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ALGEBRA LEARNING FOR ALL (ALFA)

Funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, this project is currently in its third year.

Purpose of the Study:

Develop and experimentally test a video-based professional development program to help 6th grade teachers teach critical mathematics standards that are key to improving student achievement.

Background:

The Third International Mathematics and Science Video Study (TIMSS), conducted at LessonLab, found that U.S. mathematics teachers present problems to students just as rich in learning potential as do teachers from higher achieving countries (Hiebert et al., 2003). But once they start to work through the problems in class, U.S. teachers convert them into step-by-step procedures or simply give the answer. As a result, American students never get to learn the concepts that underlie the procedures. Why do we multiply here? How is this related to what we learned last week?

Specific Goals:

1) Improve teachers’ knowledge of mathematical content for its use in the classroom (i.e., pedagogical content knowledge),
2) Improve teachers’ ability to teach critical mathematics standards and maintain high conceptual levels of mathematical reasoning, and
3) Increase students’ mathematical achievement.

Duration of the project: 4 years (2003-07)

Year 1: Development of Professional Development (PD) Materials
Years 2 & 3: Implementation of the PD with 6th-grade teachers
Year 4: Data Analyses and Writing of Reports

Research Design

During the first year of implementation, teachers were randomly assigned to the Experimental and Control conditions. Teachers assigned to the Experimental group participated in approximately 40 hours of video-based professional development. Teachers in the Control group did not participate in a mathematics professional development program during the first year, except for attending common planning time meetings or evening PD activities organized by the district.

During the second year of implementation, teachers who were assigned to the Control group will also be provided with PD. The two groups of teachers will participate together in a second version of the video-based PD, focused on the same key content areas of the pre-algebra curriculum but including new examples of rich problems.

Contact

This project is being directed by Jim Stigler; Rossella Santagata is serving as Co-PI.

LessonLab Research Institute is the independent research arm of Achievement Solutions at Pearson. Our mission is to improve teaching and learning in K-12 classrooms.

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