Martin L. Maehr - US grants

The achievement of all students in schools, but especially in mathematics and science, is a national concern for American schools. Moreover, there are concerns about the achievement of minority students in mathematics and science. There are many suggestions for educational improvement, but one that seems to offer important benefits for students is the use of small collaborative groups. Students that work in small groups to solve academic tasks seem to do achieve at higher levels and also have more positive attitudes towards learning. At the same time, there may be difficulties in the use of small groups for learning in that some students may not feel competent in groups, some students may not participate equally, and some minority students may feel left out of the group or may feel incompetent in the groups.

The proposed study will examine how small groups can be structured to increase the likelihood that all students, but especially minority students, can achieve more and have more positive attitudes towards learning. The study will involve the use of different conditions to structure group learning of mathematics tasks. One condition will have the groups focus on mastery and understanding of mathematics. A second condition will have the groups focus on doing better than other groups in a more competitive mode. A control condition will include students working individually on the same math tasks. It is expected that working in small groups under a mastery condition will have benefits for all students, but especially for minority students. The results will help us understand how different conditions can improve the operation of small group learning. These results can be used to guide teachers in improving their use of small groups in classrooms.

The study would develop new measures of non-cognitive outcome of schooling on motivation, self-efficiency, self-regulation strategies, and beliefs about learning. The study addresses the concern of the effect of beliefs and strategies on cognitive growth. These measures could be used in the MSP Projects to assess effects of the various interventions on students. The study would gather large pools of survey data by working with the Math and Science Partnership projects as well as other sites and would analyze these data with sophisticated statistical models. The study will be significantly large enough to include a specific examination of underrepresented groups. The goal of the investigators is to make new tools for assessing student motivation generally available to MSP projects to be used for increasing teachers knowledge about the role of these beliefs, and assist them in helping students. Also, the tools are intended to assist MSPs evaluate the effectiveness of their implementation.

Investigators from the University of Michigan and the University of California - Irvine, in support of partnership projects of the Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program, are conducting research on the role of teacher motivation in professional development (PD). The Math and Science Partnership - Motivation Assessment Program II (MSP-MAP II) is building on (a) capacity developed during prior work, (b) current partnerships with two MSP projects, TEAM-Math (Alabama) and TASEL-M (California), and (c) the development of new collaborations, most notably with the Georgia-based Partnership for Reform in Science and Mathematics. Whereas the MSP program has demonstrated success in improving teacher content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, as well as student proficiency in mathematics and science, the MSP-MAP II project answers a fundamental need to examine the influence of teacher motivation for and engagement in teacher PD. While motivational concerns are often alluded to in PD programs (e.g., participation incentives or teacher confidence), the motivational processes in teacher PD remains an understudied component of teacher training interventions in general, and in MSP interventions in particular. Recognition of the importance of teacher motivation in the PD process arises at a time of renewed focus on teacher motivation, but what distinguishes current work is its comprehensive application of contemporary motivation theory and research. This research offers a range of constructs and assessment tools that are relevant to the process of PD in mathematics and science instruction, and to the formative and summative evaluation of teacher PD interventions in the MSP program.

MSP-MAP II is systematically applying current work on teacher motivation to the domain of teacher PD with the following goals:
(1) developing a knowledge base of motivation theory, research and assessment that is relevant for the PD process;
(2) developing and making available a suite of motivation-related reliable and valid assessment tools for MSP projects to use for formative and summative evaluation;
(3) collaborating with MSP projects to test and refine the proposed model of motivation in teacher PD;
(4) facilitating the incorporation of the model and motivation-related PD assessment tools into existing and future MSP logic models and evaluation designs; and
(5) disseminating the PD model and assessment tools to the broader teaching and research communities.

MSP-MAP II is accomplishing its goals by surveying more than 2,000 teachers at various stages of PD. Through its systematic study of teacher motivation in PD, MSP-MAP II is contributing to the growing theoretical and empirical literature on teacher motivation, particularly in regard to expectancy-value, achievement goals and interest theories.