Marta Civil - US grants

The University of Arizona and the school districts of the greater Tucson area over 5 years will inservice 90 elememtary and middle school teachers in three summer institutes totaling six weeks over three summers as well as activities during the school year. Meaningfully integrating the teaching of grades 3-7 mathematics with the use of problem solving andtechnology, teams each composed of 1 middle school teacher and two teachers from a "feeder" elementary school will examine current research, exemplary materials, and develop strategies for implementing current practices in their classrooms.

ESI-9814003 Horack This planning grant, which is part of a joint National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Education K-8 mathematics initiative, will focus on developing a plan to improve the teaching of mathematics in grades K-12 students in the Tucson Unified School District through a collaborative effort by resource personnel, teachers administrators, parents, community/business members, special populations experts, and the University of Arizona. To provide ongoing district wide professional development & community support for reform-based mathematics, an eighty member Teacher Cadre is train to both improve the mathematical pedagogy of mathematics teachers and foster community support.

9901275
GAY

In several primarily Hispanic, low socio-economic school districts of the southwest in partnership with local institutions of higher learning, this 48-month project will develop programs and materials to attract parents of children of all grade levels and make them active supporters of a system that promotes good mathematical learning for their children. These programs and materials will help them become aware of what is happening in their children's classroom; offer them occasions to take on leadership roles in working with teachers, administrators, and other parents; and provide them opportunities for in-depth experiences with school mathematics. The materials will be initially developed and piloted in the Sunnyside School District. After revision from the pilot project, the project will be implemented in several other school districts.

Girls in the SYSTEM (Sustaining Youth in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics)
A. Project Summary. Five departments of the University of Arizona and the Sahuaro Girl Scout Council have forged a partnership to create a three-year project to improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education for girls in grades 3-8, especially Mexican American, Native American and economically underprivileged girls in southern Arizona. The partnership connects two groups with significant experience working with girls and minorities as well as with educators in STEM and represents a crucial linking of informal and formal education for this target population. It adopts a holistic model connecting the educational system with its broader social context. The project builds on research and past efforts in three significant ways: by emphasizing home and community connections; by uniting university educators, inservice teachers, preservice teachers, and Girls Scout troop leaders; and by linking the following program components:
1) After-School and Summer Programs are designed to stimulate and nurture girls' interests in using methods of inquiry to enhance their understandings of STEM. They will take place at sites established by the Sahuaro Girl Scout Council. While after-school programs will be for girls exclusively, mixed gender settings will be incorporated into summer programs to allow all participants, youth and educators, to benefit from interacting in a gender equitable context. Both programs will engage youth in the use of challenging, hands-on activities that support and expand their abilities to solve problems using the tools of scientific investigation and their natural curiosity about how things work. Inservice and preservice teachers (formal educators), Girls Scout troop leaders (informal educators) will facilitate the after-school and summer programs collaboratively.
2) Professional Development Workshops will be offered for formal and informal educators. These will provide opportunities for work with innovative educational resources that will increase participants' knowledge of STEM and provide instructional ideas for their work with youth. The workshops will foster collaboration and promote mentoring relationships between these groups of educators. They will also focus on issues of equity in STEM, on uses of alternative pedagogies, and on educational bridges between home, school and careers.
3) Workshops for Parents and other family members will serve to strengthen their roles as legitimate partners in the education of their children, especially of their daughters. The workshops will actively engage family members in STEM activities and apprise them of ways of supporting the academic preparation of their children. In addition, discussions and career panel presentations will inform parents of the long-term implications and benefits of succeeding in STEM and of the institutional and societal obstacles that minority children often face in participating in STEM.
4) Leadership Development Opportunities will be offered to adult participants to allow them to take leadership in extending the project's impact. Mini-grants and equity internships will enable them to develop activities such as study groups, mother-daughter STEM events, and presentations to other interested community groups.
5) Research created by means of the project evaluation will add to the sparse knowledge base on STEM education with Mexican American and Native American girls.

The Center for the Mathematics Education of Latinos/as (CEMELA) addresses the mathematics education needs of the largest and most rapidly growing minority group in the country, a diverse group that has one of the most disturbing patterns of academic achievement. Given the unique language, social and cultural factors associated with working-class/low-income Latino/as students and communities, a multidisciplinary approach is necessary to address their education. Although there are well-established scholars who focus on the education of Latinos, their research is in the areas of policy, language and culture, not primarily in mathematics education. Few mathematics education scholars have multidisciplinary expertise in the particular areas relevant to the learning of mathematics by Latinos/as.

The goal of the Center for the Mathematics Education of Latinos/as is to advance the field of mathematics education by:

(A) Developing an integrated model that connects mathematics teaching and learning to the cultural, social, and linguistic contexts of Latino/as students and
(B) Increasing the number of mathematics educators and teachers with this integrated knowledge to ultimately improve the mathematics education of Latinos/as, particularly those of low-income backgrounds.

