Social Studies Methods

Since the late 1980s, lesson study has been examined in the United States as a possible option for improved collaboration and professional development among in-service teachers (Parks, 2009). This idea has begun to trickle into teacher education programs with the possibility of helping pre-service teachers consider their practices differently. Research has shown that lesson study is an effective tool for lesson planning, lesson presentation, and evaluation in graduate and undergraduate contexts (Cohan & Honigsfeld, 2006).

As a social studies methods instructor I was aware that many of the pre-service teachers adapted the exemplar lessons presented in class and retaught them in their field placements. All pre-service teachers are required to teach eight lessons in their field placement with two focused on social studies. There was little opportunity in the methods course to talk about how these lessons were implemented and what adaptations students made, and more importantly, the motivation behind the adaptations. In restructuring the course assignments I decided to use lesson study as an avenue to facilitate these discussions and allow for more purposeful engagement with the social studies lessons taught.

This research focuses on how lesson study was incorporated in an elementary social studies methods course, how pre-service elementary majors would attend to the lesson study process, and the benefits and challenges associated with the project. Working in small groups, pre-service teachers planned, adapted, researched, taught, and revised the same lesson in their different field experience placements.

Literature Review Lesson study began in Japan as a

professional development activity for in-service teachers interested in improving their practice (Dubin, 2010). The lesson study process involves a collaborative group planning a lesson focused on a particular goal or objective. This collaborative group often consists of teachers and, as Dubin (2010) states, “knowledgeable others,” either professors or other outside consultants who have advanced knowledge of the content being taught. One teacher then teaches the lesson while the other participants observe, the group meets together, analyzes the data and revises the lesson, and then another teacher teaches the revised lesson. This process continues until the teachers agree that the revised lesson matches well with the goal or objective. In Japan these lessons are then typically published and shared with other educators (Lewis, Perry, Hurd, & O'Connell, 2006).

Japanese lesson study is not funded or mandatory. It takes place across all curriculum areas, but is most commonly practiced in mathematics (Doig & Susie, 2011). The goal of lesson study is not to just create a lesson plan. The overarching goal is to engage teachers in a research process that will help them to improve their teaching and ultimately student learning. It encourages teachers to reflect on their work, think deeply about it, and to learn from others (Dubin, 2010). Lesson study is collaborative and supports inquiry in teaching and learning (Marble, 2006).

Lesson study begins with an “overarching goal” for the study by observing the differences in what they desire to see in the students at their school and what they are actually seeing, then

Lara Willox, University of West Georgia




brainstorming ways to bridge the gap (Fernandez & Chokshi, 2002). Lesson study takes time and effort, making structure and strategic scheduling vital to success. Teachers must also choose appropriate lessons for lesson study because it is not realistic to employ lesson study in teaching all lessons. Fernandez and Chokshi (2002) believe that it is essential for lesson plans to be specific, detailed, clear, related to the overarching goal, provide background information about the students who will be taught the lesson, and situate the lesson in context of a larger unit/curriculum in order to allow broader learning to take place.

The implementation of lesson study in the United States occurred in the late 1990s. Since then various groups from teacher educators, non-profits, and individual professional development networks have been implementing versions of lesson study in schools across the United States. Through an examination of Japanese lesson study and the implementation here in the United States, many benefits and challenges have been identified.

Benefits The benefits of lesson study are numerous.

Many of them are explicitly understood through the act of engaging in the process, such as the focus on student learning, collaboration, reflection, and the connection of goals to practice (Sims & Walsh, 2009). There are some unexpected benefits as well. Teachers who participated in lesson study found that they improved their ability to watch students (Lewis, Perry, & Hurd, 2004). Lesson study affords teachers the opportunity to systemically observe students while paying attention to student questions and interaction with the material as it is being presented.

An additional benefit afforded through lesson study is the opportunity for teachers to learn new instructional approaches when working collaboratively with colleagues. Teachers talking with other teachers about specific lessons engage new ideas and approaches that promote professional growth. Collaboration is a significant benefit of lesson study. Rarely are teachers provided an opportunity to observe in other teachers’ classrooms. The lesson study process allows

teachers the opportunity to participate in meaningful collaboration (Parks, 2009). The lesson study process also allows for the focus of the collaboration to be on student outcomes instead of teacher presentation or effectiveness (Stewart & Brendefur, 2005). The focus on student outcomes allows for a less threatening collaborative effort.

As discussed above the focus of lesson study is on student learning (Marble, 2006). The idea is to have explicit goals for a lesson and use data from the lesson to make sure students are actually reaching the goal established by the group. The multiple iterations allow for tweaking of the lesson until everyone in the group is convinced through evidence that students have understood the key elements of the lesson. The entire lesson study cycle is embedded in improved student outcomes (Burroughs & Luebeck, 2010).

Ultimately the lesson study process allows teachers to reflect critically about their practice and systematically research a lesson until the expectations and outcomes are well matched. This process requires research processes, gathering of data, and analysis of data, as well as critical reflection. Critical reflection requires teachers to push beyond the surface and consider teaching and learning from a research stance (Fernandez, 2002).

There are numerous benefits when participating in a lesson study cycle, with the most obvious being a focus on student outcomes, an opportunity to collaborate as professionals, and engaging with teaching and learning from a critical and reflective lens. These benefits depend on many factors in order to be successful, including time allotted, commitment to the lesson study process, and the interest to examine teaching at a deeper level. Some of the same benefits can turn into challenges when roadblocks occur in the lesson study process.

Challenges With any professional development activity

there are challenges or drawbacks to implementation. One of the biggest challenges in the United States is the inability to devote so much effort to one lesson (Chokshi & Fernandez, 2004). In the current age of




accountability it is difficult to find extra time to collaborate with peers and to focus so much energy on one particular lesson. However, lesson study is less about the lesson itself and more about the process of researching and reflecting on teaching and learning. If teachers feel pressured to complete a lesson study but do not believe in the process, there will be fewer benefits.

The lesson study process requires teachers to be critical about teaching and learning. They are asked to step back and watch children in a way they may not have before. Teachers are often known for being positive and congenial. Without adopting a critical lens some of the benefits of lesson study will be lost. Through the lesson study process it is important to help teachers develop the skills of critical practice and see themselves as a part of the professional practice (Marble, 2006).

Collaboration can also be a challenge to the lesson study process in two ways. One, the collaborators can get along so well that the members do not disagree or critique the lesson elements. In a study Parks (2009) conducted, she found that collaboration actually worked against professional development efforts because members reinforced each other’s original beliefs and practices instead of examining and challenging them. A second way collaboration can be a challenge is if the group cannot get along well enough to plan and execute the lesson. An effective collaboration includes professional respect and the openness / willingness to challenge ideas and listen to critiques.

An additional challenge to the lesson study process is the ability to reflect critically on one’s teaching. Successful lesson study also involves a willingness to take risks (Stewart & Brendefur, 2005). For example, teachers have to be willing to open themselves up to the observation and constructive criticism of their colleagues. Participants have to be willing to move beyond the surface when engaging in the lesson study process. If there isn’t time or interest to move beyond a surface level engagement, many of the benefits will be lost.

In order to engage fully in the lesson study process one has to master the content knowledge

necessary for successful delivery of the lesson itself. Teachers sometimes lack the content knowledge needed to analyze a lesson fully, particularly in math (Fernandez, 2002). Stronger content knowledge would allow for a more meaningful lesson study experience; however, the collaborative nature of lesson study could allow for the development of needed content knowledge (Chokshi & Fernandez, 2004).

There are benefits and challenges to any process. The lesson study process can be more difficult when completed in contexts other than schools, such as in teacher education programs. However, the benefits of lesson study have led individuals to explore ways to incorporate lesson study in teacher preparation programs.

Teacher Preparation There is limited research on the

effectiveness of using lesson study during teacher preparation (Cohan & Honigsfeld, 2006). The few studies conducted showed that lesson study is an effective tool for lesson planning, presentation, and evaluation in graduate and undergraduate contexts (Chassels & Melville, 2009; Cheng, 2011; Cohan & Honigsfeld, 2006; Dotger, 2011; Dotger et al., 2012; Marble, 2006). The most impacting pieces of lesson study for pre-service and graduate students are the focus on collaboration and the critical dialogue centered on teaching and learning (Cohan & Honigsfeld, 2006).

Marble (2006) conducted a study with pre-service teachers completing an undergraduate methods course in the areas of math and science. He set out to see how and if lesson study promoted critical practice among pre-service teachers. He found that pre-service teachers’ engagement with lesson study allowed them to connect visible changes in students’ learning to changes in teacher practices. Marble (2006) felt that lesson study took the pressure off students by allowing them to work collaboratively to design, plan, and implement lessons.

Another group of researchers took the lesson study model and worked with pre-service teachers over two years (Sims & Walsh, 2009). The first year the goals were for pre-service teachers to engage in discussion about teaching and learning from the perspective of goals,




student practices, and being critically engaged. This was facilitated through participation in one lesson study cycle. The second year the students completed another lesson study cycle with the same goals, adding the enhancement of observation skills to the list. While the second year was much improved, Sims & Walsh (2009) felt that pre-service teachers’ engagement with lesson study over both years allowed them to learn from teaching. Pre-service teachers often find their practicum experience unconnected to their coursework. Lesson study allows for the connection between theory and practice.

