Scottsdale, AZ (PRWEB) April 04, 2012
The National Science Foundation has awarded an 8.7M grant that will fund a project in which three of the Maricopa Community Colleges ? Scottsdale Community College (as the lead), Glendale Community College and Chandler-Gilbert Community College, will create and deliver professional development workshops that will support middle school teachers in advancing their knowledge about the teaching and learning of mathematics.
The project, ?Promoting Excellence in Arizona Middle School Mathematics: Increasing Student Achievement through Systemic Instructional Change,? will benefit six Valley middle school districts: Deer Valley, Scottsdale, Fountain Hills, Chandler, Florence, and J.O. Combs school districts, as well as the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Community schools.
The project is a strategic response to the national 2010 Common Core State Standards Initiative in grades K-12 led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Arizona has embraced these standards as a way to systematically improve teaching and learning to ensure that students are well prepared for future college mathematics courses and the workforce.
?Teachers will be engaged in activities that promote their understanding of mathematics and connect their new ways of thinking with their classroom practice,? said Dr. April Strom, SCC mathematics professor and principle investigator for the project. ?Project activities are designed to build teachers? knowledge while rejuvenating their excitement about mathematics.?
According to Strom, workshops will focus on developing teachers? deep understanding of the big ideas of middle school mathematics. Teachers will be supported in shifting their thinking about math as a set of skills and procedures to thinking about math as a collection of well-connected ideas that anchor their curriculum and instruction.
Since 2003, math professors from Scottsdale CC and Chandler-Gilbert CC have provided professional development workshops to over 260 in-service teachers at eight school districts statewide, impacting over 10,000 students. The funding for these workshops, now totaling approximately $ 2 million, came from the US Department of Education and the Arizona Department of Education.
Dr. James Vicich, SCC mathematics professor, was the coordinator for the professional development workshops from 2004-2011, and will serve as a Director of Workshops for the new grant.
?Most recently, Cottonwood Middle Schools reported sustained gains in the number of student scoring at the highest level on the AIMS math test, and attributed their success to the districts? collaboration with SCC faculty,? said Vicich. ?Cottonwood teachers have reported positive impacts on their classroom practices, an increase in their students? enthusiasm for math, and an increase in their own confidence.?
The new NSF-funded partnership will involve 300 in-service middle school math teachers, 32 middle school math teacher-leaders, 40 middle school administrators and 140 pre-service middle school teachers (current education majors at the community colleges). Supporting partners are Arizona State University, Maricopa Community College District, and the Glendale, Mesa and Peoria school districts. The partnership will impact a total of 24,000 students in grades 5-8.
Teachers and administrators will be engaged in workshops that emphasize conceptual understanding, computational fluency, and problem-solving skills for students. The project will help teachers connect what they learn in the workshops with their classroom practice.
?It is well documented that students? attitudes and beliefs about mathematics shift significantly ? in the wrong direction ? during their middle school years,? said Strom. ?This project aims to change this phenomenon by working with teachers to find innovative ways to engage their students and turn their students on to mathematics.?
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