This goal will be achieved by the collaboration of experts in mathematics education, mathematics and language and culture in education. CEMELA brings together in Arizona, The University of Arizona, Sunnyside Unified School District and Tucson Unified School District; in Illinois, The University of Illinois at Chicago and Chicago Public Schools; in California, The University of California at Santa Cruz, North Monterey County School District and Pajaro Unified School District; and in New Mexico, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque Public Schools, Socorro Consolidated Schools, and The Bernalillo Public Schools. Intentionally, the Center represents diverse geographical contexts -- borderlands (UA), urban
(UIC), rural (agricultural/migrant) (UCSC) and rural/urban (UNM) -- to adequately capture the corresponding diversity of educational and cultural experiences among Latinos/as.

The Arizona Master Teachers of Mathematics (AZ-MTM) is a partnership among the University of Arizona Department of Mathematics and College of Education, the Tucson Unified School District, the Sunnyside School District, the Pima County Regional Support Center, and the Arizona K-12 Center. The AZ-MTM is working to create 20 Master Teachers (as part of a single cohort) who can provide school, district, and state-level leadership in K-8 mathematics. The AZ-MTM is a 5-year program that provides extensive training to Master Teacher Fellows (MTFs) in the leadership of professional learning communities, analysis of authentic artifacts of practice, coaching and mentoring strategies, equity in mathematics teaching and learning, organizational structures and systems thinking, and pre-service teacher education. The program is structured using an apprenticeship model, with MTFs taking increased leadership roles and responsibility for professional development in mathematics within their schools and districts as the program progresses. The AZ-MTM program builds directly upon research on mathematics teacher professional development and teacher leader development in that Fellows are developing knowledge of research, and acquiring practical experience implementing research-based professional development. Research-based methods central to the AZ-MTM program include analysis of student work and other artifacts, development of professional learning communities, cognitive and content coaching, and consideration of organizational contexts. The intellectual merit of the program is further demonstrated by its focus on the development of teacher leaders who have knowledge of research and methods in the areas of equity, mathematical discourse, and English Language Learners, and cultural and community knowledge in mathematics education. The impacts of the AZ-MTM program begin with the Master Teacher Fellows themselves and then spread through the schools and districts in which the MTFs work. Fellows assist other teachers in their schools in improving their teaching of mathematics. Importantly, the AZ-MTM program is creating Master Teachers who utilize professional development methods that are research-based and who focus teachers' attention on supporting the mathematics learning of students who have been underrepresented in STEM fields. In these ways, the program is helping to ensure the broadest impact possible on the quality of K-8 mathematics instruction.

The University of Arizona is partnering with the Tucson Unified School District to implement and study a professional community designed to alleviate the mismatch between the expectations of student teachers in mathematics and science and their mentor in-service teachers. This vexing problem often arises when student teachers expect to implement reform-based pedagogies while their mentor teachers insist on traditional approaches. The project is creating a "third space," a professional community that includes 40 pre-service and 50 in-service teachers, university scientists and mathematicians, science and mathematics education faculty, and school district administrators. The third space is providing a neutral forum for the exchange of perspectives on issues of pedagogy with the expectation that student teachers would implement inquiry-based science and problem-solving mathematics pedagogies with the knowledgeable support of their mentor teachers. The project is being implemented in two low-income, culturally and linguistically diverse elementary schools with a comparison school used as a control.

The evaluation/research component is a qualitative study led by Horizon Research, Inc. The fundamental research question is whether the third space model establishes interpretive systems that foster enactment of inquiry-based and problem-solving teaching practices. Data collection will include all participants in the third space forum, but focuses on the pre-service and in-service teachers through written products and discussions of lesson design activities, videotapes of teaching by pre-service and in-service teachers, and analysis of comments made in a web-based forum. Instruments to be used are the Reform Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP), the Experiences Patterns Explanations (EPE) framework, and the Inquiry-Application Instructional Model (I-AIM).

The main product of this project is the third space model and the research that supports its success. The model will be disseminated broadly and if replicated widely, it would represent a major improvement in the professional development of teachers in the areas of inquiry-based science and problem-solving mathematics.

The Noyce Arizona Mathematics Teaching (AZ MaTh) Program will bring together partnerships between the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies at the University of Arizona, two high-need local educational agencies and a magnet middle school in Tucson. The goal of this program is to recruit mathematics majors that will become 30 highly qualified mathematics teachers in Arizona. The program will offer a head-on response to the shortage of highly qualified mathematics teachers through multifaceted and innovative recruitment activities, and by implementing a teacher preparation program that develops and strengthens prospective teachers' abilities to work with diverse students across Arizona and the rest of the nation. The program is characterized by involving a community of mathematics and mathematics education faculty, undergraduates, teachers, secondary mathematics students and their families in a collective effort to prepare high-quality mathematics teachers. While the program is designed for University of Arizona students to work with students from local school districts, it has the potential to become a model for other programs across the country; especially in the way prospective teachers interact with the local community and learn to incorporate their culture and language as educational assets.