Unlike Sims & Walsh, Parks (2009) found that when she conducted lesson study with pre-service teachers, many of them were not connecting their methods instruction with classroom practice. The process of collaboration was the most difficult aspect to negotiate. In fact, Parks (2009) found that the group she thought was doing a great job collaborating was actually having just as many issues; they were just hidden better because the group didn’t have many external conflicts. The girls agreed on everything. They didn’t challenge, question, or critique each other very well. Also, collaborating did not show any changes/enlightenments/ improvements in the way the student teachers viewed their students or their curriculum and lesson plans. Parks (2009) found that the student teachers wholeheartedly adopted the methods used in their schools rather than those they had been taught in their methods courses.

There is limited and conflicting research about the success of lesson study in teacher preparation programs. This study will explore how students engage in the lesson study process and if introducing a modified lesson study approach in a social studies methods class will change pre-service teacher practices.

Method

Process Traditional lesson study requires many

hours of planning, analyzing, and revising. To accommodate other course expectations and student obligations, the traditional lesson study structure was modified for implementation in the social studies methods classroom. The pre-service teachers were partnered with other pre-service teachers in the same grade and if

possible, in the same school. Once partnered, students worked together in class to plan and implement lessons. Class time was dedicated each week to conversations and lesson study activities. After the students planned the lessons collaboratively, one student would teach the lesson. If possible, other students placed in their school would observe the lesson, because students are required as a part of their field experience to observe another student teaching a lesson and complete a peer observation form. Some groups were able to observe each other teaching the lesson they had adapted for their lesson study assignment, but this was not possible for every group. After the first person taught the lesson the group discussed it and modified it based on the information either observed or discussed. Then the lesson was taught again in a different classroom of students at the same grade level. This continued until each person in the group had taught the lesson. After each time the lesson was taught, the lesson was revisited by the pre-service teachers.

Research Design This research used a qualitative design

using a phenomenological perspective, as this was an exploration of how lesson study was experienced by pre-service teachers in the social studies methods course. Data was gathered from one section of elementary social studies methods during the fall of 2012. This course is required of all second semester pre-service teachers and is offered with a concurrent field experience. Of the 30 potential participants, 20 students in 8 lesson study groups participated in the project. Of the 8 groups of students, 4 of the groups were teaching at the same school.

The data sources included planning worksheets, informal discussions, lesson plans, reflections, and completed project boards. Each data source was analyzed, looking for common themes or categories among participants. Glaser’s (1978) six steps for analyzing the data in the constant comparative method guided the data analysis. Goetz and LeCompte (1981) refer to this method as one that “combines inductive category coding with a simultaneous comparison of all social incidents observed” (p. 58). Data undergoes repeated review throughout the data collection and analysis process, leading to the




refinement of categories. These categories are constantly compared, "as events are constantly compared with previous events, new topological dimension, as well as new relationships, may be discovered" (Goetz & LeCompte, p. 58).

Findings Based on the data collected during the fall,

several benefits and challenges to the lesson study process were identified. The benefits highlighted through the investigation included conversations about teaching and learning. Prior to this project, little if any time was spent discussing the implementation of lessons in field placements. An additional benefit was collaborative reflection and using evidence to support practice. A final benefit was more attention paid to differentiation and modification in lesson planning and implementation.

A common theme in regard to lesson implementation was a mismatch between expectations and ability. The pre-service teachers work with different grade levels each semester. This semester the majority of students were placed with second and third graders. Through their lesson study exploration, many found that they had unrealistic expectations for students because of their limited knowledge of grade level and developmental expectations. One student remarked, “The students were not able to write paragraphs at this time, so I would have changed the assessment.” Several students modified lessons based on student capabilities. This was particularly salient when it came to assessing students’ learning. Several pre-service teachers had to modify the assessment during the implementation of the lesson. One student explained how the assessment was modified: “I also had students draw pictures or write a couple of sentences about what they chose; I also had students explain instead of write everything.” For some pre-service teachers, deviating from their plan was stressful, because their lessons were observed by a university supervisor and they were afraid to deviate from the lesson plan. This issue allowed us to have a class discussion on the importance of having a plan, but more importantly, that the ultimate goal of teaching is student learning. If modifying a lesson was necessary to support students’ learning, then the pre-service teacher was encouraged to do so.

Beyond the class discussion of changing plans, many of the lesson study groups made changes to specific aspects of the lesson based on others’ teaching. Using evidence, in this case student work or observation, many groups changed specific parts of the lesson. Some did away with an entire portion while others modified an activity to make it better. One group had created a worksheet for students, but after implementation they discovered the worksheet was too difficult for students to complete independently. As a result of this experience, during the next methods class they redesigned the activity, moving away from a paper-pencil activity to a more engaging activity. The original activity required students to connect words with images; instead, the students were asked to physically match the words with the pictures through a game instead of the worksheet. This modification of a lesson based on evidence is an important component of teaching and learning.

There were also challenges observed and documented through the implementation of the lesson study process. One of the major challenges was collaboration. Working in groups proved to be difficult, with students finding it challenging to agree on different lesson components. After a lesson didn’t go well, one student felt attacked during the discussion and left the class upset. While the discussion was centered on the lesson itself, she felt such ownership over a portion of the lesson that when critiqued by the rest of the group she saw it as a personal attack. As shown through the literature, critical collaboration was often seen as one of the more difficult aspects of lesson study implementation.

Another challenge observed was getting students to move beyond the surface. Through an examination of the lesson plans and project boards, it was clear that many of the changes to the lesson remained at a surface level. Having students draw or speak their responses instead of write them was a common modification. Much of the analysis provided when asked to reflect on the lesson itself was shallow, with the majority of reflections beginning with the idea that “students enjoyed” the activity. This focus on student enjoyment versus student outcomes displayed a lack of critical engagement and




limited reflection. Several students remarked, “students enjoyed the lesson” and “great participation.” Only a few pre-service teachers talked directly about student understanding and learning.

When considering the overarching question of how pre-service elementary majors would attend to the lesson study process and what benefits and challenges would be associated with the project, it was clear that students were willing to participate in the process and engage in conversations related to teaching and learning. Through the incorporation of lesson study in a social studies methods course, many lessons were learned. It was evident that students needed more explicit instruction on data analysis and reflection. Conversation guides may have helped the groups stay focused on the lesson study cycle. As a researcher, data collection needed to be formalized, and group conversations needed to be recorded. These understandings will be incorporated in the ongoing implementation of this project.

Conclusions It is important that teacher educators

continue to find ways to connect classroom practice with methods taught in university classrooms. The connection between theory and practice is integral to the development of engaged practitioners. Using lesson study is one avenue to provide pre-service teachers the opportunity and space to talk and reflect deeply about a lesson, thus beginning the process of shaping them into reflective and engaged practitioners. The highlight of this activity was providing pre-service teachers the time and opportunity to talk to one another about actual teaching and learning. This is rarely afforded to pre-service teachers in most methods classes. The lesson study process allows for an integration of ideas beyond just social studies curriculum, providing pre-service teachers a critical, reflective, inquiry based stance.

References Burroughs, E., & Luebeck, J. (2010). Pre-service

teachers in mathematics lesson study. The Montana Mathematics Enthusiast, 7(2/3), 391-400.

Chassels, C., & Melville, W. (2009). Collaborative, reflective, and iterative Japanese lesson study in

an initial teacher education program: Benefits and challenges. Canadian Journal of Education, 32(4), 734-763.

Cheng, E. (2011). How lesson study develops pre-service teacher's instructional design competency? The Interntational Journal of Research and Review, 7(1), 67-79.

Chokshi, S., & Fernandez, C. (2004). Challenges to importing Japanese lesson study: Concerns, misconceptions, and nuances. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(7), 520-525.

Cohan, A., & Honigsfeld, A. (2006). Incorporating "lesson ltudy" in teacher preparation. The Educational Forum, 71(1), 81-92.

Doig, B., & Susie, G. (2011). Japanese lesson study: Teacher professional devleopment through communities of inquiry. Mathematics Teacher Education and Development, 13(1), 77-93.

Dotger, S. (2011). Exploring and developing graduate teaching assistants' pedagogies via lesson study. Teaching in Higher Education, 16(2), 157-169.

Dotger, S., Barry, D., Wiles, J., Benevento, E., Brzozowski, F., Hurtado-Gonzales, J., . . . Wisner, E. (2012). Developing graduate students' knowledge of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium through lesson study. Journal of College Science Teaching, 42(1), 40-44.

Dubin, J. (2010). American teachers embrace the Japanese art of lesson study. The Education Digest, 75(6), 23-29.

Fernandez, C. (2002). Learning from Japanese approaches to professional development: The case of lesson study. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(5), 393-405.

Fernandez, C., & Chokshi, S. (2002). A practical guide to translating lesson study for a U.S. setting. Phi Delta Kappan, 84(2), 128-134.

Lewis, C., Perry, R., & Hurd, J. (2004). A deeper look at lesson study. Educational Leadership, 61(5), 18-22.

Lewis, C., Perry, R., Hurd, J., & O'Connell, M. P. (2006). Lesson study comes of age in North America. Phi Delta Kappan, 88(4), 273-281.

