- Year 2016
- NSF Noyce Award # 1339601
- First Name Lillie
- Last Name Albert
- Discipline Mathematics
- Co-PI(s)
Chi-Keung Cheung, Boston College, cheungc@bc.edu
;
Sol Friedberg, Boston College, solomon.friedberg@bc.edu - Presenters
Chi-Keung Cheung, Boston College, cheungc@bc.edu
Need
The nation needs more outstanding mathematics teachers, a need that is critical to its competitiveness in an increasingly global economy. This need is magnified in high needs school districts; at present, students in such districts are less likely to become part of our nation’s future STEM workforce. With the reasoning-intensive new math curriculum to be implemented, it is critical to increase the nation’s supply of highly qualified new
mathematics teachers. This project creates programs to address local and national needs.
Goals
1. To increase output of the current Masters level mathematics teacher preparation program at Boston College by preparing Teaching Fellows to become excellent mathematics teachers for high-need schools.
2. To recruit and support outstanding practicing teachers (Master Teaching Fellows) in mathematics from high-need school districts who have exhibited excellent skills and knowledge and the capability for developing and sustaining classrooms that illustrate the CCSS practice standards to become highly qualified instructional leaders and mentors.
3. To expand, coordinate, and sustain the infrastructure, and consortium, among mathematicians, mathematics educators and teachers in the greater Boston area to build a strong lasting professional community.
Approach
The Boston College Department of Teacher Education (The Lynch School of Education) and Department of Mathematics (Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences), working together with the Math for America-Boston and with colleagues at Boston University and Education Development Center, are offering a Teaching Fellow program and a Master Teaching Fellow program to address the need for highly qualified mathematics teachers in high-need school districts. This program is based on prior success models of mathematics teacher preparation at Boston College that have a high teacher retention rate in urban districts and the highly regarded professional development programs provided by MfA-Boston and EDC.
Using a two-way mentoring model by pairing each teaching fellow with a master teacher to focus on classroom teaching skills and a mathematician to work on content mastery, we can help the new teachers to build the knowledge of both content and pedagogy in order to increase student engagement.
By combining the resources of Boston College, MfA-Boston and the EDC, we can build a strong professional community of mathematicians, mathematics educators and teachers in the greater Boston area and develop the long-term infrastructure necessary to support this community.
Outcomes
Eight Teaching Fellows are currently teaching in high-need school districts. Through the exit surveys, we are able to identify the graduate courses that prepare the teachers well for urban teaching. The development of a growing professional learning community through the monthly teaching seminar is clear amongst the Master Teachers. They have developed and presented several group projects which are directly related to the pedagogy and the practice of teaching math.
Next year, the Teaching Fellows will join with the Master Teachers in this monthly seminar as part of the professional training and community building effort. We will also gather more evidence from school and district staff where Fellows are teaching to measure the teaching effectiveness.
Broader Impacts
Our ultimate goal is to identify the best practice to design a teacher training program and a new teacher support program that are both locally sustainable and nationally replicable, so that this project may have high long-term national impact.