AZ MaTh will prepare secondary mathematics teachers with strong content and pedagogical knowledge as well as a deep understanding of cultural and linguistic aspects in the teaching and learning of mathematics to diverse students. The overall goals of the AZ Noyce MaTh Program will be to: (1) promote secondary mathematics teaching as a viable and engaging career choice for talented undergraduate students in mathematics, (2) recruit undergraduate students into the STEM teacher pipeline, with an emphasis on academic merit, and to increase the number of Secondary Mathematics Education Program graduates in the Department of Mathematics, (3) create a sustainable recruitment program for future mathematics teachers that includes significant and substantial experiences to work with middle and high school students, and (4) enhance our Secondary Mathematics Education Program to prepare future mathematics teachers for excellence in teaching and working with ethnically and linguistically diverse students in Arizona and nationwide. The AZ MaTh program provides high quality experiences for the potential teachers to work with students and families in local area schools, and with other undergraduate students enrolled in mathematics courses at various levels. These experiences include serving as (1) tutors in local secondary schools, (2) undergraduate teaching assistants in mathematics courses for elementary teachers, (3) teacher assistants in summer internships with partner schools, and (4) interns in an afterschool program at a partner bilingual school. Course materials and the outcomes and experiences of the Noyce scholars in the afterschool program will be made available to other mathematics educators and teacher preparation programs. The project takes advantage of ongoing and planned collaborations between mathematicians and mathematics educators to improve undergraduate course curricula for prospective teachers. The project team's research efforts also have the potential to contribute to a broad understanding of how intentional cultural sensitivity and attentiveness to language barriers during pre-service training of math teachers can lead to student success and a diversity in the types of teachers recruited to the program.

This project at University of Arizona, a Hispanic Serving Institution, aims to serve the national interest by transforming undergraduate mathematics teaching. It intends to do so by creating positive learning environments that support all students, particularly those from groups that are not yet equitably represented in STEM. As an Institutional and Community Transformation project, it will bring together undergraduate students, STEM peer mentors, mathematics graduate students, and instructional faculty to support one another?s learning. Project components include workshops on Inquiry Based Learning and anti-deficit teaching, summer-bridge Precalculus and Calculus workshops, critical conversations about race and gender in STEM, a Faculty Learning Community, and faculty-led student interviews. The focus on anti-deficit pedagogy responds to a critical need for STEM instructor professional development that attends to issues related to race and gender. Expected project outcomes include shifts in the instructors? teaching practices, their perceptions of students, and their understanding about how to challenge systemic inequities.

The project responds to a critical need for research on community-based professional development programs that prioritize undergraduate students from populations that are underrepresented in STEM. The project?s research plan will investigate the impacts of the community learning process on instructors? teaching. Design-based research methods and process evaluation will support implementation of the project activities and interrogate critical design principles, to support design improvements over the award period. The project will examine Inquiry-based Learning practices in classrooms that serve many underrepresented minority students. By adapting the ?teachers as ethnographers method? from Funds of Knowledge research, instructors will participate in critical conversations at the university?s cultural centers and conduct individual interviews with students. These activities will support instructors? development of awareness of relevant social and policy issues that affect their students, their teaching, and the University as a whole. Written reflections and surveys, together with focus-group and individual interviews, will document the instructors? developmental processes. The project has the potential to improve the learning climate, especially for students from underrepresented groups, and develop future change agents to design and deliver equitable teaching. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

The connections between students' home and family contexts and the activities of formal schooling are critical to support meaningful learning and family engagement in formal schooling. The need to better understand and make use of those connections is particularly important for multilingual learners whose family and cultural contexts may differ significantly from school contexts and their teachers' own experiences. The goal of this project is to develop and study a mathematics partnership that engages multilingual children, their teachers, and their parents in mathematical experiences together. These mathematical experiences are designed to advance equity in mathematics education for multilingual students. The project will design professional learning opportunities for parents, teachers, and students, and study the ways in which the professional learning opportunities influence teacher beliefs, quality of instruction, parent beliefs, and teacher and parent understanding of positioning.

This project uses a design-based implementation research (DBIR) approach, along with principles of Social Design Experiments to engage in iterative cycles of inquiry to develop, implement, and refine the model. Parents, teachers, and students in three states (Arizona, Maryland, and Missouri) will be recruited that represent diverse populations both with respect to demographics and with respect to the policy contexts surrounding multilingual learners. Two cohorts of parents will be invited to participate in the parent-teacher study group, one consisting of 6 parents and teachers per site and one consisting of 20 parents and their children?s teachers per site. In each iteration, data will be collected at multiple time points related to teachers? beliefs about effective math instruction for multilingual students; quality of mathematics instruction for linguistically diverse students; focus group interviews with parents and students, and video records of teachers and parents working with their students doing mathematics during study group convenings. Data analysis will blend quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative methods will include t-tests, multivariate, and correlational analyses to examine changes in teacher beliefs, instructional quality, and the relationships between the two. Qualitative analyses using thematic coding and discourse analysis will be used to analyze study group meetings and outcomes related to parent and teacher positioning of multilingual learners.

The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.