Marble, S. T. (2006). Learning to teach through lesson study. Action in Teacher Education, 28(3), 86-96.

Parks, A. N. (2009). Collaborating about what? An instructor's look at preservice lesson study. Teacher Education Quarterly, 36(4), 81-97.

Sims, L., & Walsh, D. (2009). Lesson study with preservice teachers: Lessons from lessons. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(5), 724-733.

Stewart, R. A., & Brendefur, J. L. (2005). Fusing lesson study and authentic achievement: A




model for teacher collaboration. Phi Delta Kappan, 86(9), 681-687.

About the Author

Lara Willox, PhD Lara Willox is the director of the EdD in School Improvement program and an Assistant Professor of Learning and Teaching at the University of West Georgia. Her research is in the area of collaborative action research, elementary social studies education, and teaching for social responsibility. She is active in the College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA) of the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS); she is the chair of the elementary social studies special interest group. She advocates for the inclusion of social studies curriculum in the elementary grades, and focuses her teaching and research on socially just and responsible education. Prior to completing her doctorate at UNC Chapel Hill, she taught for 12 years in public elementary schools in Charlotte, North Carolina.




Teaching Singapore Math: Evaluating Measures to Effectively Teach and Implement a New Mathematics Curriculum in 21 Elementary Schools

Fourth grade and eighth grade Singapore students’ first-place ranking in 1995 and 2003 – and second-place ranking in 2007 – in Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study has not gone unnoticed by policy makers and educators (Garelick, 2006; Hoven & Garelick, 2007). As a possible consequence of these strong international test results, a growing number of schools in the U.S. have adopted the Singapore Math curriculum (Cai, 2003; Gross & Merchlinsky, 2002; Hu, 2010; Leinwald & Ginsburg, 2007; Menon, 2000). This study evaluates the effectiveness in one U.S county that implemented the mathematics curriculum in 21 elementary schools in 2008. Two research questions framed the investigation:

1. How is Singapore Math implemented by elementary teachers?

2. Has the implementation of the Singapore Math curriculum resulted in increased teacher confidence communicating the curriculum and positively impacted student learning of mathematics?

Answers to these questions will be informed first by describing the Singapore Math curriculum before surveying some of the literature related to elementary teachers’ competence in mathematics and curriculum implementation. Utilizing O’Donnell’s (2008) conceptual framework to determine fidelity of curriculum implementation, findings from interviews, achievement results, surveys, and

classroom observations will determine fidelity of curriculum implementation along a strong or weak continuum. Conclusions advance recommendations for administrators and teachers to foster an effective curriculum implementation.

Review of Literature

Teaching Mathematics Literacy and numeracy are cornerstones in

the U.S. Department of Education’s No Child Left Behind policy. Improving the quality of mathematics teaching and learning hinges on access to sound evidence regarding what teachers do with students to promote the development of learners’ mathematical proficiency and understanding, rather than concentrating instruction in activities such as recalling facts and applying well-rehearsed procedures to answer simple questions (Bransford et al., 2000; Silver et al., 2009; Slavin & Lake, 2008; Stigler & Heibert, 1999; U.S. DOE, 2008). In a review of effective instructional practices, Washaw and Anthony (2008) underscored the importance of classroom discourse as an effective pedagogy that contributes to students’ engagement and cognitive understanding of mathematics. Falkenberg (2011) identified a shift from theorizing about what teachers need to know to teach mathematics to the conceptualization of mathematical content knowledge and a focus on

James Badger, University of North Georgia




how mathematical content knowledge is established.

Significant changes in teachers’ attitudes and beliefs can occur when teachers have the opportunity to explore new instructional strategies and ideas in the context of their own classroom practice (Borko et al., 1997). While identifying best teaching examples of mathematics, Silver et al. (2009) found that pedagogical approaches were not systematically used in ways that supported students’ engagement with cognitively demanding mathematical tasks. Similar results were found in the instruction of mathematics at the primary level in England (OFSTED, 2008). Slavin and Lake’s (2008) review of effective elementary mathematics programs in three categories – curricula, computer-assisted instruction, and instructional process – identified instructional strategies and cooperative student learning methods as the most effective in terms of student achievement. Muir’s (2008) synthesis of effective teachers’ numeracy practices identified a set of “principles of practices,” including making connections, challenging all learners, teaching for conceptual understanding, directing purposeful discussions, focusing on mathematics, and maintaining positive attitudes, that significantly affect student attainment in mathematics over a two-year period. Recent studies have identified the connection between teaching mathematics and the effective role manipulatives occupy to support content learning, especially for teaching low-achievers, students with learning disabilities, and English language learners (Boggan et al., 2010; Puchner et al., 2008; Uribe-Florez & Wilkins, 2010).

Singapore Math The Singapore Math curriculum was

created in Singapore in 1981 by the Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore and adapted for the U.S. in 2001. Singapore Math focuses on depth of student understanding of mathematical concepts instead of memorization of rules or repetitive drills. Students are expected to completely master fewer topics rather than be able to perform many tasks with mediocrity. More time is devoted to fewer topics in the curriculum, with a focus on problem solving, computational skills, and conceptual and

strategic thinking processes. Concepts in Singapore Math are mastered through concrete manipulatives such as base ten blocks, number disks, and bar models. Lessons are organized so students have opportunities to make independent and meaningful discoveries using visual and hands-on aids such as blocks, cards, and bar charts. There is an emphasis in the curriculum on an analytical approach and conceptual grasp of mathematics, with a move to also make mathematics concepts relevant to the real world.

The Singapore Math curriculum features a three-step learning process that moves from concrete to pictorial to abstract: a mathematical concept is introduced in a concrete representation before progressing to a pictorial demonstration and finally advancing to abstract conceptualization. The curriculum addresses a small number of topics in depth following a spiral organization in which topics presented at one grade level are covered in later grades. Further, the textbooks build students’ understanding of mathematical concepts through concrete illustrations that demonstrate how abstract mathematical concepts are used to solve problems from different perspectives. A comparison of U.S. mathematics with Singapore mathematics in the primary grades found differences in textbooks, assessments, and teacher training programs, with a large discrepancy identifying mastery of mathematics in Singapore students in contrast to U.S. students who mechanically apply mathematical procedures to solve routine problems (Cai, 2003; Ginsburg et al., 2005).

Curriculum Implementation: A Conceptual Framework

Investigating teachers’ implementation of a new curriculum is important to determine the effectiveness of a program in actual use and how close the program is implemented according to its original design or intention (Dobson & Shaw, 1988; Dusenbury et al., 2003; Ormundson et al., 2012). Efficacy studies of curriculum intervention often define, conceptualize, and measure fidelity to the extent to which participants understand and use the concepts in a curriculum as specified by curriculum developers (Gross & Merchlinsky, 2002; Johnson, 2000). O’Donnell’s (2008) extensive




review of the literature from K-12 schools and public health settings identified levels of fidelity during implementation that impact effectiveness. Fidelity of implementation was found to have multiple but similar definitions of fidelity for K-12 core curriculum interventions with frequent measures connected to instructional quality.

In a review of the literature concerned with fidelity of implementation in K-12 settings, O’Donnell (2008) identified four constructs that overlap: teaching, curriculum potential, curriculum-in-use or perceived curriculum, and adaptation. According to O’Donnell (2008), while fidelity of implementation is a relatively recent construct in K-12 curriculum intervention research, fidelity of implementation has been defined as the determination of how well an intervention is implemented in comparison with the original program design during an efficacy and/or effectiveness study. Measures of fidelity should indicate how an intervention is maintained consistently across multiple groups over time “or describe the parameters under which variations in the implementation may occur” (p. 54). K-12 curriculum implementation was found to encompass adherence and integrity to efficacy – “focusing on whether a program is implemented at all and to what degree” (p. 41) – and effectiveness – “interpreting evidence of effectiveness of the program for generalizability . . . and observing the implementation of the program in the field” (p. 42). Explicated as guiding questions, the four constructs below inform issues concerning fidelity of curriculum implementation and provide a framework for answering the first research question:

1. Teaching: How does one distinguish good teaching and fidelity of implementation to good teaching practices prompted by the curriculum material?

2. Curriculum profile: What are the critical components of the curriculum? What ranges of variations are acceptable? What does it mean to implement the program with fidelity as defined by school administrators and county supervisors?

3. Curriculum-in-use or perceived curriculum: How are the curriculum and

the perceived curriculum viewed and implemented by teachers? How are curriculum materials and instruction mutually supportive and reinforcing?

4. Adaptation: Does the curriculum promote variation and adaptation of curriculum implementation (O’Donnell, 2008)?

Taken together, these four constructs provide a framework through which to evaluate the implementation of a new curriculum.

A County’s Implementation of the Singapore Math Curriculum

The adoption in 2008 of the Singapore Math curriculum was mapped to the state’s standards in 21 elementary schools in a county in Georgia. Eleven schools in the county qualified for Title I status, reflective of settings where more than 70% of students attending a school are from low-income households. A school that qualifies as Title I receives federal funds to support the improvement of student test scores, prevent student drop-out, and provide free- and reduced-lunch programs with general school improvement. Thirteen of the twenty-one schools studied were identified Title I; fifteen of the schools reflected a growing English language learner (ELL) population of largely Latino students. In one school studied, 94% of the students were eligible for the free-and-reduced lunch program.

Prior to implementation of the new mathematics curriculum, teachers and school administrators participated in a two-day, district-wide training session that introduced bar modeling, number discs, abstract conceptualization, number bonds, place value, and manipulatives. In the first year of implementation, two representatives from the county were employed full-time to facilitate the rollout of the Singapore Math curriculum and regularly visited each school to conduct classroom observations, deliver mini-workshops, and answer curriculum questions. The county created a password-accessible website for teachers to access Singapore Math resources and videos to facilitate instruction and learning. In addition, a teacher representative in each school was selected to occupy the role of liaison between the school and county to address




curriculum- and instruction-specific questions. For funding reasons, only one county representative was employed in the second year to facilitate the implementation of the curriculum.

While students in Kindergarten and Grade 1 would move into higher grade levels with a foundation of Singapore Math in subsequent years, the rollout of the new curriculum also occurred in grades 2, 3, and 4 in the first year of implementation. As a result, the Singapore Math curriculum was introduced as a new approach for students learning mathematics in the higher grade levels for whom a previous curriculum was familiar; that is, students in the higher grade levels would not have a spiraling Singapore Math curriculum as the lower grade levels would experience.

Methodology

Data Collection Determining the fidelity of the Singapore

Math curriculum implementation was measured through multiple measures rather than relying on a single indicator (Ormundson et al., 2012): teacher surveys and journals, teacher and student interviews, end-of-year state criterion-referenced test (CRT) and Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) student achievement scores, and classroom observations.

One teacher in each of the 21 schools from Kindergarten to Grade 4 volunteered to participate in the first year of the study after receiving a description by the principal or assistant principal in a staff meeting. There were, therefore, 105 teachers in the first year. Participating teachers each received a $100.00 stipend at the conclusion of the school year for their contributions to the study. The educators agreed to journal four times over the course of the school year and allow classroom observations. The first-year teachers were invited to return to participate at the start of the second year, and others volunteered to replace five teachers who did not to return in the second year. Five teachers withdrew after the first year because of pregnancy, change in work assignment, growing school commitments, and inability to maintain the journaling and classroom video-recording requirements. In the second year of the study, Grade 5 was

implemented by the county and also included in the research design, increasing the number to 127 participating teachers. There were no design changes in the second year of the study.

Surveys The development of online teacher surveys

was informed by the research questions of this investigation, pilot-testing the surveys in 2008, and a review of literature on teachers’ perceptions of mathematics (Luppescu & Hart, 2005; Tapia & Marsh, 2004; Wisconsin Center for Education Research, 2004). Results collected from the same survey disseminated over two years were produced in an Excel file and data disaggregated by grade level and school.

Journals Teachers’ journals were submitted at the

conclusion of four data-collection periods: September-October, November-December, January-February, and March-April. To increase participants’ response rate, teachers received e-mail reminders requesting the completion of a journal reflection at the conclusion of each data collection period. Teachers answered guiding questions related to the delivery of the mathematics curriculum and student learning: What has been particularly successful for you when teaching mathematics (in this unit)? What has been confusing or frustrating for you when teaching mathematics (in this unit)? What math activities in this unit have your students liked the best? What math activities in this unit do you feel have most helped your students to learn mathematics? What has been confusing or frustrating in this unit for your students as they learn mathematics?

Interviews Structured interviews were conducted for

30 to 40 minutes with participating teachers, principals, and assistant principals who self-selected themselves in schools where classroom observations were conducted. The experience of interviewed educators ranged from 2-20 years, with five educators possessing a masters’ degree in education and the same number with ESOL endorsement. Three educators were career changers. Interviews probed their perceptions, delivery, and concerns about the new curriculum. Interviews with participating




teachers were commonly conducted over a lunch break or after school (Rubin & Rubin, 2005; Stecher et al., 2006).

Student focus-group interviews with Kindergarten to Grade 4 students in participating teachers’ classrooms asked learners to reflect on their likes or dislikes in mathematics, favorite activities, and how best they learned mathematics. No more than four students were randomly selected for a focus-group interview from the returned group of parent/guardian letters of consent. In total, 60 students participated in focus-group interviews during the first year and 52 students during the second year. Interviews were conducted in the school library, a hallway, or in a classroom.

Classroom observations Classroom observations were conducted by

three researchers in three, three-week periods in four randomly selected schools in 2009 and six schools in 2010. Half of the schools selected in 2009 and 2010 were Title I. One teacher from Kindergarten to Grade 4 was observed at least six times. Classroom observations supplemented journal data by focusing on teachers’ explanations and modeling of the new curriculum together with the dialogue and interactions between the teacher and students about mathematical concepts, examples, or activities (Mercer, 2001; Muijs, 2006).

Student mathematics achievement The criterion-referenced competency

(CRT) is administered each April for all grade levels. The CRT is a standardized, state assessment that tests students’ knowledge in grades 1 through 8 of mathematics, language arts, and reading, with grades 3 through 8 also assessed in science and social studies. The Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) is a standardized, norm-referenced test administered to Kindergarten to Grade 5 students every September. Student achievement results from the CRT and ITBS from 2006 to 2010 were provided by the county to the researchers.

Data Analysis The sections below analyze the gathered

data. Journal entries, teacher interviews, and classroom observation data were coded with MAXQDA, a computer-assisted software

program to analyze quantitative and qualitative data, text, and multimedia. Using grounded theory as a framework to systematically group the coded data into similar concepts or themes, recurring themes were identified (Marshall & Rossman, 1995; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Rubin & Rubin, 2005; Saldana, 2009).

Teacher Surveys The experience level of surveyed teachers

is shown in Table 1:




Table 1 Years of Teaching Experience, 2008-2010

Surveyed teachers reported that they received sufficient training and resources from school and county administration to effectively teach the new curriculum. Survey data revealed that the training and mentoring initiatives that accompanied the implementation of the Singapore Math curriculum were appreciated by many teachers in response to the survey statement ‘I believe I have the training and resources to effectively teach math.’ Further, elementary teachers’ attitudes toward mathematics rose slightly rather than dipped when the new curriculum was introduced. Teachers of all grade levels were considered as a single group to the survey item ‘I like teaching mathematics,’ suggesting that teachers’ affinity for teaching mathematics increased slightly from 2008 to 2010.

While survey data found teachers’ affinity for teaching mathematics increased slightly between 2008 and 2010, there was no significant change in teachers’ understanding of or confidence in mathematical concepts, either for teachers at any grade level or for all surveyed teachers considered as a whole group. In 2008, 40% of surveyed teachers in grades 3 and 4 reported that they understood mathematics concepts covered at K-2 levels to the survey statement, ‘I am confident that I effectively teach mathematics concepts covered at K-2 only, K-5 only, K-8 only, K-10 only, K-12 only, college level.’ More than 70% of surveyed teachers agreed or strongly agreed to the following survey statements, with no significant change over time while implementing the new mathematics curriculum, either for teachers at any individual grade level or for all teachers considered as a whole group: ‘I believe developing problem-solving skills is an important component for success in learning mathematics’ and ‘I believe that in math class, students can learn to be creative and discover concepts independently.’ The affirmative response to these questions may be indicative of the teachers’ dispositions that math content is accessible to all students and that all are capable of learning mathematics.

Surveyed teachers identified the training and resources provided by the district prior to and throughout the first and second year of

Years of Experience (All Teachers) – 2008

1-327%

4-616%

7-915%

10-1211%

Over 1231%


1-324%

4-615%

7-914%

10-1211%

Over 1236%

Series1, 1-3,

16.6%, 17%

Series1, 4-6,

18.5%, 19%

Series1, 7-9,

11.2%, 11%

Series1, 10-12, 10.2%, 10%

Series1, Over 12, 43.4%, 43%





implementation as essential for their understanding and instruction of the new curriculum. Findings from the survey data revealed that the Singapore Math curriculum did not significantly impact elementary educators’ knowledge of mathematics. While lingering questions remain from the survey data concerning elementary teachers’ reported low levels of mathematical understanding, conceptualizing elementary teachers’ receptive attitudes toward mathematics through O’Donnell’s curriculum profile and curriculum-in-use indicate the potential for fidelity of implementation that was moderately strong.

Teacher Journals Teachers’ journals, which were submitted

each quarter of the school year, reflected benefits and challenges associated with delivering the new mathematics curriculum. Coding of the journal data identified a number of themes. In the first year of implementation, entries by teachers identified the utility of manipulatives, place-value disks, and number bonds as effective tools to communicate mathematical concepts, especially for learners who required more time to process mathematical ideas. The use of manipulatives occupied a central role in both the instruction and learning of a mathematical concept. Reflecting after a taught class or unit of instruction, teachers noted that interactive, hands-on activities were important for facilitating students’ learning of demanding mathematical concepts, and that the same engagement stimulated the learners’ interest and cultivated their interpersonal social skills. Elementary educators also valued the curriculum’s problems and questions that connected mathematical concepts to real-life examples.

While elementary teachers claimed that mathematical problems and discovery activities instilled more engagement and interest in students, others expressed a desire for an even greater number of real-life examples in the curriculum and struggled to identify strategies to accommodate students with special needs. Still other educators identified a poor alignment of the curriculum, at times, with state standards. During the first year of implementation, educators expressed frustration that the county’s

pacing guide curtailed instruction and reduced some students’ deeper understanding of a concept. Elementary educators expressed a desire for a more flexible pacing guide to allow for longer instruction time to facilitate learning in all students.

