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Principal Investigators: Bob Floden, Alan Shoenfeld (University of California, Berkeley)
Current Graduate Students: Jerilynn Lepak, Jamie Wernet
Funding: National Science Foundation
Dates: 8/16/09 –8/15/12
This project is focusing on the detailed description and analysis of mathematics classroom practices that result in students’ development of proficiency in word problems in algebra. The products of this research will be (a) an enhanced understanding of the mechanisms of “teaching for mathematical proficiency” in a centrally important area of the mathematics curriculum, (b) a set of research tools that supports deeper investigation into the mechanisms of teaching for robust mathematics learning, and (c) a set of practical tools that can be used on a large scale for benchmarking and improving teaching practice.
Specifically, we propose to explore the following two questions: (1) What instructional practices are frequently used by teachers judged to be doing an exceptional job of helping students to develop proficiency in solving word problems? and (2) What analytic procedures can be developed and used to characterize these promising teaching practices, with low enough cost so that connections between teaching and learning can be examined for a large number of classrooms?
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