Jonee Wilson - US grants

Creating supportive middle school mathematics learning spaces that foster students' self-efficacy and mathematics learning is a critical need in the United States. This need is particularly urgent for mathematics classrooms with students who have been historically marginalized in such spaces. While many instructional improvement efforts have focused on broadening access to mathematical ideas, fewer efforts have paid explicit attention to the ways instructional practices may serve to marginalize students. Supporting teachers in identifying and refining their equitable mathematics instructional practices is a persistent challenge. This project brings together a successful mathematics rubric-based coaching model (MQI Coaching) and an empirically developed observation tool focused on equity-focused instructional practices, the Equity and Access Rubrics for Mathematics Instruction (EAR-MI). The project's work integrates the EAR-MI rubrics into the MQI Coaching model with 24 middle grades mathematics coaches supporting 72 teachers at grades 5-8. The project measures the effects of the coaching model on teachers' beliefs and instructional practices and on students' mathematical achievement and sense of belonging in mathematics. The project also investigates how teachers' attitudes and beliefs impact their participation and what teachers take away from engagement with the coaching model.

The project makes use of a delayed-treatment experimental design to investigate effects on teacher beliefs and practices and student achievement and sense of belonging. A cohort of 14 coaches are randomly selected to participate in the coaching in Years 2 and 3, with the remaining 10 coaches assigned to a business-as-usual model in Year 2 and engaging in the training in Year 3. Coaches engage in a 4-day summer training to become acquainted with the model with coaching cycles and follow-up meetings during the school year. Each coach will engage teachers in 8-10 coaching cycles in treatment years. Data on the nature of the coaching includes logs and surveys from the coaches. Teachers submit surveys related to their beliefs and practices and two lessons each at the start and end of the academic year for analysis. Student assessment data, course grades, and administrative data, combined with survey data from students on classroom belonging and perceptions of ability and confidence in mathematics, are used to describe student outcomes. Teacher outcomes are captured through the analysis of classroom video, surveys about ethnic-racial identity and racial attitudes, beliefs about students and instruction, and beliefs about and efficacy for culturally responsive teaching. The project uses a set of survey measures with established reliability and validity, adapting some instruments to include specific indicators related to the equity and access rubrics. Analysis of the data uses a multi-level model accounting for the clustering of teachers within schools and students within classrooms and schools.

This project is funded by the Discovery Research PreK-12 (DRK-12) Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). The DRK-12 program 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.

School and district leaders play an important role in supporting teachers to learn new practices, especially those related to equity. Both researchers and educators have often treated educational leadership that promotes racial justice as separate from mathematics teaching. This project focuses on developing anti-racist mathematics teaching and learning practices that have led to inequitable school experiences for Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students. This study is a partnership with school and central office leaders from one district and educational researchers from three universities with expertise in both educational leadership and mathematics education. Partnership activities include documenting how leaders learn and develop anti-racist leadership practices and then measuring the impact on teachers’ instruction and students’ experiences. This project will result in a refined set of leadership practices that support anti-racist, ambitious teaching and learning by fostering Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students’ positive racialized mathematical identities, positioning students as central members of their mathematics learning communities, and affirming their home and cultural assets. Moreover, the tools, routines, and leadership moves developed and used by the partner educators will help researchers and educators better envision and advocate for anti-racist leadership in the areas of school systems and policies, mathematics teaching and learning, and supports for teacher learning. This award is funded by the Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) which 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.<br/><br/>This mixed-methods study aims to document how leaders learn and develop leadership practices to support anti-racist and ambitious mathematics learning opportunities for students, and measure the relationship between these practices and a) teachers’ instruction and b) students’ experiences. In a research-practice partnership (RPP), both educational leadership and mathematics education researchers from three universities and leadership practitioners from three elementary schools and a central office team in one district will collaborate to understand how and if leadership for anti-racist, ambitious mathematics teaching and learning is a key lever to create more racially just schools. Qualitative analysis of observations, interviews, documents, and artifacts from the RPP and from leaders’ practices will demonstrate leaders’ developing understandings and practices. Mixed-methods analyses of classroom video recordings and artifacts, teacher interviews, student focus groups and student surveys will describe the relationship between leaders’ actions, teachers’ practices, and students’ learning experiences. Findings will contribute to both the fields of justice focused leadership and mathematics education by explaining how this type of leadership shapes content-specific instruction and will provide much-needed guidance for practitioners looking to cultivate antiracist teaching, learning, and leadership in schools.<br/><br/>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.