A second theme that emerged from the journal data was the teachers’ observations of a vocabulary-rich curriculum that also contained challenging assessment instruments. In schools with a majority of English language learners, elementary educators reflected on strategies to effectively differentiate the new curriculum not only for English language learners but also advanced students who “got bored easily once the concept was clear,” wrote one teacher. Teachers noted that additional instruction was needed to describe a term or phrase found to be confusing for students. One example was the difference between the “value of the digit” and the “place of the digit” in the Grade 4 curriculum. These and other content-specific nomenclatures were particularly troublesome for English language learners. One teacher claimed that if students had been exposed to the Singapore Math vocabulary and bar-modeling strategies in Kindergarten, the terminology might be less confusing, thereby providing more time for teachers in upper grade levels to scaffold conceptual problems.

A third theme that arose from the journal data was an observation that concrete exercises progressed too quickly to pictorial examples, and the same rapid progression outlined in the student textbook and teacher guide occurred when presenting material in pictorial representations that moved to complicated abstract concepts. In response, teachers claimed they supplemented the curriculum with additional problems at each stage to facilitate students’ learning. A related challenge was the observation that the Singapore Math assessments tended to “add questions containing problems that have never been taught,” according to one teacher. The inclusion of such problems may reflect the focus on problem solving and applying concepts, challenging learners to be creative and discover solutions by using and extending what students learned in a unit rather




than memorizing specific algorithms to be applied to all questions.

While some issues in the second year overlapped with the first, journal narratives in the second year were more nuanced, reflecting, in part, teachers’ growing familiarity with the curriculum and students’ knowledge of Singapore Math from the previous year of study. Lessons and activities that integrated manipulatives, number bonds, and number disks continued to be perceived as effective mediums to develop students’ conceptual understanding of mathematics. Teachers valued problems that connected concepts to real-life examples for instilling student interest and fostering discovery and experiential learning. The outcomes from adopting these approaches positively impacted student learning and confidence, as noted by a Grade 2 teacher: “My favorite part of this unit is when I see those struggling students look at me and say, ‘Look, Miss. I did it right!’” In the second year, educators claimed they had higher expectations of students and could plan lessons more effectively.

The teachers’ written narratives revealed a perspective of the new curriculum that was perceived by some as being poorly aligned with state standards, presenting linguistic challenges for English language learners, and using assessment instruments that did not reflect a stronger connection to a taught unit. Alongside these observations, however, were equally detailed observations underscoring students’ interest in mathematics and the rich source of interactive activities. Teachers highlighted the value of number bonds, place value, and manipulatives that fostered students’ deeper understanding of mathematics. As reflected through journal data, teachers’ implementation of the new mathematics curriculum conceptualized through O’Donnell’s concepts of curriculum profile and adaptation intimated a marginally strong fidelity.

Interviews

Teacher interviews The most frequently occurring theme that

emerged from the teacher interviews in 2009 related to the training and support delivered by the county. Teachers stated that the county’s workshops, Singapore Math website, and

devoted county- and school-based Singapore Math representatives facilitated a deeper understanding of the new mathematics curriculum. As a consequence of the county’s introduction of Singapore Math and ongoing professional development over two years, interviewed teachers stated there was sustained support and interest in the new curriculum. When asked to contrast Singapore Math with the preceding curriculum, Harcourt Math, teachers claimed that they possessed greater confidence delivering a curriculum that was described as more engaging, challenging, and creative than the previous. Some teachers distinguished the new curriculum from the prior one as more structured and teacher-centered that required mastery of skill, greater emphasis on student literacy to understand the mathematics curriculum, and development of higher-order thinking skills in students:

I think it’s very evident this year more than in the past how much language impacts learning when it comes to mathematics. (Grade 1 Teacher)

I have found that even my lowest math students – who before would really struggle – know they can understand the concepts better because you have the hands-on with the disc which makes it much more concrete: you say what the number looks like and how you can manipulate it and how you can change the number. I feel that has helped a lot, especially with the lower (ability) kids. (Grade 2 Teacher)

Singapore Math was described by teachers as an approach to learning mathematics that moved from a “drill and memorization skill” to an interactive, rigorous approach of learning and instruction. Further, the activity-oriented approach to learning was viewed as communicating deeper conceptual depth of mathematical concepts and fostering more critical and higher-order thinking skills in students. Teachers also stated that they had greater expectations of students and noticed higher formative test results as consequence of the new approach to learning mathematics.

Teachers claimed that students learned Singapore Math through hands-on activities. The




integration of manipulatives was a way to model and demonstrate concepts as well as an approach that fostered student learning in the concrete and pictorial stages of development:

I’m more of a facilitator. We have a lot of time for the kids to practice and use the manipulatives. I introduce all the concepts and we try to work in a lot of time for the kids to work in small groups and to do centers and activities with what they have learned and also do a lot of practice, especially when you get to the algorithms for additions and subtraction - they just need a lot of practice with that. Give them what they need, introduce the concepts, and give them time to use it. (Grade 2 Teacher)

Rather than memorize concepts, teachers stated that bar modeling, number bonds, and manipulatives fostered students’ conceptual understanding of mathematics through model drawing and challenging activities. In contrast to the previous curriculum, teachers described Singapore Math as a “rigorous program” that demanded strong reading strategies from students and sought learners to think about numbers in their head so “they’ll be stronger with the understanding of number sense and kind of help them concentrate.” In the process, a few teachers claimed that they asked more “why” questions to deepen the students’ understanding of mathematical strategies, such as “Why do you think we are doing it this way?” or “Why are we doing this?” The rationale for adopting this form of interaction was to instill higher-level thinking skills and independent learning:

We’re more focused on having students explain their reasoning and getting into the higher level thinking skills rather than just rote getting math facts. (Grade 1 Teacher)

We are getting them to see for themselves what the patterns are and what the rules are. Yes, I’m going to tell them, but I want them to start trying to figure it out for themselves as well. (Grade 3 Teacher)

One teacher observed that the ability to competently communicate the Singapore Math curriculum to learners depended upon a

teacher’s patience, flexibility, strong understanding, and preparation of Singapore Math’s central concepts and strategies:

I feel like with Singapore you have to understand the math and the thinking behind how you’re going to teach them the math if that makes sense. And if you can’t think that way, then you’re not going to be able to teach them to think that way. (Grade 1 Teacher)

The new curriculum was not without its challenges and limitations. In the first and second year of implementation, some teachers reported difficulties with effectively teaching bar modeling and illustrating word problems, which sometimes confused student learning. Echoing some of the themes in the journal data, particularly concerning for teachers, were the assessment instruments, paucity of real-life activities in the curriculum, and struggles to differentiate the new curriculum for ELLs:

Yes, they may be more rigorous because it [test] allows you to have higher level thinking to see if you can apply the material but, as a teacher, I need to know what I taught was effective and so I was a little concerned with that. So we had those types of questions, like what do we do with these tests here? We’re finding that when we give a test, all of a sudden there’s this particular question that was not even part of our lesson. (Grade 1 Teacher)

Teachers in the first and second year of implementation observed that the Singapore Math materials tended to, according to one teacher, ‘‘add questions containing problems that have never been taught.” Some educators perceived a disconnect between the instruction and the test questions that would often be, according to one teacher, “different than what was taught.” A few of the interviewed teachers remarked that the Singapore Math curriculum involved a lot more from the teacher modeling concepts than previous mathematic curriculums, thus emphasizing teacher-centered instruction at the expense of integrating student-focused math centers. Further, some teachers claimed the county’s pacing guide restricted their ability to effectively deliver a lesson and did not allow




student mastery of particular mathematical concepts as a consequence of following a prescribed time period to complete a unit. It was noted, however, that modifications to the pacing guide were integrated in the second year and teachers were permitted by the school district to supplement specific units of the curriculum that did not meet state standards. Some educators remarked that parents’ reactions to the new mathematics curriculum ranged from enthusiasm to frustration, resulting in e-mail requests to teachers querying the terminology and concepts of Singapore Math as well as for information packets and modifications to better assist their child with assignments.

Administrator interviews County and school administrators described

the Singapore Math as a curriculum that would not only improve student learning but would develop deeper mathematical skills in elementary teachers who were described as possessing stronger literacy skills than mathematical abilities. For county administrators, a consequence for an elementary educator who possessed greater confidence in the knowledge of mathematics would be an improved ability to deliver the content. Principals claimed that increased elementary teachers’ competence in mathematics and higher student achievement results were desirous in the medium- rather than short-term:

For the students, we’ve got to have our teachers better educated and better math teachers. So that’s definitely a goal to have better math teachers and stronger math teachers. They need to become stronger math teachers, and they need to understand how to teach students to develop this level of thinking and problem solving. (Elementary Principal 1)

County administrators claimed that over time the new mathematics curriculum would deepen educators’ content-knowledge, positively impact students’ critical thinking and problem solving skills, and foster the students’ interest and mathematical understanding beyond the primary years extending into middle and secondary schooling:

We want [teachers] to develop an understanding of how this process works on what numbers are and [students] know how to work with numbers. So that’s the goal: to develop the understanding. It takes more than just the teacher writing it on the board and the kids copying it on their paper. . . . What the very engaged classroom doesn’t necessarily mean is that the students are busy with the manipulatives all the time, but there needs to be a lot of interaction going on between the teacher and the students as far as [teachers] hearing that the students can process: “Did you get that answer?” or “Tell me, how did you arrive at that solution?” That sort of thing – good strong teacher instruction. (County Administrator 1)

According to interviewed school and county administrators, these skills were cultivated over years rather than months, with teachers actively engaged in the students’ discovery process of learning and cognitive development:

The rigor part is not going to come overnight. It takes a while to adjust to a different computation style. We’re hoping down the road that this will make a big difference for our children as far as their critical thinking skills and higher-order thinking skills. You just can’t evaluate [those abilities] overnight. To me, the children have to develop that year-in and year-out. (Elementary Principal 2)

We want the children to think over and above what they’ve thought before, and this program offers that. We not only want them to problem solve in math but throughout their lives. We want them to have the skills they need to just think through things and start developing a pattern of “How do I deal with this problem?” and “How do I solve this problem?” (County Administrator 2)

To successfully attain the interconnected goals of elevated teachers’ content-knowledge and increased students’ learning, administrators emphasized the importance of teacher training and continual county- and school-level support. Monitoring an effective and sustained




implementation was determined through initial and succeeding teacher training workshops, installation of a county representative to address curriculum and pedagogical concerns, and regular classroom observations from school administrators. One principal stated that higher student expectations and improved tests results were contingent upon effective teaching “that we can sometimes control,” while student attitude toward the subject could not be influenced because it “sometimes originates from parents.“ Principals claimed that parent buy-in of the new curriculum depended upon student interest and academic success in mathematics.

Based on classroom observations of and discussions with teachers and senior school staff, county administrators and principals claimed they were conscious of some of the difficulties and obstacles classroom teachers faced delivering the new curriculum. Some of the emergent challenges included differentiating the curriculum, responding to the needs of ELLs, modifying the Singapore Math assessment instruments, and developing teacher-training workshops. Principals recognized that classroom teachers were struggling to effectively integrate some math concepts and content-specific vocabulary as well as attaining master-level results in the assessment instruments. Principals described the challenges, on the one hand, of meeting adequate yearly progress and pressures preparing students for the high-stakes end-of-year tests, with, on the other hand, a desire to cultivate student interest, learning, and critical thinking skills in mathematics.

Student interviews Focus-group interviews revealed that

Kindergarten to Grade 4 students were interested in mathematics and claimed they were not adverse to the challenges, questions, activities, or word problems expressed in their Singapore Math workbook or presented by their teacher. Interviewed students recognized the importance of mathematics, claiming that mathematics was not only used by their parents in their places of employment, but was important for future employment and valued for being able to answer questions without pen and paper when purchasing items in a store. When asked to

identify whether the students preferred teacher-led instruction or working together in student-centered stations to answer math questions, students from Kindergarten to Grade 4 favored both learning stations and teacher-centered instruction.

The teachers’, county administrators’, principals’, and students’ reflections of the Singapore Math curriculum contributed to a deeper understanding of how the curriculum was perceived coupled with tensions that imbue the delivery. Teachers’ ability to differentiate the mathematics curriculum for English language learners, adherence to the county’s pacing guide, and professed disconnect between the curriculum’s assessment instruments and unit of instruction presented lingering challenges to effectively deliver the curriculum. These limitations were overshadowed, however, by the teachers’ stated higher student expectations and the county’s ongoing training and support of the new curriculum. School and county administrators claimed to adopt a broader view of the new mathematics curriculum: the curriculum would not only positively impact student achievement scores, but foster in educators a deeper knowledge of mathematics that would positively impact the classroom instruction and cultivate students’ mathematical knowledge and problem-solving skills. Conceptualizing these themes through O’Donnell’s curriculum profile and adaptation constructs, the teachers’ and administrators’ positive perceptions of Singapore Math suggested a moderately strong implementation of the new approach to instruction and student learning.

Classroom Observations Classroom observations provided a

perspective of how teachers implemented the Singapore Math curriculum through O’Donnell’s curriculum-in-use category. Participant classroom observations collected data on teachers’ delivery of the Singapore Math program. Evident in classroom observations were bar modeling strategies and number bonds to review and explicate mathematical problems as a whole class. Kindergarten to Grade 4 teachers modeled mathematical examples at the concrete and pictorial level using magnetic




place-value disks on a white board, and periodically explained some vocabulary-rich terms. Mental math strategies were also infused in many lessons. It was not uncommon for a teacher in the lower grade levels to ask students to open their workbook to “the page with seven tens and three ones [page 73].” With few exceptions in the first year of observations, all teachers held – or placed on a table nearby – a copy of the Singapore Math Teacher’s Edition to consult while delivering a lesson. Teachers stated that this practice was permitted by school administrators to facilitate accurate delivery of the new curriculum.

Classroom observations reflected a preponderance of teacher-centered instruction instead of providing more occasions for student-centered learning. There were not a lot of opportunities for students to experience the concrete manipulatives themselves, to collaborate on workbook exercises, or progress to the abstract level from the concrete and pictorial stages. The majority of teachers tended to emphasize low-level questioning and did not ask students to draw associations of a mathematical concept to real-world contexts. In one lesson, a teacher drew pictures of number disks (manipulatives) on a whiteboard, but neither used number disks herself nor permitted the students to employ them. In another case, a teacher demonstrated a mathematical operation with some manipulatives but did not allow the students to perform the same operations with the manipulatives.

Teachers in grades 1, 2, and 3 integrated dry-erase whiteboards for each student to display their answer to a question during a teacher demonstration or review of a mathematical concept. One teacher engaged her Grade 2 students with individual clocks, whereby each student manipulated a time piece to set the correct time announced by the teacher, such as 20 after 6:00, 5 minutes before 8:00, or three-quarters after 9:00. Another Grade 2 teacher integrated number bonds to reinforce the principle of subtraction using the ones and tens place values. In the Grade 2 example that follows, the strategy of bar modeling was incorporated; however, the teacher provided few opportunities for the students to apply the model

and did not question the students’ thinking to determine how an answer was determined.

The Grade 2 teacher read a word problem from the textbook, then:

T: What did the sentence just tell you? Who are we talking about? How much money did she have?

S: She had $6.80 for a watermelon.

T: OK. And $2.40 to buy beans. Draw a bar: $6.80 [watermelon]

$2.40 [beans]

Are we finding the sum or subtracting?

S: Sum.

T: Quickly try to find the answer. Make sure the decimals are on top of each other. Remember we are not just finding the answer, but write your answer in a sentence: part-part-whole. Set-up the alignment:

6.80 [part] + 2.40 [part] [whole]

On the count of three, show me your answer.

Students displayed their answers by raising dry-erase whiteboards over their heads for the teacher to view their answer. The teacher responded with either “good” or “check your answer” to each displayed white board.

Individually rather than in pairs or in groups and either alone or in silence, students applied mathematical concepts described by a teacher during the last 5-10 minutes of a 50-minute class. When student collaboration or discussion occurred at the end of a lesson, there was little time for the teacher to probe the students’ reasons for arriving at an answer. Classroom observations in Kindergarten to Grade 4 revealed teachers integrating manipulatives in their instruction as well as incorporating bar modeling strategies and explicating Singapore Math vocabulary. Taken together, classroom observations data revealed a moderately strong implementation of the Singapore Mathematics framed through




O’Donnell’s teaching and curriculum-in-use constructs.

Standardized Achievement Results The introduction of the Singapore Math

curriculum did not negatively impact either the CRT test outcomes or ITBS achievement results from 2006-2009. Instead, CRT results from the 2007-2008 to the 2009-2010 academic year revealed that at least 65% of schools increased the percentage of students meeting minimum state CRT requirements in mathematics at every grade level: 65% of schools increased CRT achievement in mathematics in Grade 1, 75% of schools at Grade 2 and Grade 3, 85% of schools at Grade 4, and 80% of schools at Grade 5.

ITBS results from the 2007-2008 to the 2009-2010 academic year found 95% of schools increased average student percentile rankings on the mathematics portion of the ITBS for Grade 3 and Grade 4, 75% of schools increased for Grade 5, and 65% of schools increased for Grade 2. The largest increase in average percentile ranking on the ITBS was 34.91 points at one school; this increase occurred at Grade 3. The largest decrease was 10.79 points at one school; this decrease occurred in Grade 5. Table 2 shows the changes in ITBS percentile ranking in mathematics from 2006-2009:

Table 2 Change in ITBS Mean Percentile Ranking in

Math, 2006-2009

Increase 95%

Decrease 5%

Change in ITBS Mean Percentile Ranking in Math

Grade 2 2006-2009

Increase 100%

Decrease 0%


Grade 3 2006-2009

Increase 95%

Decrease 5%


Grade 4 2006-2009

Increase 85%

Decrease 15%


Grade 5 2006-2009




Similar to the CRT results, the implementation of the Singapore Math curriculum did not negatively affect the ITBS achievement scores. Table 3 reveals the elevating ITBS mean percentile ranking in mathematics for grades 2-5 from 2006-2009:

Table 3 ITBA Percentile Ranking, 2006-2009

Relating the positive CRT and ITBS

student achievement results to O’Donnell’s curriculum-in-use construct suggests the implementation of the new curriculum may have contributed to an increase in standardized test results. Determining the measures that may have contributed to these academic results as well as confounding factors implementing the new curriculum identified through surveys, journals, interviews, and observation data provide deeper insights into teachers’ perceptions and practices delivering the new mathematics curriculum.

