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$10 million NSF grant launches training program for math teachers

By David J. Craig

	Wayne Harvey Photo courtesy of Education Development Center

Children typically are taken with mathematics when they are young and the basic concepts of the field seem new and exciting. But adolescents and teenagers often lose interest in the subject, says CAS Mathematics and Statistics Professor Glenn Stevens, in part because they tire of the rote nature of math exercises.

To help invigorate middle and secondary school math instruction with passion and intellectual rigor, Boston University, in collaboration with five local school districts and the Newton-based Education Development Center (EDC), is about to launch an innovative teacher training program called Focus on Mathematics. Supported by a five-year, $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Focus on Mathematics will coordinate professional development opportunities in five communities -- Arlington, Chelsea, Lawrence, Waltham, and Watertown. The program's beginning coincides with the creation of a new master's in advanced study and teaching (MAST) degree offered jointly by SED and CAS, which teachers from BU's partner districts will be encouraged to pursue.

The goal of Focus on Mathematics is to “increase student achievement in mathematics,” says Wayne Harvey, a vice president at EDC, an education and health-care research organization. He and Stevens will direct the program. “We want students to find math engaging and intellectually satisfying,” he says. “We want to give them the kind of world-class mathematics that can come only from teachers who are part of a community of experts in mathematics, teaching, and learning.”

Glenn Stevens Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

Focus on Mathematics will consist of two related initiatives. The Mathematics Teaching Fellow program will offer advanced math and education course work to local teachers, in part to prepare them to lead professional development activities for their peers, and the Professional Development Portfolio will offer academic seminars, online courses, colloquia, and summer institutes to all teachers in the five districts.

As part of the fellowship program, Focus on Mathematics will pay for about 10 teachers from across participating districts to enroll in the new SED/CAS master's program, which begins next summer. In exchange for tuition, the teacher-fellows will commit to remaining in their respective school districts for at least three years after earning their degree.

The three-year, 38-credit MAST program will satisfy requirements for the Massachusetts professional teaching license, Stevens says, but will be innovative for its emphasis on mathematical content. “MAST will be a very mathematics-focused degree, requiring research projects that aren't offered now at SED,” he says. “It will feature several new courses for math teachers, such as a serious problem-solving course in geometry and symmetry, and a research methods course. The idea is to focus on content, and thereby prepare teachers as mathematical leaders instead of simply as educational leaders.”

The new master's degree also will prepare teachers to lead math study groups and other professional development initiatives in their schools. Teachers who complete the degree as part of Focus on Mathematics eventually will be on-site resources for their colleagues. In addition, they will develop and run the periodic training and support activities that comprise the program's Professional Development Portfolio, with help from math and education experts at Boston University, EDC, UMass-Lowell, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Lesley University. Faculty from Boston University will run those professional development offerings in the early years of the grant.

“Five years from now, we expect to leave a cadre of mathematically sophisticated teachers in our school districts who will maintain ties to the universities and research institutes of this partnership and who will serve as leaders in the professional development of other teachers,” says Stevens, who also directs BU's Program in Mathematics for Young Scientists (PROMYS), which was created in 1989 as an advanced mathematics summer program for gifted high school students. In 1991, PROMYS began holding summer training sessions for high school teachers, and Stevens says that the organizers of Focus on Mathematics based their plans partially on what worked in that program.

He says Focus on Mathematics will be special also in that it will treat local teachers and school administrators as genuine partners. “Our outlook is that we're working with teachers on education reform, not that we're university experts coming into schools to make the decisions,” he says. “This program is dedicated to the idea that teachers are going to run education reform, and under our grant the control of all the teacher-support funds ultimately are in district hands. That's important for our long-term goal of building a math community where the whole business of education is approached in a new way, where teachers and students are learning at the same time.”

7 November 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations