In this MSP project, the University of Rochester partners with the Greece,
Penfield and Rush-Henrietta School Districts as well as a consortium of
twenty-three rural districts through the Genesee Valley Board of Cooperative
Educational Services (GVBOCES) in an effort to develop effective ways
to foster the mathematical content knowledge necessary for a successful
implementation of reform mathematics curricula. The three suburban Rochester
districts are in various stages of the adoption and implementation of
curricula while the rural districts are in the early stages of a curricular
reform process. Together, the districts in this partnership serve roughly
28,000 students. Other partners in this work are the Education Development
Center, Horizon Research and WestEd.
For curricular reform to succeed,
the partners believe that multiple constituencies need to be engaged in
practices that enhance mathematical knowledge including K-12 teachers
and other school support personnel, parents and other influential community
members, and mathematicians and mathematics educators who prepare future
teachers. To this end, they will:
* Offer a series of reform mathematics
courses, each focusing on different sets of mathematical concepts addressed
by the adopted curricula and targeted to the various constituencies in
such a manner that they will experience learning mathematics similar to
ways in which students learn the discipline;
* Train teacher leaders
to facilitate mathematics case discussions involving in-depth analysis
of student thinking; and
* Engage various groups in evening chats about
school mathematics reform, with a special emphasis on understanding goals
and expectations for student learning of mathematics; chats will involve
different combinations of mathematicians, mathematics educators, K-12
teachers, parents and community members.
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