Findings A strong claim can be made that the

Singapore Math curriculum positively impacts student learning after the first and second year as revealed in the CRT and ITBS tests results. This finding begins to answer the second research question related to student learning of

mathematics but does not, however, provide a more nuanced understanding into the research question concerning teachers’ confidence, practices, and perceptions implementing the new mathematics curriculum. O’Donnell’s (2008) framework offers a more meaningful analysis of the teachers’ successes and struggles delivering the new mathematics program by providing multiple constructs for evaluating the effective implementation of a new curriculum. Taken together, applying O’Donnell’s four constructs to the collected data in Table 4, reveals a curriculum that was implemented with moderately strong fidelity between 2008 and 2010:

Table 4 Implementation of the Singapore Math

Curriculum, 2008-2010

An equivocal response is advanced to the

research question concerning the influence of Singapore Math curriculum contributing to elementary teachers’ confidence and competence delivering mathematics. Survey data found no significant change in educators’ understanding of or confidence in mathematical concepts, either for educators at any individual grade level or for teachers considered as a whole group. Interview data collected from teachers and students as well as teachers’ journal reflections suggest that there is a growing interest in Singapore Math as it pertains to the

Mean ITBS Percentile Ranking Among All Schools

Grade 2 Grade 3

Grade 4 Grade 5

DATA COMPONENTS OF O’DONNELL’S MODEL (2008)

FIDELITY OF CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION (FCI)

Teacher Surveys

Curriculum profile & curriculum-in-use

Moderately strong fidelity (+FCI)

Teacher Journals

Curriculum profile & adaptation

Marginally strong fidelity (-/+FCI)

Teacher & Administrator Interviews

Curriculum profile & adaptation

Moderately strong fidelity (+FCI)

Classroom Observations

Teaching & curriculum-in-use

Marginally strong fidelity (-/+FCI)

Student Achievement Results

Curriculum-in-use

Strong fidelity (++FCI)




integration of manipulatives, conceptual development through bar modeling and number disks, hands-on activities, and real-life applications. Teachers’ journals revealed instructional areas that county and school administrators could target through training and ongoing support to cultivate instruction and strategies to foster student learning. Principals as well as teachers expressed interest in the integration of manipulatives, bar modeling strategies, number disks, and real life applications of Singapore Math, a small number of elementary educators were not receptive to the curriculum or strategies for teaching mathematics. Classroom observations revealed a large percentage of time devoted to teacher-centered instruction, possibly reflective of teachers’ developing understanding of the new curriculum.

Founded on an extensive review of efficacy and effectiveness studies, O’Donnell’s (2008) conceptualization of fidelity of K-12 core curriculum implementation acknowledges student achievement results as well as curriculum potential, teaching, curriculum-in-use, and adaptation. Qualitative data provided insights into the first research question concerning how the new mathematics curriculum was implemented by elementary teachers. Participating teachers identified workshops and professional development sessions as important occasions that provided knowledge and strategies when delivering the curriculum in the first and second year of implementation. Classroom observations in Kindergarten to Grade 5 revealed elementary teachers delivering the Singapore Math curriculum through extensive explanations of mathematical concepts, describing curriculum-specific vocabulary, and reviewing problem-sets as a class. There was a discrepancy, however, between teachers’ stated claims during interviews of how lessons were communicated and actual classroom practices observed. Classroom teachers’ focus on the pictorial and concrete, with intermittent attention devoted to student-centered application of abstract mathematical concepts and extension to real-world problems, raise questions related to fidelity of implementation.

Accountability pressures, time constraints, and elementary teachers’ developing understanding of the new mathematics curriculum may explain why the curriculum was delivered with a prevalence of teacher-centered instruction rather than integrating more opportunities for student-centered learning as well as a preponderance of concrete and pictorial concepts at the expense of abstract concepts. Addressing these inconsistent instructional approaches could be taken up through targeted training sessions to differentiate the new curriculum for English language learners. If teachers can learn to leverage these teaching strategies by encouraging students to explore the less familiar exercises and by guiding students’ thinking through appropriate questioning strategies, educators may be more effective cultivating students’ independent thinking and conceptual understanding of mathematics. Permitting students to develop the important skill of problem solving requires less teacher-centered instruction and more independent student effort or collaboration to discover solutions to mathematical questions. Further, when educators allow, in a supportive environment, all learners – including underachieving students – to get frustrated by mathematics, it can lead to dramatically improved achievement and test scores as well as increased student confidence and engagement (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999; Yeung, 2009).

Discussion Findings from this research identify

multiple areas that both positively impact and restrict the teachers’ ability to deliver the Singapore Math curriculum with fidelity. Results from this study provide insights for those embarking on implementing a new curriculum, including the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which is comparable to the Singapore Math curriculum (Achieve, 2010). Teachers expressed an appreciation of and desire for professional development workshops to deepen their understanding of and strategies to deliver the Singapore Math curriculum. The importance of teacher workshops in the first and second year of implementation to cultivate the efficacy and effectiveness of curriculum implementation is underscored, reflecting




educators’ need to comprehend not only subtle elements of the curriculum but to revisit essential concepts, principles, and strategies that positively impact student learning.

Facilitating the implementation of a new curriculum can be fostered through teacher-driven workshops delivered throughout the school year that target, for example, particular gaps or problems in teachers’ understanding or delivery of the curriculum (Bantwini & King-McKenzie, 2011; Boone et al., 2004; Obara & Sloan, 2009). Such an approach may reduce elementary educators’ anxiety about teaching the new curriculum (Hadley & Dorward, 2011). In conjunction, peer observations could foster collaborative learning that encourages the adoption of an approach to thinking through teachers’ development of a shared vision, personal mastery, mental models, and team learning – influencing teachers’ perceptions of a curriculum over time (Senge, 2007). Further, school administrators and faculty could conceptualize the implementation of a new curriculum through the problem-solving coherence framework (Childress & Marietta, 2008). Alternatively, faculty could construct a checklist – employed in other professions such as medicine to ensure rigor and fidelity when rolling out a new approach (Gawande, 2008) – to be utilized in classroom observations that may be modified from one quarter to the next and informed by issues raised in grade level meetings, peer observations, and targeted areas such as higher-order questioning strategies, vocabulary learning approaches for English language learners, strategies to differentiate the curriculum, integration of abstract mathematical problems, and opportunities for student-centered activities (Louis et al., 2010).

The introduction of a new curriculum extends to the provision, support, and mentoring of neophyte educators and teachers transferring into a system to resolve instruction and assessment issues that may be encountered. To be an effective educator, elementary teachers need to possess a deeper understanding of and confidence in mathematics well beyond the grade level they teach. Implementation also extends to the endorsement and support of parents/guardians through periodic newsletters,

e-mails, website postings, and parent/guardian-teacher meetings. If professional development is not afforded, teachers may modify a new curriculum and resort to previous teaching strategies or implement a new curriculum less effectively than it could if they received initial training and ongoing support.

The implementation of a new curriculum involves the coordination of multiple stakeholders and is sometimes fraught with internal and external pressures confronting teachers and school administrators. Reflective of curriculum changes that educators and administrators face, teacher education programs should continue to develop in teacher candidates the dispositions of openness, flexibility, and creativity in preparation for their future profession of change (Darling-Hammond, 2010). Preparing teacher candidates involves not only the knowledge of a subject-discipline, skills to manage a classroom of diverse learners, and ability to differentiate instruction, but the openness and flexibility to integrate a new curriculum, ability to adopt to a new schedule or pacing guide, and participation in peer observations.

It is reasonable to expect that as teachers become more acquainted with a new curriculum, teacher confidence and competency will increase and student test scores may also improve. Future studies evaluating the fidelity of implementation would want to assess the impact of teacher-training workshops on teachers’ instruction, carry out in-depth case studies of teachers’ attitudes and pedagogical practices related to a new curriculum, and conduct longitudinal studies tracking students’ interest and academic results in mathematics from the primary years to the middle years of schooling.

References Achieve. (2010). Comparing the common core state

standards and Singapore’s mathematics syllabus. Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://www.achieve.org/files/CCSSandSingapore.pdf.

Bantwini. B.D., & King-McKenzie, E.L. (2011). District officials’ assumptions about teacher learning and change: Hindering factors to curriculum reform implementation in South Africa. International Journal of Education, 3 (1), 1-25.




Bickman, L. et al. (2009). Approaches to measuring implementation fidelity in school-based program evaluations. Journal of Research in Character Education, 7(2), 75–101.

Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., & Cocking, R.R. (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Boggan, M., Harper, S., & Whitmire, A. (2010). Using manipulatives to teach elementary mathematics. Journal of Instructional Pedagogies, 3, 1-6.

Boone, W.J., D’Ambrosio, B.S., & Harkness, S.S. (2004). Planning district-wide professional development: insights gained from teachers and students regarding mathematics teaching in a large urban district. School Science and Mathematics, 104(1), 5-15.

Borko, H., Mayfield, V., Marion, S., Flexer, R. J., & Cumbo, K. (1997). Teachers' developing ideas and practices about mathematics performance assessment: Successes, stumbling blocks and implications for professional development. Los Angeles: National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST).

Cai, J. (2003). Singaporean students’ mathematical thinking in problem solving and problem posing: an exploratory study. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 34(5), 710-737.

Childress, S., & Marietta, G. (2008). A problem-solving approach to designing and implementing a strategy to improve performance. Public Education Leadership Project at Harvard University, PEL-056, 1-16.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). The flat world and education: How America’s commitment to equity will determine our future. New York and London: Teachers College Press.

Dobson, K. S., & Shaw, B. F. (1988). The use of treatment manuals in cognitive therapy: Experience and issues. Journal of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, 56(5), 673-680.

Dusenbury, L., Brannigan, R., Falco, M., & Hansen, W. B. (2003). A review of research on fidelity of implementation: Implications for drug abuse prevention in school settings. Health Education Research: Theory and Practice, 18(2), 237-256.

Falkenberg, T. (2011). Knowing mathematics-for-teaching: The case of planning learning activities. Problems of Education in the 21st Century, 35, 58-69.

Garelick, B. (2006). Miracle math. Education Next, 6(4), 39-45.

Gawande, A. (2008). The checklist manifesto. New York: Metropolitan Books.

Ginsburg, A., Leinwand, S., Anstrom, T., & Pollock, E. (2005). What the United States can learn from Singapore’s world-class mathematics system. Washington, D.C.: American Institutes for Research.

Gross, S., & Merchlinsky, S. (2002). Evaluation of the Singapore Math pilot program: Year 1 report of findings, Montgomery County Public Schools. Rockville, Maryland: Office of Shared Accountability.

Hadley, K.M., & Dorward, J. (2011). The relationship among elementary teachers’ mathematics anxiety, mathematics instructional practices, and student mathematics achievement. Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, 5(2), 27-44.

Hogan, B. (2004). Singapore Math: A problem-solving approach. Principal, 84(2), 22-23.

Hoven, J., & Garelick, B. (2007). Singapore Math: Simple or complex? Educational Leadership, 65(3), 28-31.

Hu, W. (2010). Making math as easy as 1, pause, 2, pause… New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/education/01math.html?_r=2&src=tp.

Johnson, M.H. (2000). A district-wide agenda to improve teaching and learning in mathematics. Journal of Classroom Interactions, 35, 1-7.

Lee, J.G., & Dian, G. (2007). The nation’s report card: Mathematics 2007. National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C.

Leinwand, S., & Ginsburg, A.L. (2007). Learning from Singapore Math. Educational Leadership, 65(3), 32-36.

Louis, K.S., Leithwood, K., Wahlstrom, K.L., & Anderson, S.E. (2010). Learning from leadership: Investigating the links to improved student learning. University of Minnesota: Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement.

Luppescu, S., & Hart, H. (2005). Sample Elementary 2005 – Details of student and teacher responses improving Chicago’s schools, 2005 survey report. Consortium on Chicago School Research, Chicago IL. Retrieved from www.consortium-chicago.org.

Marshall, C., & Rossman, G.B. (1995). Designing qualitative research, second edition. London: Sage Publications.

Menon, R. (2000). Should the United States emulate Singapore’s education system to achieve




Singapore’s success in the TIMSS? Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 5(6), 345-347.

Mercer, N. (2002). Developing dialogues, In Wells, G. & Claxton, G. (Eds), Learning for Life in the 21st Century. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 141-153.

Miles, M.B., & Huberman, M.A. (1994). Qualitative data analysis, second edition. London: Sage Publishers.

Muijis, D. (2006). Measuring teacher effectiveness: some methodological reflections. Educational Research and Education, 12(1), 53-74.

Muir, T. (2008). Principles of practice and teacher actions: Influences on effective teaching of numeracy. Mathematics Education Research Journal, 20(3), 78-101.

Newton, X. (2007). Reflections on math reforms in the U.S.: a cross-national perspective. Phi Delta Kappa, 88(9), 681-685.

Obara, S., & Sloan, M. (2009). Classroom experiences with new curriculum materials during the implementation of performance standards in mathematics: A case study of teachers coping with change. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 8(2), 349-372.

O’Donnell, C.L. (2008). Defining, conceptualizing, and measuring fidelity of implementation and its relationship to outcomes in K-12 curriculum intervention research. Review of Educational Research, 78(1), 33-84.

OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) (2009). Mathematics: understanding the score (Improving practice in mathematics teaching at primary level). London, England.

Osmundson, E., Herman, J., Ringstaff, C., Dai, Y., & Timms, M. (2012). Measuring fidelity of Implementation- Methodological and conceptual issues and challenges. (CRESST Report 811). Los Angeles, CA: University of California, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST).

Patton, M.Q. (2002). Utilization-focused evaluation (U-FE) checklist. Western Michigan University, Evaluation Checklists Project, Retrieved from http://web.idrc.ca/uploads/user-S/10905198311Utilization_Focused_Evaluation.pdf.

Penuel, W.R., Fishman, B.J., Yamaguchi, R., & Gallagher, L.P. (2007). What makes professional development effective? Strategies that foster curriculum implementation.

American Educational Research Journal, 44(4), 921-958.

Puchner, L., Taylor, A., O’Donnell, B., & Fick, K. (2008). Teacher learning and mathematics manipulatives: A collective case study about teacher use of manipulatives in elementary and middle school mathematics lessons. School Science & Mathematics, 108(7), 313-325.

Reimer, K., & Moyer, P.S. (2005). Third-graders learn about fractions using virtual manipulatives: a classroom study. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, 24(1), 5-25.

Rubin, H.J., & Rubin, I.S. (2005). Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data, second edition. Thousand Lakes, CA: Sage.

Saldana, J. (2009). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.

Senge, P.M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Silver, E.A., Mesa, V.M., Morris, K.A., Star, J.R., & Benken, B.M. (2009). Teaching mathematics for understanding: an analysis of lesson submitted by teachers seeking NBPTS certification. American Educational Research Journal, 46(2), 502-531.

Slavin, R.E., & Lake, C. (2008). Effective programs in elementary mathematics: a best-evidence synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 78(3), 427-515.

Stecher, B., Le, V., Hamilton, L., Ryan, G., & Lockwood, J.R. (2006). Using structured classroom vignettes to measure instructional practices in mathematics. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 28(2), 101-130.

Stigler, J.W., & Hiebert, J. (1999). The Teaching Gap. New York: Free Press.

Tapia, M., & Marsh, G.E. (2004). An instrument to measure mathematics attitude. Academic Exchange Quarterly, 8(2), 1-9.

Uribe-Florez, L.J., & Wilkins, J.L.M. (2010). Elementary school teachers' manipulative use. School Science & Mathematics, 110(7), 363-371.

U.S. Department of Education (2008). Foundations for success: The final report of the national mathematics advisory panel. Washington, D.C.: National Mathematics Advisory Panel.

Walshaw, M., & Anthony, G. (2008). The teacher’s role in classroom discourse: a review of recent research into mathematics classrooms. Review of Educational Research, 78(3), 516-551.

Wisconsin Center for Education Research, (2004). Survey of Instructional Practices: Teacher




Survey Grades K-12, Mathematics. A joint project of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, Surveys of Enacted Curriculum. Retrieved from http://seconline.wceruw.org/Reference/K12mthSurvey.pdf.

Yeung, B. (2009). Kids master mathematics when they’re challenged but supported. Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/math-underachieving-mathnext-rutgers-newark.

About the Author

James Badger, PhD James Badger is an assistant professor of research and assessment in the College of Education at the University of North Georgia. His research areas include professional development of pre-service teachers, program evaluation, values in education, qualitative research, and charter schools.

The Georgia Association of Teacher Educators

is an organization of educators from Georgia's public and private schools.

Those wishing to become members or renew membership

may find an application online.


is a refereed online journal with national representation on its editorial

review board, published by the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators.

Each issue is non-thematic. The journal, published annually in October,

is soliciting manuscripts concerned with teacher education, including teaching

and learning, induction, in-service education, and pre-service education.

Project descriptions, research reports, theoretical papers, debates, papers

espousing a particular point of view, and descriptions of activities or

issues in teacher education at the local, state, or national level

would be appropriate topics for the journal.

Editors:

Dr. Judy Butler, University of West Georgia

Dr. Janet Strickland, University of West Georgia

Copy Editor:

Dr. Robyn Huss, University of West Georgia

GEORGIA ASSOCIATION OF TEACHER EDUCATORS

October 23-25, 2013

Jekyll Island Club Hotel

371 Riverview Drive Jekyll Island, GA 31527

Conference Registration

forms are available on the GATE home page:

www.gaate.org

Make Hotel Reservations Directly with the Hotel

$139.00 per night single or double occupancy

Room Reservations: 800-535-9547; 912-635-2600

FAX 912-635-2818 www.jekyllclub.com

Join us at the GATE 2014 Fall Conference

We’re on the Web!

www.gaate.org

http://www.jekyllclub.com

Date post:	10-Mar-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	gateways
View:	223 times
Download:	2 times

GATEways 2013

Documents